The Impact of Knowledge Coordination on Virtual Team Performance over Time

Abstract

As the role of virtual teams in organizations becomes increasingly important, it is crucial that companies identify and leverage team members' knowledge. Yet, little is known of how virtual team members come to recognize one another's knowledge, trust one another's expertise, and coordinate their knowledge effectively. In this study, we develop a model of how three behavioral dimensions associated with transactive memory systems (TMS) in virtual teams-expertise location, 1 Ritu Agarwal was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Alberto Espinosa and Susan Gasson served as reviewers. The associate editor and a third reviewer chose to remain anonymous. Authors are listed alphabetically. Each contributed equally to the paper. task-knowledge coordination, and cognition-based trust-and their impacts on team performance change over time. Drawing on the data from a study that involves 38 virtual teams of MBA students performing a complex web-based business simulation game over an 8-week period, we found that in the early stage of the project, the frequency and volume of task-oriented communications among team members played an important role in forming expertise location and cognition-based trust. Once TMS were established, however, task-oriented communication became less important. Instead, toward the end of the project, task-knowledge coordination emerges as a key construct that influences team performance, mediating the impact of all other constructs. Our study demonstrates that TMS can be formed even in virtual team environments where interactions take place solely through electronic media, although they take a relatively long time to develop. Furthermore, our findings show that, once developed, TMS become essential to performing tasks effectively in virtual teams.

Geographically Distributed Sensemaking: Developing Understanding in Forum-Based Software Development Teams

“…By contrast, the developers seem to work differently, perhaps because they are familiar with one another. This would tie in with research into transactive memory systems in distributed teams [5]. This is illustrated by how the developers tend to deal with only one theme in each response.…”

“…Fewer studies examine teams in situ to understand how they cope with distribution [1], [17]- [20]. Of these, even fewer focus on how socio-cognitive processes occur in distributed teams [5], [6], [21]. Socio-cognitive processes happen through social interaction and affect the way a group thinks, for instance, when a team shares information and reviews it during sensemaking to reach a consensus.…”

“…Where an individual's model of understanding differs from their teammates', confusion and disruption can occur. More effective teams develop social systems that help them negotiate these conflicts [5], [17], [18].…”

“…To this end, some recent research explores how distributed teams operate (e.g. [5], [6]). Here, we build upon this by focusing specifically on how sensemaking occurs in a geographically distributed team.…”

Leveraging Enterprise Mobility Innovation for Knowledge Sharing in the Airline Industry with Implications for Engineering Education

“…Students learn by observing and mimicking their professors and fellow students. Employees in distributed teams mimic the successful, observed behaviors of others for finding expertise and coordinating knowledge with others [23]. Developing and sharing innovative ideas is mainly a reciprocal, social activity relying on the interactive linking of ideas between individuals and collective knowledge [24].…”