Transactive memory system links work team characteristics and performance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhang, Zhi-Xue; Hempel, Paul S.; Han, Yu-Lan; Tjosvold, Dean
• 署名单位: Peking University; City University of Hong Kong; Lingnan University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0021-9010
• DOI: 10.1037/0021-9010.92.6.1722
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 1722-1730
• 关键词: work team; transactive memory system; team characteristics; performance; team process

摘要

Teamwork and coordination of expertise among team members with different backgrounds are increasingly recognized as important for team effectiveness. Recently, researchers have examined how team members rely on transactive memory system (TMS; D. M. Wegner, 1987) to share their distributed knowledge and expertise. To establish the ecological validity and generality of TMS research findings, this study sampled 104 work teams from a variety of organizational settings in China and examined the relationships between team characteristics, TMS, and team performance. The results suggest that task interdependence, cooperative goal interdependence, and support for innovation are positively related to work teams' TMS and that TMS is related to team performance; moreover, structural equation analysis indicates that TMS mediates the team characteristics-performance links. Findings have implications both for team leaders to manage their work teams effectively and for team members to improve their team performance.