Phase-specific relationships between team learning processes and transactive memory development

With this study we seek to contribute to the research on the emergence of transactive memory, that is, the knowledge of “who knows what”, as part of the structural component of transactive memory systems (TMSs). Based on our theoretical model of team learning and transactive memory development, we analyse the relationships among different team learning behaviours and transactive memory during various phases of team development. We use a longitudinal design with three points of measurement at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a semester, to examine real student project teams over their full life cycle. The results support our presumptions of phase-specific influences of team learning behaviours on transactive memory development. This shows that knowledge-based processes (storage and retrieval) play a more important role during early stages of project-based teamwork, followed by a shift to a higher relevance of communication-based processes (reflection and co-construction) in later stages. Implications for further research and team management phenomena are discussed.     

团队断裂带对团队绩效的影响：团队交互记忆系统的作用

对团队构成与团队绩效关系的认识有助于充分利用团队结构优势、提高团队效能、建立竞争优势。理论界对团队断裂带与团队绩效的关系给予了极大关注, 然而遗憾的是, 研究结果还存在较大分歧。通过明确团队断裂带的属性类别, 探索团队断裂带与团队绩效之间的中介机制, 试图系统解释分歧产生的原因。基于115个实际工作团队配对样本数据的结构方程模型分析表明, 信息相关断裂带通过提高团队交互记忆系统水平促进团队绩效; 社会属性断裂带与团队交互记忆系统或团队绩效都无显著关系。本研究结果有助于深化对团队断裂带内涵及效能机制的认识, 推动团队断裂带理论的发展。     

Coping with challenge and hindrance stressors in teams: Behavioral,cognitive, and affective outcomes

The purpose of this study was to utilize the challenge–hindrance framework to examine the discrete and combined effects of different environmental stressors on behavioral, cognitive, and affective outcomes at the team level. Results from 83 teams working on a command and control simulation indicated that the introduction of a challenge stressor positively affected team performance and transactive memory. The introduction of a hindrance stressor negatively affected team performance and transactive memory and positively affected psychological withdrawal. When the hindrance stressor was combined with the challenge stressor, teams exhibited the lowest levels of performance and transactive memory, and the highest levels of psychological withdrawal. These effects were due to the adoption of specific coping strategies by team members. Implications are discussed, as well as limitations and directions for future research.     

Transactive memory in organizational groups: the effects of content, consensus, specialization, and accuracy on group performance

Previous research on transactive memory has found a positive relationship between transactive memory system development and group performance in single project laboratory and ad hoc groups. Closely related research on shared mental models and expertise recognition supports these findings. In this study, the author examined the relationship between transactive memory systems and performance in mature, continuing groups. A group's transactive memory system, measured as a combination of knowledge stock, knowledge specialization, transactive memory consensus, and transactive memory accuracy, is positively related to group goal performance, external group evaluations, and internal group evaluations. The positive relationship with group performance was found to hold for both task and external relationship transactive memory systems.     

The Benefits of Stepping Into Others' Shoes: Perspective Taking Strengthens Transactive Memory

Perspective taking is an important requirement for effective communication. Teams working on knowledge-intensive tasks should benefit particularly. In a laboratory study, we examined whether perspective taking (vs. egocentrism) facilitated transactive memory when team members' knowledge was either different or similar. Perspective taking led teams to form more accurate transactive memory and agree more regarding each other's knowledge assessments. Corresponding effects were found when knowledge was similar. However, no interaction emerged. Our study shows that perspective taking is a cognitive state that can be induced with a short intervention and that can positively influence team-level outcomes such as transactive memory.     

差异化变革型领导对知识分享与团队创造力的影响:社会网络机制的解释

差异化变革型领导是团队领导领域的最新议题,现有的研究局限于探讨其社会心理方面的作用机制。本文从社会网络机制出发解释差异化变革型领导对团队知识分享及团队创造力的影响。基于65家企业的225个工作团队样本的结构方程模型分析表明,团队一致性变革型领导正向影响团队交流网络密度从而提高团队知识分享;个体差异性变革型领导正向影响团队成员交流网络密度差异性从而降低团队知识分享;团队知识分享正向影响团队创造力。本文的证据表明,在中国情境下,差异性团队领导行为不利于创造稠密的团队交流网络,以及团队知识分享,从而不利于提升团队创造力水平。     

First,get your feet wet: The effects of learning from direct and indirect experience on team creativity

How does prior experience influence team creativity? We address this question by examining the effects of task experience acquired directly and task experience acquired vicariously from others on team creativity in a product-development task. Across three laboratory studies, we find that direct task experience leads to higher levels of team creativity and more divergent products than indirect task experience. Moreover, our results show that the difference in team creativity between direct and indirect task experience persists over time. Finally, our findings demonstrate that transactive memory systems fully mediate the effect of direct task experience on team creativity. Teams who acquired task experience directly are more creative because they develop better transactive memory systems than teams who acquired experience vicariously. We discuss how our findings contribute to understanding the effects of prior experience on team creativity, and the role of transactive memory systems in creative tasks.     

Can transactive memory system improve top management team’s creativity? The moderating role of team identity

Current Psychology - Whether transactive memory system can improve top management team’s creativity is an important issue that remains to be solved. Based on the theory of information...     

Transactive memory system links work team characteristics and performance

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.     

Relations entre réflexivité d’équipe,mémoire transactive et efficacité interventionnelle perçue chez les policiers-opérateurs du RAID

The objective of this study is to examine the influence of explicit (team reflexivity) and implicit (transactive memory) coordination processes on the perceived interventional effectiveness of specialized elite units (RAID) of the French national police. We test the hypothesis that transactive memory is a mediating process in the relationship between team reflexivity and perceived effectiveness. One hundred and three police-officers representing the seven French police special units replied to a questionnaire. The results show that perceived effectiveness is positively related to task reflexivity and transactive memory. The relationship between task reflexivity and perceived effectiveness is mediated by the integrated component of transactive memory (bootSE = 0.05, 95% BCa CI [0.004, 0.19]). The theoretical and practical implications are discussed with regard to the development of debriefing methods and teamwork training for the development of shared mental models.     

交互记忆系统研究回顾与展望

交互记忆系统是团队成员之间形成的一种彼此依赖的,用以编码、储存和提取不同领域知识的合作分工系统。其研究有助于发现高效工作团队如何处理解决问题所需要的信息,解释团队成员怎样通过发挥各自的专长去解决团队面临的问题。它是解释团队知识处理过程的一个机制。相关研究已有近20年的历史。文章从交互记忆系统的形成和维护、测量、影响因素及其对团队有效性的作用等几个方面对已有研究进行回顾,并指出其对管理研究和管理实践的借鉴意义及未来可能的研究方向     

虚拟团队中交互记忆系统理论研究现状述评

交互记忆系统(Transactive Memory System,TMS),团队成员在交流的过程中形成的一种合作性分工系统,简单来说就是团队成员对于“谁知道什么”的一种共同认知.通过TMS,团队成员能够协调彼此的专长从而提高团队知识整合和共享水平.文章回顾了TMS和虚拟团队的相关概念,重点从虚拟团队中TMS的形成、效用以及虚拟性与TMS的关系三个角度对虚拟团队中TMS的相关研究进行了归纳,最后指出未来不仅需要深入研究团队输入、输出和调节因素的影响,还需考虑到不同的信息技术的影响以及研究方法和范围的完善.     

Transactive memory in decision-making teams: implications for team effectiveness

The transactive memory system (TMS) construct is one of the most extended theoretical approaches to understand the role of cognitive processes at group level in the effectiveness of work teams. This study examined the relationships among TMS, performance, satisfaction and functional communication in decision-making teams. 40 four-person teams were asked to suppose they were expert consulting teams advising a fictitious organization on how to solve a problem with their employees. Results showed a mediating effect of TMS on the relationships between functional communication, perceived team performance and satisfaction. Contrary to our expectations, TMSs were not related to performance as evaluated by external raters. These findings suggest the importance of team communication in the formation of TMSs, as well as their implications for the effectiveness of decision-making teams.     

A multilevel examination of the relationships among training outcomes, mediating regulatory processes, and adaptive performance

This study examined whether cognitive, affective-motivational, and behavioral training outcomes relate to posttraining regulatory processes and adaptive performance similarly at the individual and team levels of analysis. Longitudinal data were collected from 156 individuals composing 78 teams who were trained on and then performed a simulated flight task. Results showed that posttraining regulation processes related similarly to adaptive performance across levels. Also, regulation processes fully mediated the influences of self- and collective efficacy beliefs on individual and team adaptive performance. Finally, knowledge and skill more strongly and directly related to adaptive performance at the individual than the team level of analysis. Implications to theory and practice, limitations, and future directions are discussed.     

Cognitive interdependence and convergent expectations in transactive memory.

A laboratory experiment investigated the processes that underlie the development of transactive memory structures--the organizing schemes that connect knowledge held by individuals to knowledge held by others (D. M. Wegner, T. Guiliano, & P. T. Hertel, 1985). The design was a 2 x 4 factorial that controlled expectations about the partner's knowledge (similar or different from the participant's) and cognitive interdependence, the degree to which participants' outcomes depended on whether they recalled the same or different information as their partner (defined by 4 incentives). Transactive memory was most differentiated when individuals had different expertise and incentives to remember different information and most integrated when individuals had similar expertise and incentives to remember the same information. These findings may help to explain the impact of previous experience and relationships on the development of transactive memory.     

团队心理安全感对成员创新行为影响的跨层次研究:知识分享的中介作用

采用问卷调查法,以珠三角地区高科技企业61个工作团队的387名员工为调查对象,在控制被试的教育水平、工作年限及人口统计学变量后,运用多层线性模型技术考察团队心理安全感、知识分享及成员创新行为之间的关系。结果表明:(1)团队心理安全感对知识分享和成员创新行为具有显著的正向促进作用;(2)知识分享是团队心理安全感与成员创新行为之间的跨层次中介变量。     

团队学习、交互记忆系统与团队绩效：基于IMOI范式的纵向追踪研究

本研究采用纵向追踪设计,以55支实际运行的项目团队作为研究对象,分析检验了交互记忆系统对于团队学习与团队绩效之间关系的作用机制; 并基于理论界近期受到广泛关注的IMOI研究范式,通过两阶段的追踪探索团队学习与团队绩效间关系的动态机制。结果表明: 交互记忆系统对团队学习与团队绩效间关系呈现出显著的中介效应,能够为团队学习的绩效机制提供良好的理论解释力;另一方面,团队学习是一种动态演进的组织行为过程,采用IMOI范式来替代传统的I-P-O模型能够更好地剖析其动态属性。     

领导者情感的作用机制：一个跨层的整合观点

领导者情感能够影响下属个体绩效和团队整体绩效, 但作用机制尚不清晰。基于情感事件理论和情绪传染理论, 在个体层面上, 领导者情感通过情绪传染和领导者行为两条路径影响下属情感, 进而影响下属绩效和工作态度。其次在团队层面上, 个体情感通过情绪传染和交叉影响形成团队情感基调, 通过影响团队过程, 进而影响团队绩效。最后, 文章提出领导者情感的跨层整合模型, 并对未来研究方向进行讨论。     

Group cognition,membership change,and performance: Investigating the benefits and detriments of collective knowledge

This study analyzes the effects of group membership change on group cognition and performance to determine how groups can simultaneously leverage oldtimers’ collective knowledge and a newcomer’s expertise. Our analysis focuses specifically on the interrelated effects of the two components of a transactive memory system (TMS)—TMS structure and TMS processes—to explain the cognitive mechanisms through which membership change affects group performance. Results from a laboratory study show that groups that experience partial membership change tend to rely on the TMS structure that oldtimers developed in their original group, and that doing so is ultimately detrimental to performance because it creates inefficient TMS processes. Results from a supplemental study indicate that these TMS process inefficiencies can be avoided when oldtimers are instructed to reflect upon their collective knowledge prior to task execution. We discuss the implications for managing group cognition in organizations where membership change is prevalent.     

社会网络视角的团队情绪智力

据估计, 60%的团队都没有达到它们的目标, 这给学术界提出了重要且具有挑战性的研究课题。情绪智力(emotional intelligence)是在人际关系基础上发展起来的重要概念。研究发现, 基于微观个体或宏观整体的团队情绪智力在团队成功达到目标过程中起到重要作用。然而, 当前尚无研究探讨基于团队局部成员间情绪智力行为交换而产生的团队情绪智力对团队的影响。为此, 本课题从配对层次(一对一关系中两个人, 即actor-target)这一新角度探讨团队情绪智力, 通过把它看做团队过程中一种产生的状态(emergent state), 在整合团队成员交换理论和社会网络方法基础上对它进行研究。具体围绕团队内配对单元存在的交换关系(指目标者感受到行动者对其实施的情绪智力行为)在团队中形成的网络所代表的团队情绪智力开展实证研究, 以期从理论上揭示团队内情绪智力行为交换的特征, 情绪智力自下而上(bottom-up)由个体发展到团队的过程, 以及配对基础的团队情绪智力的影响效应, 从而为团队管理实践提供具体的改善建议。