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。

The influence of team faultlines on team performance: Mediating effect of team transactive memory system

To improve team effectiveness and build up competitive advantage, team leader has to make clear of the dynamics of team composition first and make best use of it then. Research on the relationship between team faultlines and performance has grown popular over the last two decades. Nevertheless, cumulative findings of the effects of demographic faultlines have been inconsistent. I argued that these inconsistent findings were partly due to the neglect of the typology of faultlines. Further, there is little knowledge about the intermediate process between different types of faultlines and team performance. This study tended to address the puzzling issue of inconsistency by hypothesizing that social category faultlines might dampen team performance and information- based faultlines benefit team performance. In addition, transactive memory system was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between social category / information-based faultlines and team performance.
Data were collected using a questionnaire survey approach. Two different questionnaires were presented: a team manager questionnaire and a team member questionnaire. The team manager questionnaire was used to collect team performance data, whereas the team member questionnaire was used to collect member demographic information and transactive memory system data. I contacted and invited 293 workgroups to participate. By excluding team data that was lacking adequate observations, 222 teams remained with matched observations. By further eliminating samples with incomplete individual demographic information as required by the measure for faultlines (Thatcher et al., 2003), the effective sample size was 115 teams (including 115 team leaders and 667 team members).
Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted with the Amos 6.0 program to examine the hypotheses. First, a direct effect model was constructed to examine the relationship between social category / information-based faultlines and team performance. I found support for the positive effect of information-based faultlines on team performance. However, social category faultlines were found to be unrelated to team performance. Furthermore, I used a mediated model to examine the mediating effects of transactive memory system, the findings of which suggested that team transactive memory system mediated the relationship between information-based faultlines and team performance (the indirect effect was 0.12, and the 95% CIs obtained for transactive memory system did not include zero (0.010, 0.250)).
The study extended research on faultlines by theorizing how different faultline bases (social category and information-based faultlines) might have differential effects on the performance of workgroups. The empirical results led some support to the hypotheses, suggesting that the refinement of content of faultlines might help explain the divergence in faultline effect. Furthermore, the study had elaborated the mediating effects of team transactive memory system, uncovering the black box between different types of faultlines and team performance.