Beyond the Internal! Exploring How Transactive Memory System Facilitates Knowledge-Based Team Performance

Abstract

Transactive memory system (TMS), as the powerful collective cognition, is well-documented to support team performance. Given today’s boundaryless era with great uncertainty, managing boundaries has become challenging but critical for teams. However, how TMS would influence teams to engage with external environments through boundary management remains underexplored. Adopting an open-system perspective, we explore how TMS affects team boundary management and further contributes to team performance in uncertain environments. Empirical results from 337 respondents embedded in 56 teams revealed that TMS was positively related to all three types of team boundary management. Among them, boundary spanning and reinforcement was positively associated with team performance, while boundary reinforcement mediated the relationship between TMS and team performance. Lastly, environmental uncertainty was found to play an important moderating role in the TMS - team performance relationship. Accordingly, this research advances the knowledge of how teams would manage while being influenced by their external environments.

Keywords

• Transactive memory system
• knowledge-based team
• environmental uncertainty
• team boundary management
• team performance