Knowledge Utilization, Coordination, and Team Performance

Ray Reagans (), Ella Miron-Spektor () and Linda Argote ()
Additional contact information
Ray Reagans: Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
Ella Miron-Spektor: Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel
Linda Argote: Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Organization Science, 2016, vol. 27, issue 5, 1108-1124

Abstract: Considerable research has established the superior performance of teams on which team members utilize specialized knowledge and also develop transactive processes that promote coordination. Less is known, however, about the consequences for team performance when team members only possess one of the two productivity factors. We develop and test a framework highlighting the distinct challenges these teams will face. In particular, our results show that each productivity factor contributed significantly more to team performance when the other factor was present. And our findings also illustrate a potential failure mode for knowledge utilization. If team members could not coordinate their collective efforts, utilizing knowledge undermined team performance. Our framework outlines a similar risk for too much coordination, if team members cannot utilize their specialized knowledge and are asked to perform a task with a “rugged” performance landscape. We discuss the implications of our framework and results for theory and practice.

Keywords: teams; transactive memory systems; coordination; knowledge utilization; specialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2016.1078 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:27:y:2016:i:5:p:1108-1124

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().