Title: Psychological Adjustment in Teams: Team Member Well-Being Facilitates Transactive Memory Emergence
Abstract: Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) have been linked to many critical organizational outcomes, including team performance and satisfaction. In this research, we seek to advance organizational theory and practice by investigating how the formation of TMS is impacted by the psychological adjustment of the team members (i.e., a combination of high self-esteem, high satisfaction with life, positive social relations with others, and low depression). Integrating theory from organization science and personality and social psychology, we propose that the average adjustment level of team members will positively predict the transactive memory of the team. We test our hypothesis with a laboratory experiment in which teams complete a marketing plan and are assessed on the extent to which they develop TMS, both in terms of their ability to accurately identify the specialized expertise of their peers and their ability to coordinate and utilize the knowledge on the team. Additionally, we explore the degree to which team adjustment predicts TMS in contexts of high and low expertise explicitness by manipulating whether explicit information about team members’ individual training is provided to the team. Results show that average team adjustment significantly predicts the development of TMS in terms of credibility and coordination. While all teams, regardless of adjustment, benefit from increased expertise explicitness in terms of accurate expertise identification, consensus and specialization, only well-adjusted teams exhibit increased trust in team members’ expertise and coordination of the knowledge of their members.
Publication Year: 2019
Publication Date: 2019-08-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot