Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of its Effects on Productivity and Learning for Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

Abstract

While organizations strive to manage the time and attention of workers effectively, the practice of asking workers to contribute to multiple teams simultaneously can result in the opposite. We present a model of the effects of multiple team membership (MTM) on learning and productivity via the mediating processes of individual context switching, team temporal misalignment, and intra-organizational connectivity. These effects are curvilinear, with learning and productivity peaking at moderate levels of these mediating processes.