The dynamic relationship between multiple team membership and individual job performance in knowledge-intensive work

Area of Science:

• Organizational Psychology
• Human Resource Management
• Sociology of Work

Background:

• Modern knowledge-based organizations increasingly utilize employees in multiple teams simultaneously.
• Understanding the dynamic interplay between individual multiple team membership (MTM) and job performance is crucial for organizational effectiveness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the reciprocal, within-person relationship between changes in an employee's multiple team membership (MTM) and their overall job performance.
• To determine if changes in MTM precede or are predicted by changes in job performance over time.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal archival data from 1,875 employees in a knowledge-intensive organization over 5 years.
• Latent change score modeling to analyze the dynamic association between MTM and job performance.

Main Results:

• An increase in an employee's MTM was associated with a subsequent decrease in job performance evaluations.
• Conversely, an increase in job performance was associated with a subsequent increase in MTM.
• Initially, increased MTM negatively impacted job performance, but long-term, it correlated with higher performance.

Conclusions:

• A complex, dynamic, and reciprocal relationship exists between individual multiple team membership and overall job performance.
• While short-term challenges in MTM exist, sustained engagement in multiple teams may ultimately benefit employee performance.
• Organizations should consider the temporal effects of MTM on performance when designing team structures and evaluating employees.