The Dualities of Multiple Team Membership: Implications for Team Performance and Adaptability

Abstract

Researchers recognize that multiple team membership (MTM) represents a double-edged sword for teams, but the precise mechanisms that explain the countervailing effects and contingencies that modulate these relationships remain underexplored. We argue that team-level MTM allows team members to access heterogeneous external resources through more diverse external-network ties, benefiting team performance. In contrast, we advance ideas that team-level MTM can negatively impact team adaptability by diminishing the heterogeneity of team members’ external roles. To reconcile these divergent arguments, we introduce an informational perspective to suggest that teams can strengthen the benefits and mitigate the downsides of MTM when they have high levels of internal informational diversity. Using data from financial forecast reports published by 473 analyst teams in J. P. Morgan from 2011 to 2019, we find support for our integrated theoretical framework. MTM indeed appears to be beneficial for team performance through increased external network heterogeneity, but detrimental for team adaptability through reduced external role heterogeneity. Teams’ internal informational diversity was furthermore found to accentuate these indirect benefits of MTM for team performance, while simultaneously attenuating its indirect detriments for team adaptability.