通功易事:团队交互记忆系统有效性的一项元分析

Exchange and Cooperation:A Meta-analysis of the Effect of Transactive Memory System on Team Effectiveness

在团队中构建团队交互记忆系统的优势日益凸显,运用元分析方法明晰这种基于个人专长的合作方式对团队效能的影响机制,能够有效指导团队管理实践。基于对团队交互记忆系统有效性的97个实证研究、300个效应值、50 903个独立样本的元分析,检验团队交互记忆系统与团队效能的相关性,以及情境因素和测量因素的调节效应。研究发现:团队交互记忆系统能够促进团队效能,其中,对团队行为的作用强度最高,对团队绩效与团队情感的作用强度相当;专长—可信—协调三维度结构具有较高的区分效度,其中,可信和协调维度对团队效能的作用强度相当,且强于专长维度;地区文化、团队规模、组织类型和测量方式是重要调节因素,当团队来自儒家文化地区、高新科技企业以及属于小规模团队时,作用强度更高。

The transactive memory system(TMS) has been prominent and popular in the current management practice. It is beneficial for teams to release individual memory burden, improve the utilization efficiency of team members’ knowledge and skills, enhance team knowledge sharing ability, and obtain team efficacy(TE). Quite a lot of scholars in various fields have paid more attention to its effectiveness. It is of both practical and theoretical significance to systematically clarify the influence mechanisms and boundary conditions of TMS. Despite of the fruitful results achieved on the impact of TMS on TE, there are still four shortcomings generally. First, the conclusion of the influence mechanisms of TMS on team effectiveness has not been drawn. Second, the existing research results mainly focus on team performance, and the variables involved are too scattered. Third, there is a lack of meta-analysis to test the discriminant validity of TMS in three dimensions. Finally, its boundary conditions are still unclear. Therefore, this paper uses the meta-analysis method to clarify the issues listed above, which is helpful to bridge the differences with existing conclusions and promote the research on the effectiveness of TMS. According to the social cognition theory(SCT), individual behavior acts as a moderator between him/her and the corresponding environment. While his/her behavior changes the environment, the environment also guides the individual behavior. Actually, the effect of TMS is the result of the individual social cognition continuously. Under the influence of TMS, members strengthen their own cognition and improve the self system, which make it possible for their team to efficiently achieve the goals. Following the SCT, this study conducts a periodical meta-analytic examination on the effectiveness of TMS using 97 empirical studies, with 300 effect sizes and 50 903 independent samples. Schmidt and Hunter’s psychometric meta-analysis method is used to calculate the estimates reported in the above literature. This method estimates what the results would have been had if all the studies were conducted without methodological limitations or flaws. In this study, the meta-analysis operation mainly incorporates publication bias analysis, main effect analysis and moderator analysis. In the first part, the study systematically evaluates transactive memory system′s effectiveness, and compares its different promotion effects on team behavior, team performance and team emotion. Periodical conclusions with less second-order sampling error are gained by main effect analysis from meta-analytic examination. TMS is found to promote TE. Specifically, its impact on team behavior comes first while it exerts the similar promoting effects on team performance and team affect.In the second part, the discriminant validity of the three-dimension structure of expertise-credibility-coordination of TMS are checked and their different effects on TE are also explored. The three-dimension structure is verified to possess enough discriminative validity. The effects of credibility and coordination dimensions on TE are similar and stronger than that of expertise dimension.In the third part, it also examines the moderating effects of 4 potential factors, including the regional culture(macro level), organization type(middle level), team size(micro level) and measurement tool(measurement level), on the relationship between team transactive memory system and TE. They are proved to play a role. It indicates that TMS exerties stronger positive effects when teams are in the Confucian culture context(compared with in the Anglo-Saxon culture context) or in high-tech enterprises(compared with low-tech enterprises),or belong to small groups(compared with in large groups). This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following three aspects. First, it systematically summarizes the effects of TMS on team effectiveness, and forms an overall framework for summarizing the effects, theoretical basis, measurement methods and moderating variables on team effectiveness. Second, more reliable results show that the division of expertise-credibility-coordination dimensions has good discriminative validity. What′s more, credibility and coordination have stronger correlations with TE. Third, the moderating effects of the region culture(macro level), organization type(middle level), team size(micro level) and measurement tool(measurement level) on the team effectiveness of TMS are clarified, which make it possible to describe the internal mechanisms of TMS. The practical implications are finally discussed. First, managers can stimulate TE building TMS. Second, when building TMS, it is more effective to create the team atmosphere of credibility and coordination compared with emphasizing the expertise of members. Third, for those small groups embedded in Chinese high-tech enterprises, the construction of TMS should be paid more attention for the TMS can exert more positive influence on teams.