In a study of 27 teams at a large apparel and sporting goods company, teams performed better if team members were aware of each others' expertise. Two years earlier, the firm had switched to cross-functional teams focused on product lines. The scientist believed that teams would perform better if they were very aware of who knew what—and who knew whom, in case they didn't have expertise they needed within the team. Using several surveys per team over five months, he compared each team's awareness of member expertise to its attainment of measurable annual goals and to ratings from both upper managers and team members on how well the teams contributed to achieving corporate objectives.
In general, awareness of specialties improved both objective performance and ratings from upper managers, though not team member self-ratings.
Source: Austin, J. (03), "Transactive Memory in Organizational Groups: The Effects of Content, Consensus, Specialization, and Accuracy on Group Performance," Journal of Applied Psychology 88(5): 866.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.