Information-processing capabilities as a transactive memory system : a comparative study of two distributed R&D teams

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Autonomous agile teams: Challenges and future directions for research

According to the principles articulated in the agile manifesto, motivated and empowered software developers relying on technical excellence and simple designs, create business value by delivering working software to users at regular short intervals. These principles have spawned many practices. At the core of these practices is the idea of autonomous, self-managing, or self-organizing teams whose members work at a pace that sustains their creativity and productivity. This article summarizes the main challenges faced when implementing autonomous teams and the topics and research questions that future research should address

Agile methods influence on communication in globally distributed it project teams

Agile methods are increasingly used by companies. Although these methods were initially developed for collocated teams, the number of their successful implementation in globally distributed IT project teams is growing. Despite the considerable research on distributed teams and agile methods, little is known about how they influence communication in globally distributed IT project teams. The study aims at examining the relationship between agile methods and communication in such teams. The research question of the study is dedicated to the exploration of agile methods influence on communication in globally distributed IT project teams. Data collection was done with the help of such qualitative research method as a case study in form of ten semi-structured Skype interviews. The results showed that the use of agile methods has a mixed impact on communication in globally distributed IT project teams. On one hand, agile methods facilitate informal communication among team members. However, the use of agile methods may further limit this informal communication, which is ICT mediated. At the same time, agile methods do not offer adequate tools for effective formal communication.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

An investigation of the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge in software development teams

Knowledge in general, and tacit knowledge in particular, has been hailed as an important factor for successful performance in knowledge-worker teams. Despite claims of the importance of tacit knowledge, few researchers have studied the concept empirically, due in part to the confusion surrounding its conceptualisation. The present study examined the acquisition and sharing o f tacit knowledge and the consequent effect on team performance, through social interaction and the development of a transactive memory system (TMS). TMSs are important for the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge, since they enact ‘collective minds’ of teams, and are also a factor in successful team performance. In order to conduct this research, a team-level operational definition of tacit knowledge was forwarded and a direct measure of tacit knowledge for software development teams, called the Team Tacit Knowledge Measure (TTKM ) was developed and validated. To investigate the main premise of this research an empirical survey study was conducted which involved 48 software development teams (n = 181 individuals), from Ireland and the UK. Software developers were chosen as the example of knowledge-worker teams because they work with intangible cognitive processes. It was concluded that tacit knowledge was acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS. Quality of social interaction was found to be a more important route through which teams can learn and share tacit knowledge, than was transactive memory. However, transactive memory was not a mediator between social interaction and team tacit knowledge, indicating that both provided separate contributions. Team tacit knowledge was found to predict team performance above and beyond transactive memory, though both were significant. Based on these findings recommendations were made for the management of software development teams and for future research directions

Knowledge Boundaries Shape the Cognitive and Structural Foundations of Innovation: Dyad-Level Expertise Exchange in Teams of Specialists

Innovation in academia and industry is increasingly achieved via complex problem solving in teams making use of knowledge from multiple areas of expertise. These expertise-diverse teams have proliferated in response to the demands of contemporary knowledge work, and members often possess intellectually distant skillsets that impose novel constraints on the means by which they must collaborate—in particular, they must rely more on distributed taskwork. Yet, research continues to place emphasis on the goal of enabling teams to achieve innovation by increasing knowledge shared in common, overcoming obstacles to cognitive parity, or via sustained periods of problem solving by the team as a whole. Instead, this study shows—and supports using a field experiment—that expertise-diverse teams heavily emphasize skillset complementarity and dyadlevel expertise exchange, allowing team-level innovation to emerge from smaller interactions in which concrete, actionable expertise is transferred directly between members. As such, members from partly incommensurate expertise domains can still contribute to one another’s work, raising the chance of breakthrough innovation across domains at the team level. Teams were randomly assigned to one of two training interventions emphasizing either dyadic or entirely group-level interaction. Results revealed that dyadic interaction was more strongly related to innovativeness and integrative complexity of team knowledge products. Measured expertise exchange in dyads also predicted team outcomes, a finding mediated by transactive memory—teams with more differentiated transactive memory systems were more effective. This study resolves incoherence about the impact of expertise diversity on teamwork, how to operationalize team cognition, and the contributions of structural features (e.g., interdependence) to team cognition and innovation

THE TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEM AND GROUP LEARNING

The objective of this article lies in the understanding of the learning process that occurs in cross-functional groups in automotive companies in light of the Transactive Memory System (TMS). The specific objectives describe the working methodology applied for the operation of multifunctional groups and its relation to learning; the main factors that facilitate group learning and the moments which there was evidence of group learning. The research methodology used is qualitative and exploratory approaches due to the fact those approaches has been less explored in the academic environment. Two different organizations were investigated: the first one is a multinational which works with a strategy of offering complete innovation product, and the other with strategy of offering incremental innovative products for the automotive industry. The results indicated that the fact TMS acts as an important facilitator of group learning

The Effect of Role Specialization And Transactive Memory Systems On Performance in Data Science Teams

Teamwork is an integral part of data science work. Data science work requires knowledge from many different disciplines including statistics, information visualization, programming, and subject matter knowledge related to a given set of data sets (e.g., politics, education). Data science teams are often formed by individuals who have different areas of knowledge and expertise and, as a result, may take on different functional roles within a team. Due to their distinctive expertise, members in data science teams may take on specialized task roles matching their expertise, and such division of labor could increase coordination cost among team members. As data science work is often open-ended and dynamic by nature, high coordination costs could deteriorate performance in data science teams. In this research, I argued that developing shared cognition on who-knows-what (i.e., transactive memory system, abbreviated as TMS) in data science teams would be beneficial for team performance, especially when the members have specialized roles. I conducted two studies to understand the effect of role specialization and transactive memory systems on team performance with a goal to identify and test a lever to facilitate transactive memory system in data science teams. I collected data from two consecutive Data Challenge events; Data Challenge is an week-long data science competition hosted annually as a university-wide event. In Study 1, I conducted an observational study by collecting survey data from 74 individuals in 36 teams in Data Challenge 2019. In Study 2, I conducted a field experiment to examine the effectiveness of an experimental intervention designed to facilitate transactive memory system in data science teams by highlighting any inaccuracies in the perceived expertise between members

Change Of Routines: A Multi-Level Analysis

This paper analyses how organizational routines change. It focuses on the level of learning groups within organizations. The paper starts with a summary of the 'activity theory' of knowledge used. Next, the notion of scripts is used, to analyse organizational groups as 'systems of distributed cognition', and to identify different levels of routines and their change. Finally, the paper looks at communication routines or rules needed for different levels of change, in the formation of new 'shared beliefs'.organizational change;organizational learning;evolution;routines;scripts

Using Design Science Research to Develop a Conceptual Solution for Improving Knowledge Sharing in a Virtual Workspace

Enhancements in technology have resulted in significant changes to day-to-day operations of organizations in the present day. One especially noteworthy change is the alteration in the nature of teams from being co-located, with face-to-face interaction, to virtual, with the involvement of information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate communication. This change in team character has had a downstream impact on a key element of an organization’s competitive edge, namely knowledge. Overall, there is consensus that knowledge is a crucial facet of the competitive edge of an organization. Consequently, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, and organizational learning are essential components of an organization’s sustained existence and effectiveness in the competitive marketplace and considerable academic and industry attention has been paid to this matter. However, the present day scenario of global organizations and dispersed teams, within and across geographies, transforms the matter of knowledge sharing and organizational learning into one of great complexity. Thus, the present study was interested in understanding the modalities of knowledge sharing and consequently organizational learning in the context of a virtual workspace, that is, teams operating from physically distinct locations and communicating using ICT tools. Overall, the objective of this study was to propose a conceptual model using the Design Science Research (DSR) approach to enhance organizational learning and knowledge sharing in the context of the virtual workspaces of the present day work environment. Further, the conceptual model is extended to propose the use of a Learnin

Connecting minds: On the Role of Metaknowledge in Knowledge Coordination

Abstract Knowledge coordination, that is, the process of locating, transferring, and integrating the specialized knowledge of multiple individuals, is a critical prerequisite for organizations to make fuller use of one of their most important resources: the knowledge of their employees. Yet, knowledge coordination is as challenging as it is important. This dissertation aims to further our understanding of how groups and larger collectives process information and integrate their knowledge and what factors influence the social interactions at the core of this process. The three empirical studies contained in this dissertation examine the role of individuals’ metaknowledge - the knowledge of who knows what - in knowledge coordination processes. Findings from the first two studies indicate that individuals who have an above-average level of metaknowledge can play a critical role in catalysing information processing and decision making in teams as well as in helping to integrate knowledge between organizational groups. The third study furthermore elucidates the role of formal rank in shaping informal organizational networks through which employees seek knowledge as well as metaknowledge. The findings presented in this dissertation contribute to research on group cognition, knowledge integration within and between groups, and intra-organizational networks. Most importantly, together these studies underscore the importance of taking into account differences in individuals’ metaknowledge in creating a better understanding of knowledge coordination in organizations