Team Asynchronicity: A Costly Remedy to Facilitate Team Members’ Multi-teaming

Abstract

Knowledge-based teams that work on challenging, nonroutine tasks typically have their members involved in multiple concurrent teams. Scholars have long advised these teams to leverage communication technologies for asynchronous work to facilitate their members’ multiple team membership (MTM). The recent surge in MTM research however largely overlooked the application and soundness of this advice, and how teams organize their work in response to their members’ multi-teaming. Using adaptive structuration theory, we develop a research model that specifies the link between members’ multi-teaming, team asynchronous communication, and creative behavior in the team. We propose that team MTM number drives teams to communicate more asynchronously, and identify teamwork demands as a moderator of this effect. We further argue that team asynchronicity diminishes creative behavior that is important for knowledge work, and that this effect is moderated by teamwork demands. Results from a sample of 176 teams support the notion that team asynchronicity is both a common and costly remedy for multi-teaming when teamwork demands were at higher levels. Under this condition, team MTM number led to more asynchronous communication and the negative effect of asynchronous communication on members’ creative behavior in the team intensified.