Transactive Memory - Transactive Memory and Team Performance

Transactive Memory and Team Performance

The existence of a transactive memory system within a group allows for quick access to a large amount of knowledge, improving information integration processes, improving decision making processes, influencing the perception of efficiency of other teammates, and increasing their satisfaction and sense of identification with the team and the organization. Transactive memory is composed of specialized knowledge and understanding of who has that knowledge, but benefits are not limited to just groups that engage in a lot of knowledge work.

Transactive memory may enhance performance through three major mechanisms:

• Division of the responsibility on different kinds of knowledge across the teammates allows each one of them to broaden his own knowledge in a specific area while maintaining access to relevant required task knowledge possessed by others.

• Developing transactive memory system will shorten the time needed for seeking the appropriate knowledge: when each team member knows who to turn to for the required information, less time is wasted in search for relevant task knowledge.

• The shared understanding of the teammates regarding the interpersonal relations in the team and the different expertise domains, enables them to better predict and anticipate how their team colleagues would behave, leading to well coordinated and efficient interactions.

Transactive memory may not be helpful for all kinds of groups or all kinds of work. Lewis and Herndon (2011) suggested criteria for kinds of tasks that a developed transactive memory system will be the most helpful in improving the performance of.

• Tasks that require diverse knowledge.
• Tasks that require a deep understanding of specialized knowledge.
• Tasks where the credibility and accuracy of information is important.
• Tasks where it is possible to know which members possess expertise.
• Tasks that require a complete application of knowledge to the task.
• Tasks where efficient coordination between members is important.

For these reasons, groups performing tasks that can't be broken apart or require little specialization may not get much benefit out of the development of a transactive memory system. The authors suggest that tasks where ideas have to be executed and all members have the same goal will benefit the most from a transactive memory system. Conversely the authors suggest that groups that engage in brainstorming or decision tasks may develop transactive memory systems faster than those merely executing ideas because there is more knowledge sharing and interaction between members.