Abstract
With many employees operating in a multiteam environment, multiple team membership (MTM) has become a critical topic across a number of disciplines. Although MTM research is often regarded as being in its beginning stages, there has been a recent uptick of research. An integration of the literature at this phase allows scholars to see the most pressing challenges and begin to identify general insights to move research forward effectively. Accordingly, this review contributes to the literature through drawing meaningful connections regarding MTM between disciplines and providing nascent opportunities for future research. The final review includes 44 articles that directly examine MTM. These articles are supplemented by the project and management literatures to elaborate upon the theoretical bases and findings of these articles.
With over a decade since Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, and Gilson (2008) reviewed the previous decade of team effectiveness research, researchers have begun to follow their call to embrace the intricacies of modern team arrangements: we need to . . . be willing to take great strides and in some cases leaps to ensure that we are capturing and embracing the complexities of current team arrangements and seeking to better understand them rather than to fit them into our current frameworks. (Mathieu et al., 2008, p. 463)
As these authors noted, one core area that warranted such attention was the norm of individuals belonging to multiple teams simultaneously despite “scant research” on the topic (Mathieu et al., 2008, p. 442). With 65% to 95% of knowledge workers operating in a multiteam environment (O’Leary, Mortensen, & Woolley, 2011), many related calls have followed, imploring researchers to investigate how multiple team membership (MTM) impacts individuals and teams alike (e.g., Tennenbaum, Mathieu, Salas, & Cohen, 2012; Wageman, Gardner, & Mortensen, 2012).
Although multiteam structures have been recognized for decades, much of the initial literature focused on the organizational or system level, addressing questions such as “How can multiteam systems be most effective?” (e.g., Shuffler, Jiménez-Rodríguez, & Kramer, 2015), “How can organizations optimize their project portfolios?” (e.g., Martinsuo, 2013), and “What are best practices for managing multiple projects?” (e.g., Dean, Denzler, & Watkins, 1992; Patanakul & Milosevic, 2008). Within this broader perspective, employees were frequently conceptualized as a resource to be maximized or managed, with less of a concern for the psychosocial experience that accompanies multiteam membership (Zika-Viktorsson, Sundström, & Engwall, 2006). However, with the introduction of a social network and attention perspective to MTM, O’Leary and colleagues’ (2011) theoretical model spurred interest in a personnel and team-based perspective to MTM. Following this interest, MTM has been examined from a range of perspectives across multiple disciplines. This research has spanned from management scholars examining MTM as a determinant of productivity and performance (e.g., Crawford, Reeves, Stewart, & Astrove, 2019; Cummings & Haas, 2012; Maynard, Mathieu, Rapp, & Gilson, 2012; van de Brake, Walter, Rink, Essens, & van der Vegt, 2018) to technology and information systems scholars examining the effect of MTM on online communities and individual perceptions (e.g., Dawood & Chan, 2015; Kim, Jarvenpaa, & Gu, 2018; Zhu, Kraut, & Kittur, 2014) to project management scholars examining the benefits and challenges of participating in a project-based structure (e.g., Furukawa, 2016; Sanchez & Terlizzi, 2017; Zika-Viktorsson et al., 2006).
Despite more than 70 million employees having to deal with challenges resulting from a multiteam context (G. Chen et al., 2019) and MTM research beginning to percolate across fields, there has yet to be a scholarly consensus regarding how to best support individuals and teams in this context. Because the benefits and challenges of MTM must be managed carefully to ensure that the potential benefits are realized (O’Leary et al., 2011), integrating the multiple existing perspectives on MTM will help advance our understanding of how individuals and teams can best utilize multiteam structures. Furthermore, although this area of research is often regarded as being in its beginning stages (e.g., G. Chen et al., 2019; Rapp & Mathieu, 2019), there has been a rampant uptick of research, with nearly one third (29.5%) of published MTM studies since O’Leary et al.’s (2011) seminal paper occurring in the past 15 months (January 1, 2018, through March 31, 2019). An integration of the literature at this phase allows scholars to see the most pressing challenges and begin to identify general insights to move research forward effectively. Accordingly, the contribution of this article is to provide an integrative review of MTM. In amalgamating unique perspectives that have been developed across disciplines, this review will highlight emergent patterns from the extant literature and introduce nascent opportunities for future research.
Defining the Scope of the Review
To adhere to the core topic of gaining a multidisciplinary understanding MTM, this review focuses on the individual- and team-based perspectives that accompany MTM (which has occasionally been called multiteaming; e.g., Gupta & Woolley, 2018). To complete this review, articles addressing MTM were pulled from Google Scholar. As O’Leary and colleagues (2011) are widely cited for introducing or popularizing the MTM construct, all forward citing items were examined (a search was finalized as of March 31, 2019, resulting in 269 articles). Those citations that corresponded to published articles in academic journals or conference proceedings on the topic of MTM, regardless of discipline, were included in the final review. Citations which referred to theses/dissertations, books, or unpublished works were excluded. Articles which only had a nonsubstantive connection to MTM, such that they cited O’Leary et al. (2011) briefly and the main content of the article was not related to MTM, were not included. Articles which related to tangential topics (e.g., multitasking, teamwork) but did not directly measure/address MTM or occur in the MTM environment were excluded from the formal review count; however, they were used as context and cited where appropriate. Finally, although O’Leary et al. (2011) are often credited with introducing the construct of MTM, these authors acknowledge that MTM has been examined sparsely, often indirectly, in prior literature. Thus, key prior empirical articles were also included in this review. As a result, the final review includes 44 articles. These articles are supplemented by research from the management and project literatures to elaborate upon the theory and findings of these studies.
Defining and Operationalizing MTM
Through questioning the oft-prior assumption of teamwork occurring in a singular, discreet team, a plethora of research has grown to incorporate multiteam systems (MTSs; Mathieu, Marks, & Zaccaro, 2001) and project-based management (e.g., Lycett, Rassau, & Danson, 2004; Sydow, Lindkvist, & DeFillippi, 2004). The recognition of these multiteam structures has resulted in research regarding membership, process, and output interdependencies (O’Leary, Woolley, & Mortensen, 2012). A broad definition of MTM is used to facilitate the review; that is, MTM is defined as membership interdependencies across teams.
Whereas MTM is defined by membership interdependencies, MTSs are defined by process and output interdependencies (O’Leary et al., 2012). MTM is often discussed in conjunction with MTSs; however, it is important to distinguish between these constructs. MTSs are “two or more teams that interface directly and interdependently in response to environmental contingencies toward the accomplishment of collective goals” (Mathieu et al., 2001, p. 290). Although MTSs can have membership interdependencies when team members fulfill dual roles, such as when team members are part of multiple component teams or when team members are part of the leadership team overseeing the MTS in addition to a component team, (Davison, Hollenbeck, Barnes, Sleesman, & Ilgen, 2012; Firth, Hollenbeck, Miles, Ilgen, & Barnes, 2015; Lanaj, Hollenbeck, Ilgen, Barnes, & Harmon, 2013; Sessa, London, & Wanamaker, 2019), this type of interdependency is not a required factor in defining an MTS. To illustrate, consider an emergency response MTS; in this setting, firefighters, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and surgical units all have coordinated actions to work to deal with an emergency (DeChurch & Marks, 2006; O’Leary et al., 2012). Although these teams have to coordinate their processes to be effective (i.e., process interdependency) and are working together toward the same overarching goal of resolving the emergency (i.e., outcome interdependency), we would not expect there to be membership interdependency between component teams (e.g., it is not expected that the firefighter is also part of the surgical team and vice versa; O’Leary et al., 2012). Thus, research regarding MTSs and correspondingly process and output interdependencies will be used to offer context about membership interdependencies when applicable; however, process and output interdependencies will not be the focus of this review (for relevant reviews, see Lycett et al., 2004; Shuffler et al., 2015).
As outlined by O’Leary and colleagues (2011), MTM is informed by the literature on multitasking and task switching at the individual level and boundary spanning at the team level, however, is distinct from these constructs in critical ways. With regard to multitasking, the existing literature generally focuses on task switching frequency and costs in brief intervals and simple tasks (Altmann & Gray, 2008). MTM goes beyond these switches to also include a much broader set of switches between team contexts (rather than between simple tasks). Those team contexts often include different tasks, roles, routines, technologies, locations, and so forth, which make switching between them both more effortful (in terms of time and attention) and more potentially valuable in terms of learning. (O’Leary et al., 2011, p. 463)
Similarly, whereas the boundary spanning literature provides insights into how team members extend across team boundaries, this research does not fully capture MTM as it generally focuses on a focal team without regard for the MTM context (O’Leary et al., 2011). Thus, although task switching and boundary spanning offer insights into MTM, they do not fully explain the MTM context or experience, necessitating MTM to be studied independently (O’Leary et al., 2011).
With the definition of MTM broadly encompassing membership interdependencies, there are a range of ways in which MTM occurs and therefore a range of ways in which MTM has been operationalized in the literature. For instance, all employees may be part of multiple teams simultaneously, dividing their time fairly evenly between multiple teams, or there may be core team members who dedicate most of their time to one team, whereas peripheral team members spread their time sporadically among a large number of teams. Once engaging in MTM, team members may switch their attention between projects as frequently as every 15 to 30 min (Parnin & Rugaber, 2011) or they may spend a large portion of time on one project before directing their attention to the next. To capture this complexity, researchers have operationalized and measured MTM in a variety of ways, ranging from the number of teams in which one participates to the fragmentation of time over a certain period. Within these operationalizations, the majority of the literature on MTM has adopted a between-person approach, examining differences in MTM across individuals. However, a limited subset of the MTM literature has alternatively adopted an intra-individual approach. Although these operationalizations all fall under the umbrella of MTM, they have important implications for understanding the phenomenon such that different approaches to measuring MTM have yielded unique results, and at the extreme, some operationalizations are in polar opposition to one another (Mortensen, 2014). Thus, in the review that follows, the operationalization of MTM will be emphasized.
Literature Review
As illustrated in Figure 1, MTM has been largely examined as a structural construct which is proceeded by determinants and followed by outcomes. The review that follows begin on the right side of the model (Figure 1) before moving left, examining the outcomes of MTM and then the determinants of MTM. Because the outcomes of MTM have encompassed much of the existing literature, the review of these consequences is broken into two sections based on the key theoretical perspectives used: (a) attention and social network perspectives and (b) resource and demand perspectives. Next, the literature on the determinants of MTM, including the antecedents and management of MTM, will be reviewed. Finally, a subset of the recent literature has adopted unique theoretical perspectives that focus on understanding the experiences within the MTM context rather than the structural measurements of MTM. Thus, the final portion of this article will review this burgeoning literature.
Framework for review.
Outcomes of MTM
Attention and Social Network Perspectives
Productivity
Since its inception, MTM has been theorized to have a complex relationship with team and individual success, such that it can be both a benefit and detriment to employees and teams (O’Leary et al., 2011). O’Leary and colleagues’ (2011) seminal conceptual article tied together attention and social network theories to illuminate the productivity dilemma (Abernathy, 1976) that accompanies MTM, explaining those routines that encourage productivity often attenuate learning and vice versa. O’Leary et al. (2011) selected the number and variety of team membership as operationalizations of MTM as they illuminate the tensions between productivity and learning in this environment, highlighting that those benefits from increased number of teams can be erased if the variety is not considered, and vice versa.
Beginning with productivity, as the number of MTMs increase, employees’ utilization (“the extent to which resources are being used as opposed to sitting idle”; O’Leary et al., 2011, p. 466) increases with the purpose of filling downtime. In addition, because employees must figure out how to work more effectively with the increased workload, they will focus on efficiency-oriented practices at the individual level and improvements in team norms and practices at the team level (O’Leary et al., 2011). Yet, this benefit of the number of MTMs does not occur indefinitely, as eventually the number of teams will fragment attention and introduce lags into teamwork (O’Leary et al., 2011). Team members may become preoccupied by concurrent team commitments, resulting in ineffective behaviors such as engaging in multiple simultaneous conversations (Reinsch, Turner, & Tinsley, 2008). Thus, O’Leary and colleagues (2011) proposed that the relationship between the number of MTMs and productivity at both the individual and team levels was positive, but at a declining rate that eventually turned negative. There is no definitive consensus of the number of teams where this tipping point occurs: Initial evidence from case studies in engineering management proposed “that two to three ‘major’ projects at one time was an effective maximization of an engineer’s productivity” (Fricke & Shenbar, 2000, p. 262), whereas other studies report that the number could be as high as nine teams (Bertolotti, Mattarelli, Vignoli, & Macrì, 2015) or as low as one team (i.e., no MTM; Crawford et al., 2019).
The project literature likewise points to the potential for increased utilization as an ideal with MTM; however, this literature has highlighted that this ideal is often not attained. In many project-based organizations (PBOs), there are a limited number of employees whose time is fully committed across concurrent projects. However, the planned schedule of these projects often veers from the implementation; in such a schedule-driven environment, there is a “vicious cycle” of pulling employees onto the on-time delivery of business-critical projects (Yaghootkar & Gil, 2012). Yet, doing so requires expedited and increased task switching, decreasing productivity (Yaghootkar & Gil, 2012). Indeed, many organizations overutilize their employees by having them engage in too many concurrent projects (Steyn & Schnetler, 2015). An MTM worker brought this theoretical perspective to life, highlighting how switching projects can be detrimental to productivity—“It would be OK to keep moving people between projects if they were like boxes. But we aren’t boxes. Reallocating people . . . reduces productivity” (Yaghootkar & Gil, 2012, p. 5).
As this employee begins to indicate, MTM does not only influence utilization, but it also impacts the time it takes to turnaround your focus when switching teams. Whether being forced to change your focus, as this example illustrates, or voluntarily choosing to switch between tasks, interruptions influence one’s focus and productivity (Abad, Karras, Schneider, Barker, & Bauer, 2018). From a theoretical perspective, O’Leary and colleagues (2011) conceptualized this negative impact of MTM on turnaround, and thus productivity, as a factor of the variety in MTM. Because variety is associated with a greater information load and processing time at the individual level and increased coordination costs at the team level, individual and team productivity are negatively impacted as the variety of MTM increases (O’Leary et al., 2011).
Learning
With regard to learning, O’Leary and colleagues (2011) proposed relationships that are polar to those proposed with productivity: the number of MTMs has a negative impact on learning, whereas MTM variety has a largely positive, albeit curvilinear, relationship with learning. In more detail, variety allows for unique concurrent experiences and thus the acquisition of a range of knowledge. However, the heightened differences between teams also have the potential to limit analogical learning and limit the possibility of transferring knowledge across dissimilar experiences (O’Leary et al., 2011). Although “the movement of members across organizational units is a powerful mechanism for transferring knowledge” (Argote & Hora, 2017, p. 580), similarities across projects (e.g., shared resources) and team members (e.g., technical backgrounds) are likely to facilitate the effectiveness of this learning (Dawood & Chan, 2015; Patanakul, 2013). Thus, individual and team learning as a result of MTM variety is proposed to reach a saturation point where it becomes negative (O’Leary et al., 2011). In addition, MTM number can further undermine this relationship, because increases in the number of teams can decrease the focus on new information, reduce the time available to process and encode knowledge, and reduce the prospect of integrating knowledge across teams and members (Crawford et al., 2019; Lewis, Lange, & Gillis, 2005; O’Leary et al., 2011).
Building from the social network perspective to MTM, Brennecke and Rank (2016) expanded upon the complicated effect that MTM can have on learning. Explaining that learning can occur through informal in addition to formal networks, these researchers sought to investigate how MTM influenced informal advice seeking and giving. Contrary to expectations, their findings provide initial evidence that formal MTM cannibalizes participating in informal knowledge networks: “knowledge workers either belong to many formal project teams or engage strongly in informal advice seeking or giving—but not both” (Brennecke & Rank, 2016, p. 315). Whereas Brennecke and Rank (2016) had proposed that MTM was associated with high formal status that would transfer to informal exchange networks, their empirical analyses demonstrated that status in a formal network does not transfer to the informal network, essentially impeding the learning that could occur through these informal means. Brennecke and Rank (2016) surmise that overload from MTM, which is addressed later in this review, may explain this finding.
Additional research indicates that the unexpected finding could also be due to the difference between online and offline networks, such that MTM promotes the development of diverse online networks rather than in-person networks (Mo & Wellman, 2016). Alternatively, these findings could be due to the characteristics of the individuals in the study. Using the MTM context to drive their research, Bertolotti, Mattarelli, and Dukerich (2019) furthered Brennecke and Rank’s (2016) supposition that whereas MTM prescribes formal ties through dictating team membership, individuals in this context can also form informal ties through communication and advice networks (i.e., instrumental network). Bertolotti and colleagues (2019) focused on polychronicity, or the preference to work on different tasks (Bluedorn, Kalliath, Strube, & Martin, 1999), as a driver of network centrality, arguing that both the individual characteristic of polychronicity and one’s perception of the organization polychronicity norms drive centrality in the instrumental network. In finding support for these relationships, they demonstrated that individual polychronicity drives centrality in instrumental networks more so than perceived organizational polychronicity norms.
Together, this research indicates that without the proper resources (Brennecke & Rank, 2016; Mo & Wellman, 2016) and mind-set (Bertolotti et al., 2019), learning in the MTM setting may be limited to the mandated structural ties. This can be particular problematic to one’s development, as informal ties and connections beyond one’s formally assigned groups are critical for learning, and these learning benefits may even surpass the benefits that can be attained from formally assigned teams in certain environments (Rienties & Tempelaar, 2018). For instance, in a business school academic setting, “findings indicated that students seemed to learn more from learning relations outside their group than from their own group members” (Rienties & Tempelaar, 2018, p. 550). Accordingly, the potential cannibalization of MTM on learning beyond the formal MTM network ties is a critical concern.
Effectiveness
Building from O’Leary and colleagues (2011) theoretical framework, researchers have empirically expanded upon the complex propositions to explore how the tensions between productivity and learning manifest in the relationship between MTM and individual and team effectiveness. In doing so, two key refinements to theory on MTM have emerged.
The first refinement is that researchers have demonstrated that the relationship between MTM and individual/team effectiveness is subject to a number of boundary conditions. Specifically, Chan (2014) utilized the theoretical perspective presented by O’Leary et al. (2011) to support the hypothesis that MTM has an inverted-U relationship with individual performance: individuals who have either low or high levels of MTM have the lowest levels of performance. However, after Chan (2014) was unable to empirically establish the predicted curvilinear team-level relationship between number of teams and performance, Bertolotti et al. (2015) clarified that the team-level relationship was moderated by characteristics of modern teams. Through focusing on a knowledge acquisition perspective and similarly adopting attention and social network theories, Bertolotti and colleagues (2015) found that the number of MTMs has an inverted-U relationship with team performance in a sample of research and development teams. This relationship was moderated by external advice receiving and use of collaborative technology (i.e., instant message), such that receiving external advice and using collaborative technology benefited teams with low levels of MTM by supplementing the lack of information diversity and encouraging communication. However, at high levels of MTM, the use of collaborative technology harmed team performance by further fragmenting attention and requiring greater task switching (Bertolotti et al., 2015).
Gibson (2018) similarly showed that the potential performance benefits of MTM are fragile and subject to limitations. This research demonstrated that teams under MTM which face turnover, especially unexpected turnover, are more likely to experience the negative effects of MTM. Zhu and colleagues (2014) utilized a vastly different environment to similarly demonstrate that the relationship between MTM and effectiveness is subject to moderating conditions. In examining the impact of membership overlap on the survival of online communities (where online communities are those such as Wikipedia, Apache, and stackoverflow.com), Zhu and colleagues (2014) found that the positive relationship was impacted by characteristics of the team (e.g., length of time) and the characteristics of individuals on the teams (e.g., the role position of individuals).
Thus, when considered in conjunction with O’Leary and colleagues’ (2011) model regarding the complex interplay between MTM and productivity and learning, this stream of research lends empirical credence to the notion that MTM has a very complex relationship with effectiveness and success. This research supports O’Leary et al.’s (2011) core supposition that the benefits and challenges of MTM must be managed carefully to ensure that the potential benefits from MTM are realized.
A second key refinement to MTM theory following O’Leary and colleagues’ (2011) model is that researchers have moved beyond number or variety of teams as the main indicators of MTM. Researchers have surmised that it is not solely the number of teams employees participate on, but rather the attention that they can dedicate to those teams that determines performance. Although an attention-based perspective was introduced by O’Leary et al. (2011), this latter research is unique in that it examines attention through focusing on fragmentation of time rather than the number or variety of teams. For instance, Cummings and Haas (2012) demonstrated that the percentage of time spent on a focal team increased team performance. Maynard and colleagues (2012) echoed this finding, demonstrating that the team’s preparation activities and their transactive memory systems explained the relationship between the time allocated to the focal team and effectiveness. Daniel and Stewart (2016) similarly found that when developer attention was turned to external projects, the focal project suffered.
Although the focus of this review is on the individual- and team-based perspectives that accompany MTM, it is important to note that the above enumerated effectiveness implications of MTM act as microfoundations for the unit-level performance implications of MTM (Crawford et al., 2019). Due to the countervailing effects that MTM can have on individual and team outcomes, contexts where the potential positive effects are not relevant (such as when there is no slack to allow for increased productivity) will impede the would-be benefits of MTM. One such environment, as detailed in recent research by Crawford and colleagues (2019), is in Veterans Health Administration primary care units where teams are hierarchically independent and are “designed to internally possess requisite knowledge and skills” (Crawford et al., 2019, p. 350), thus limiting the potential learning and productivity benefits that could accrue from MTM. In this environment, the negative individual- and team-based microfoundations of MTM overtake the positive, decreasing unit-level performance (Crawford et al., 2019).
Connections across teams
The aforementioned research provides initial evidence that MTM may be most beneficial when team members are not overloading their attention beyond the focal team. Supporting this perspective, Peng, Wan, and Woodlock (2013) demonstrated that not all network ties across teams are equally beneficial. In examining co-membership in open-source software development projects, they demonstrated that membership across teams is most beneficial when one can learn from another project but is not unduly burdened beyond their focal work (i.e., when an individual is a leader on one team but only a team member on the other project).
The project literature helps us understand the implications of this attention perspective within and across teams on individual and team behavior. This literature concedes that projects that focus on their sole effectiveness through pursuing their independent goals are often those that succeed (Martinsuo, 2013), because allegiances and misalignment of goals across teams may limit the effectiveness of MTM on any single project (Halevy & Cohen, 2019; Mesmer-Magnus, Carter, Asencio, & DeChurch, 2016). For example, a recent study demonstrated that when developers discuss multiple projects simultaneously, the average amount of time to resolve an issue declines; however, this discussion-switching can hurt the resolution time of a single project (Hu, Wang, Chang, Yin, & Zhang, 2018). Therefore, because for companies “the major objective in an environment of multiple, competing projects is to maximize overall departmental success rather than the success of any individual project” (Fricke & Shenbar, 2000, p. 259), managers in these project-based settings often adopt a solo-focus to get the resources and attention needed for the projects they lead.
Whereas in certain contexts “the organization as a whole may benefit from greater team fluidity, overlap, and dispersion, the resulting boundary blurring can lead to problems that reduce the effectiveness of a given team” (Mortensen & Haas, 2018, pp. 346-347). Furthering this perspective, Mortensen (2014) demonstrated that the percentage of time dedicated to the focal team increased team performance through decreasing membership model divergence and increasing transactive memory. Furthermore, Olabisi and Lewis (2018) concluded that there is a vicious cycle weakening team transactive memory system and consequently coordination within and across teams when the knowledge base and position of the boundary spanner are not properly managed. Thus, despite MTM potentially encouraging the diffusion of best practices and learning (Furukawa, 2016; Martinsuo, 2013), some of the challenges of competing for these resources (Cooper, Edgett, & Kleinschmidt, 1998; Dye & Pennypacker, 1999) and the benefits that can be attained when attention is dedicated to the focal team (Cummings & Haas, 2012; Maynard et al., 2012; Mortensen, 2014; Peng et al., 2013) may lessen the likelihood of MTM being embraced. Accordingly, a recommendation in the project management literature is that managers should work to boost their autonomy and protect their actors (Martinsuo & Lehtonen, 2009), inherently impeding MTM.
Tactics for overcoming this barrier to interteam coordination and for encouraging generative outcomes across teams have been discussed sporadically in the literature. For example, using personal construct theory (Kelly, 1970) to explain how personal cognitive constructs shape one’s interpretation of their environment, de Vries, Walter, van der Vegt, and Essens (2014) demonstrated that an individual’s range of functional experience increases his or her cognitive complexity, allowing for greater interteam coordination. However, this relationship only holds when organizational identification is high; interteam coordination is critical for organizational outcomes and thus one’s identification with the organization is the catalyst for translating functional experience into strong linkages between teams (de Vries et al., 2014). Thus, a review concluded that “inter-team coordination might only increase in functionally diverse MTSs when individuals are motivated to utilize their knowledge for the good of the organization” (Shuffler et al., 2015, p. 12).
This motivational perspective to the attainment of the benefits of interteam coordination was echoed in a study by Kim et al. (2018). Using the theory of knowledge collaboration in online communities and a social network perspective to examine the extent to which sharing time and attention across online communities could be a generative resource for community responsiveness, these researchers found that the time and attention spent beyond the focal online community had a negative relationship with community responsiveness. However, critically, this relationship became positive when both motivation (i.e., internal bonding) and opportunity (i.e., external bridging) were high. Thus, taken together, these studies offer initial evidence that motivation to benefit the whole is fundamental in making sure that critical knowledge transfers occur in MTMs to encourage individual, team, and system success.
Although employees have the opportunity to fill structural holes across teams if they have the motivation to do so (de Vries et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2018; Reus, Moser, & Groenewegen, 2014), it is possible that employees do not effectively transfer information from one group to another (Reus et al., 2014). This may occur because of the variety in team membership (defined as the “amount of overlap in membership across teams;” Gupta & Wooley, 2018, p. 3) such that “the focal team’s performance will suffer [when there is high variety] because of logistical and cognitive demands imposed on their attention,” which reduce the team’s transactive memory system due to increased switching and coordination costs (Gupta & Woolley, 2018, p. 3). Furthermore, team members who have bridging positions between groups may act differently in each group if they are the only bridging members who span these groups (Reus et al., 2014). Accordingly, “some groups might profit from more than one bridging member, which improves stability of the cooperation between two groups” (Reus et al., 2014, p. 4). Put differently, when an employee is embedded within key team social network structures that span more than one other team member (e.g., transitive triads), this can increase coordination within and across teams (Olabisi & Lewis, 2018; Vedres & Stark, 2010). This is consistent with research that has shown that although weak ties may help facilitate the transfer of simple knowledge, strong ties are helpful in aiding the transmission of complex knowledge (Hansen, 1999).
Indeed, Sanchez and Terlizzi (2017) demonstrate that the quality of employee ties is critical for success. Using two key social network indices in examining information systems projects, Sanchez and Terlizzi (2017) demonstrated that high project network closeness (or, how close an individual is to all other individuals in the network) impeded project success, whereas project network eigenvector (or how close an employee was to well-connected employees) promoted project success. Thus, in addition to considering the MTM of the individual and team, this research provides evidence that the connections across teams must be managed for success.
Resource and Demand Perspectives
Whereas O’Leary et al. (2011) and the research reviewed thus far largely focused on an attention and social network perspective to MTM, a parallel and related stream of research has focused on the psychosocial and resources/demand perspective the accompanies MTM. Although learning, productivity, and effectiveness are considered within this perspective, a noteworthy difference is that the main emphasis within this stream of research is on how the resources and demands that accompany MTM impact the engagement, strain, and overload of employees and teams.
In one of the early studies of MTM, Zika-Viktorsson and colleagues (2006) aptly identified that the “the problems related to allocation of human resources are not only a question of administration; they also affect the work situations of individual project members” (p. 386). Adopting a psychosocial perspective and examining a sample of 392 employees, Zika-Viktorsson and colleagues (2006) found that the number of projects, insufficient routines, insufficient time resources, and lack of opportunities for recuperation increased project overload, with lack of opportunities for recuperation explaining the largest portion of the variance. Project overload subsequently was associated with low adherence to time schedules, low development of skills, and high levels of psychological stress. In short, the strain from MTM led to overload which subsequently harmed employees and projects. This is consistent with research in the medical field, which has demonstrated that overloading and overworking employees decreases performance (Kc & Terwiesch, 2009).
Participating in multiple teams simultaneously can create overload due to increased requirements at three levels: requirements from individual tasks, requirements from project activities (where individuals complete group tasks alone), and requirements from group meetings (Altschuller & Benbunan-Fich, 2017). Furthermore, the increased use of collaboration platforms within companies allows access to knowledge and social resources; however, it is also associated with collaborative overload (Lansmann & Klein, 2018). Accordingly, as one’s time becomes fragmented within and across these competing levels and requests, it impacts the resources and demands of employees and thus job strain and work engagement (Altschuller & Benbunan-Fich, 2017; Lansmann & Klein, 2018; Pluut, Flestea, & Curşeu, 2014). Using job demands-resources framework and role theories, Pluut and colleagues (2014) examined how such fragmentation of time impacts employees and teams. Regarding job demands, fragmentation was positively related to team process load and conflict with team members, which subsequently increased job strain. Regarding job resources, fragmentation decreased team social support, which subsequently influenced work engagement. Thus, MTM can increase the difficulties associated with teamwork.
Applying this idea to the auditing context, Hooghiemstra, Rink, and Veltrop (2017) sought “to get a better idea of why some auditors are likely to struggle, while others thrive in such a working environment” (p. 282). Focusing on the countervailing social demands, task demands, and resources, Hooghiemstra and colleagues (2017) proposed that recovery time between projects, which could be as short as a half day, could enhance learning. They further proposed that one’s career phase could influence how MTM impacts performance largely through its implications on task demands, surmising that senior auditors would be more likely to benefit from MTM due to their task familiarity, whereas junior auditors would likely struggle.
At the team level, Bedwell, Salas, Funke, and Knott (2014) echoed the need to attain balance with regard to MTM. Adopting workload theories, they examined how MTMs relate to team workload capacity, or “the relationship between the finite performance capacities of a team and the demands placed on the team by its performance environment” (Bowers, Braun, & Morgan, 1997, p. 90). Focusing on context switching, they offer a proposition that there is a U-shaped relationship between MTM and team workload capacity, such that both high and low levels of MTM are associated with the lowest workload capacity. They argue that low levels of MTM are associated with inexperience with context switching that limits effectiveness, whereas persistent switching can be arduous at high levels.
Although much of the literature examining MTM as a resource/demand has emphasized the increased demands or limiting resources associated with MTM, there is some evidence that participating in multiple teams can also provide beneficial resources and assistance to employees. For example, W. Chen and McDonald (2015) demonstrated that MTM allows for more job decision latitude, defined as “a multidimensional construct that includes how workers get compensated as well as when, where, and how work gets done,” which is a vital part of job quality (W. Chen & McDonald, 2015, p. 2). In another example, Matthews, Whittaker, Moran, Helsley, and Judge (2012) showed that participation in multiple teams was related to productive group interrelationships, because membership in stable groups helped establish goals and direction for dynamic groups, and membership in communities and professional relationships provided resources, social support, and recruiting for dynamic groups. Research has also demonstrated that membership overlap within an ecosystem supports the assembly of teams (Lungeanu, Carter, DeChurch, & Contractor, 2018). Finally, research has demonstrated that although boundary spanning at the individual level can increase one’s role overload due to the increased effort and time commitments, team-level boundary spanning can paradoxically reduce this individual overload due to the increased knowledge, information, and support that correspond to a team’s commitment to spanning behavior (Marrone, Tesluk, & Carson, 2007).
Building from this literature that MTM can be both a resource and demand to employees, van de Brake and colleagues (2018) adopted a within-person approach to examine the complex relationship between within-person changes in MTM and individual performance. Their findings demonstrated that whereas the initial resources invested in increased MTM may reduce one’s performance, the positive social capital implications overtook this detriment in the long run, as demonstrated by the long-term performance benefits of participating in an increasing number of teams. Thus, van de Brake et al. (2018) extend the prior research on the resources and demands of MTM through providing evidence that the implications of participating in increasing numbers of teams may manifest differently depending on where one is in the life cycle of MTM.
Determinants of MTM
Antecedents of MTM
Although the majority of the research on MTM has focused on understanding the implications of MTM, a subset of the literature has focused on what encourages MTM. At the individual level, the characteristics of the employee have been shown to be a key determinant of the number of teams one participates and the percentage of time spent on the focal team (Cummings & Haas, 2012; van de Brake et al., 2018), two characteristics that are negatively related such that increases in the number of MTM decrease the time dedicated to the focal team (Mortensen, 2014). These studies have consistently demonstrated that an individual’s success makes him or her a target for increased MTM, such that being a highly valued organizational asset leads to increases in MTM and decreases in the percentage of time dedicated to the focal team (Cummings & Haas, 2012; van de Brake et al., 2018). For example, Cummings and Haas (2012) demonstrated that educational attainment, company experience, and organizational rank positively impacted the number of teams in which one participated, and the latter organizational-based characteristics negatively impacted the percentage of time one dedicated to the focal team. Yet, as highlighted earlier, being such a highly valued organizational asset is a double-edged sword because high performing individuals are likely to increase the number of teams in which they participate, but this further fragmentation of one’s resources leads to decreased initial performance that is only reversed in the long run (van de Brake et al., 2018). The only exception found to the positive relationship between professional attainment and increased MTM is with regard to one’s status on the focal team: those assuming a leader role are likely to have a high percentage of time dedicated to the focal team because of their heightened team-based duties (Cummings & Haas, 2012).
There is a dearth of research regarding team-level characteristics that influence MTM. One exception is regarding the geographic dispersion of the team. Geographically dispersed teams are likely to over-assign members due to the opaqueness of their task load (Hinds & Bailey, 2003) and, further, are likely to be stretched between local and distal requirements (Armstrong & Cole, 2002). Accordingly, virtuality is correlated with MTM (Carton & Cummings, 2013) and the more dispersed a team is geographically, the lower percentage of time its team members will dedicate to the focal team (Mortensen, 2014).
Management of MTM
The following includes insights from the project literature which inform our understanding of the management practices that help determine MTM. A complete review of the literature on the management of projects and multiteam project structures could encompass a review itself and goes beyond the current review’s focus on the individual- and team-based perspectives that accompany MTM. However, insights from the project management literature are provided in what follows as they offer background information regarding the administration of MTM.
Engaging in MTM is not solely at the discretion of the individual or team, but is also largely a factor of strategic managerial decisions about how to allocate human resources (Baiden & Price, 2011; Bell, Brown, & Weiss, 2018; Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Chansler, Swamidass, & Cammann, 2003; Maurer, 2010). At the system level, algorithms, linear programming, and other statistical techniques have been proposed as ways to determine how to optimize these scarce resources (e.g., Dean et al., 1992; Hendriks, Voeten, & Kroep, 1999; Morse, McIntosh, & Whitehouse, 1996). However, these methods “may not be applicable to an operational-level for a multiple-project manager to allocate resources across his/her projects” (Ballesteros-Pérez, González-Cruz, & Fernández-Diego, 2012, p. 5). Certainly, managing a group of projects is a complex interplay between organizational- and operational-level characteristics (Patanakul & Milosevic, 2008). Using a case study approach, researchers in this area have concluded that project managers in critical problem-solving project teams create MTM for employees across organizational units to facilitate knowledge integration and, to do so, these project managers require the autonomy to assign project members across units in ways that include diversity and stimulates cross-understandings and transactive memory systems (Furukawa, 2016). Accordingly, managers and organizations can ensure that MTM is most effective through adopting unique human resource management practices (Huemann, Keegan, & Turner, 2007), such as working with employees to build “transportable” teamwork competencies and incorporating the multiteam context into evaluations and rewards (Tennenbaum et al., 2012). Furthermore, project management information systems can be used to support decision-making and information quality when in a multiproject environment (Caniëls & Bakens, 2012).
However, even with the autonomy and support to make assignments, managers in project-based systems tend to encounter the resource allocation syndrome (defined as the distribution and prioritization of resources and personnel being the critical issue in multiproject systems; Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003). The resource allocation syndrome is driven by project scheduling dovetailing from its expected path in addition to organizations overcommitting to the number of projects that can be accomplished (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003). This overcommitment of organizations to projects is rampant in PBOs (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003) and is something Clark and Wheelwright (1992) coined to be the canary cage approach: “that new canaries (projects) are thrown into the cage without any analysis of the effects of the other canaries already in the cage” (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003, p. 408). This is consistent with prior research’s supposition that a main cause of project failure is the need to control interdependencies across projects and ensure the entire portfolio is compatible (De Maio, Verganti, & Corso, 1994).
Accordingly, the critical success factors needed by managers in a multiproject setting include those factors that are needed on single-project assignments (e.g., clear goals, management support, ownership) in addition to factors that are unique to the multiproject context (e.g., prioritization, the division and assignment of resources, customization; Fricke & Shenbar, 2000; Kaulio, 2008). However, managers need to be careful that their actions in multiproject settings do not further compound the resource allocation syndrome. For instance, to ensure that their project will get the right resources, managers could go to the extreme of deciding to “push the project to such a crisis that the project has to gain priority if it should survive at all” to ensure that the project moves to the top of the company’s resource allocation needs and receives the most effective resources (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003, p. 408). Thus, project control mechanisms (Anavi-Isakow & Golany, 2003) and effective project management office practices (Spalek, 2012) are frequently suggested in the literature to ensure that multiproject environments do not become too overloaded or unruly.
Experiences in the MTM Context
Structural operationalizations of MTM that focus on a quantitative approach to membership and attention have encompassed much of the existing literature (G. Chen et al., 2019). As illuminated in the review thus far, frequent structural operationalizations of MTM include the number of teams or projects in which one participates (e.g., Carton & Cummings, 2013; Cummings & Haas, 2012; O’Leary et al., 2011; Steyn & Schnetler, 2015) or the fragmentation of time across teams and projects (e.g., Matthews et al., 2012; Mortensen, 2014; Pluut et al., 2014). However, more recently, researchers have begun to look beyond structural approaches by opening the black-box of MTM to focus on the qualitative experiences that accompany MTM. These operationalizations are unique from the literature reviewed thus far as they move beyond the structural characteristics to focus on the characterizations of employees’ experiences in an MTM environment. A few recent studies adopt unique theoretical vantage points to understanding MTM that go beyond the perspectives highlighted thus far.
Two of these studies use MTM as the context and framing of their research rather than the core variable of interest to provide insights into the impact of the MTM setting on employees and teams. Zhuang and Shen (2017) examined the role conflict that accompanies MTM in relationship to job satisfaction and performance. They found that the level of role conflict had a negative relationship with job satisfaction and task performance through the level of team communication. This is consistent with the project management literature that has shown that role clarity is important when managing a portfolio of projects (Elonen & Artto, 2003).
G. Chen and colleagues (2019) sought to understand the impact of the empowering leadership from two team leaders on a single employee’s psychological empowerment and proactivity. Although previous research has indicated that leadership can trickle down an organization (e.g., Margolis & Ziegert, 2016; Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Salvador, 2009), it remained largely unclear if this vertical cascade also moves horizontally across multiple teams. Using a social cognitive perspective to suggest that one’s sense of agency can spread across situations and pulling from the work–family literature’s construct of spillover (“effect of work and family on one another that generate similarities between the two domains”; Edwards & Rothbard, 2000, p. 180), G. Chen and colleagues (2019) demonstrated that the empowering leadership from leaders on two teams each has an independent effect on an individual’s psychological empowerment. However, when the focal team’s empowering leadership is higher, the other team’s empowering leader has less of an effect (G. Chen et al., 2019); individuals’ empowerment exhibits plasticity, such that those who are lower in self-efficacy are more receptive to interventions than those who are higher. Finally, this psychological empowerment promotes proactive behavior within and across teams (G. Chen et al., 2019).
Furthering this approach to understanding the experience of MTM, Rapp and Mathieu (2019) combined the experiential approach to MTM with structural indicators of MTM (number of teams, percentage of time allocated to the focal team). Interestingly, whereas their hypotheses regarding the structural indicators of MTM were largely not supported, they found strong evidence for the qualitative experience of MTM that they hypothesized. In more detail, through adopting a social identity perspective to MTM, Rapp and Mathieu (2019) introduced a novel approach to conceptualizing and analyzing MTM. They contend that MTM is a “within-person phenomena and thereby “double nested” (or cross-classified) within both individuals and teams” (Rapp & Mathieu, 2019, p. 2). Through this perspective, MTM can be theorized at the per membership level in addition to the individual and team levels. In pulling on social identity theory, Rapp and Mathieu (2019) introduced the concept of parallel identities, defined as “instances whereby individuals may identify with multiple work teams that are not themselves hierarchically nested” (p. 3). Building from this theory, their research found that team identification per membership positively influences performance per membership and satisfaction per membership. The antecedents of team identification per membership exist at the individual level (project state variability, role stressors) and the team level (project prestige, team cohesion, team project stage).
Discussion and Future Directions
In integrating the extant literature on MTM, there are some areas of strong convergence in which studies unite to provide insights into the levers that determine the benefits or challenges of MTM. Contrariwise, the review also highlights some unanswered questions and important paths that need to be explored to advance theory and research in this domain. Thus, to close the review, key conclusions from the review will be highlighted in three segments: (a) operationalization of MTM, (b) balance of MTM, and (c) transferability of existing frameworks. Within these segments, directions for future research are provided. A summary of the future directions is provided in Table 1.
Future Directions of Multiple Team Membership Research.
Note. MTM = multiple team membership.
Operationalization of MTM
Because MTM has been conceptualized broadly as membership interdependencies, there have been a number of ways in which the construct has been operationalized and measured within the existing research. MTM is most commonly measured using a structural approach (G. Chen et al., 2019), frequently as the number of teams that one participates on, or conversely, the amount of time that employees dedicate to a focal team. Although the structural approach has been prevalent in the literature, recent research evidence supports a broader conceptualization of MTM, including understanding qualitative experiences within the multiteaming context.
As a poignant example of the importance of considering the operationalization of MTM, Rapp and Mathieu (2019) did not find significant relationships between the percentage of time allocated to a team and the number of teams as predictors of outcomes at the per membership level. However, they found that individual- and team-level characteristics beyond these traditional MTM measures were predictors of a number of outcomes (team identification, performance, and satisfaction) at the per membership level. This highlights the importance of examining a broad range of conceptualizations, including quantitative approaches and qualitative experiences, when studying MTM.
Future directions
As part of the consideration of the operationalizations of MTM, several recommendations follow. First, MTM researchers should continue to explore the underlying assumption that membership can be clearly defined across teams. Mortensen and Haas (2018) present the case that membership is not always binary and may not be able to be clearly delineated in many organizations. Boundary blurring, which is defined as “a lack of clarity about who is or is not a member of the team,” can exist “because individuals are personally uncertain about the team’s membership or because they disagree with each other about the team’s membership” (Mortensen & Haas, 2018, pp. 342-343). The increasing literature on team boundary blurring and permeability (Dibble & Gibson, 2018; Mortensen & Haas, 2018) and membership model divergence (Mortensen, 2014) challenges the idea that team membership can be clearly delineated as much of the literature on MTM would seemingly assume. Accordingly, future research could benefit from examining the extent to which the blurring of team boundaries influences MTM. Furthermore, researchers could benefit from determining the most accurate manner to conceptualize and measure these boundaries (Espinosa, Cummings, Wilson, & Pearce, 2003). Relatedly, it is possible that there may be divergence in the number of team memberships that employees perceive (Mortensen & Haas, 2018): An employee may perceive that he or she is on more or less teams than his or her manager or coworkers due to membership model divergence. Future research could benefit from examining the extent to which the divergence or convergence of perceived number of MTMs impacts employees and teams.
Relatedly, an examination of membership versus participation could also help enhance our understanding of MTM. Although membership is seemingly inherent in the phrase and construct of MTM, it is possible that employees have participation interdependencies across teams in addition to membership interdependencies (where “the concept of ‘membership’ is binary, based on either belonging or not belonging, the concept of ‘participation’ is continuous, and it recognizes that individuals can participate in a team to varying degrees, at varying times, with varying others, and in varying roles”; Mortensen & Haas, 2018, p. 342). Thus, scholars could benefit from examining the extent to which membership is actually critical for MTM or for which participation will suffice.
Scholars should also consider how different attentional characteristics influence the conceptualization and operationalization of MTM. Existing research has frequently equated time with attention or dedication; however, Rapp and Mathieu’s (2019) lack of significant results for the relationship between time allocation and team identification questions this connection. These researchers cautioned that “time commitment is not a perfect proxy for team salience” (Rapp & Mathieu, 2019, p. 13). One potential avenue for explaining this lack of connection is the quality of the attention that is paid during one’s time on a team. Existing research has demonstrated that shifting to a new task may not fully connect to shifting one’s attention (Leroy, 2009). Thus, to further understanding the connection between attention and the quality of time dedicated to the focal team, multiple characteristics of attention may be applicable: attentional control (“appropriately directing attention amid competing demands”), attentional stability (“sustaining attention on a current target with less mind wandering”), and attentional efficiency (“the economic use of cognitive resources”) (Good et al., 2016, p. 119). Therefore, future research could benefit from further understanding the attention that accompanies MTM.
Future research could also benefit from continuing to highlight the time period under which MTM occurs. It is possible that MTM can occur over a single hour (e.g., multitasking on multiple projects during a meeting) or that MTM could occur over the period of a month (e.g., rotating between projects on weekly basis). Yet, the period of MTM and the dynamic nature of MTM are not fully understood, highlighting a ripe area for future research.
Finally, researchers are encouraged to further explore cross-organizational MTM. The majority of the existing research on MTM assumes an intraorganizational focus, paralleling the need to manage an organization’s portfolio of projects (e.g., Lycett et al., 2004; Sydow et al., 2004). Yet, little research has explored membership interdependencies that span organizational boundaries. Organizational actors may work on teams that span to include other organizations, such as professors working on research project teams that go across university boundaries and board members participating on a number of company boards simultaneously. The limited research that has examined cross-organizational MTM has found that it can provide unique benefits, such as recruiting assistance to employees (Matthews et al., 2012). This provides evidence that cross-organizational MTM may offer resources and demands that go beyond the intraorganizational benefits and challenges of MTM. Accordingly, future research could benefit from addressing the unique benefits or detriments of cross-organizational MTM and examining the extent to which these findings are distinctive from cross-organizational teams under singular team memberships.
Balance of MTM
Membership on multiple simultaneous teams provides opportunities for novel learning and resources; however, the demands and strains from this context need to be balanced for productivity and success to follow. There is very strong convergence among the different theoretical perspectives reviewed in this article that achieving balance in MTM, including operating in the correct organizational or unit context, is needed to ensure that the prospective benefits from MTM are realized and not overcome by the challenges (e.g., Bertolotti et al., 2015; Chan, 2014; Crawford et al., 2019; O’Leary et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2014). The existing research has demonstrated that optimizing the number and type of MTM is required to offset the countervailing forces of MTM on productivity, learning, and effectiveness.
Indeed, the focus of managing projects has shifted to understanding this balance: “While the project challenge of yesterday was to plan and execute a large project, the challenge of today is managing a project in an environment where several parallel projects are all competing for a limited resource base” (Kaulio, 2008, p. 344). To gain the potential synergies from employees engaging in multiple teams, there must be the opportunity and motivation to make productive connections across teams (Kim et al., 2018; Shuffler et al., 2015) and there must be a careful balance between organizational- and operational-level characteristics (Crawford et al., 2019; Patanakul & Milosevic, 2008).
Leaders in the MTM context have a large influence on the implementation of MTM (Ballesteros-Pérez et al., 2012; Kaulio, 2008) and their actions have a cascading effect across teams (G. Chen et al., 2019). However, because MTM often takes employee focus away from the focal team (Mortensen, 2014) and the potential overall benefits of MTM may not be visible in any given team (Mortensen & Haas, 2018), leaders may be discouraged from actively supporting MTM (Martinsuo & Lehtonen, 2009). Thus, leaders must be able to recognize when the organizational context will allow for the potential benefits from MTM to be accrued, must possess the opportunity to schedule employees in ways that support a generative flow of information, and must hold the drive to actively support this structure (e.g., Crawford et al., 2019; Gupta & Woolley, 2018; Olabisi & Lewis, 2018; Reus et al., 2014).
Future directions
As a general recommendation, further research is needed to understand this tipping point where MTM becomes too much of a good thing. Multiple theoretical perspectives support the idea that we need to get the quantity of MTM “just right” to encourage individual and team success; however, there is less evidence on what will shift this tipping point to where the benefits of MTM are encouraged and the potential negatives are kept at bay. There is initial empirical evidence that the organizational context must be appropriate for MTM to thrive (Crawford et al., 2019) and that reducing the increasing cognitive load placed on any team or team member may encourage the positive outcomes of MTM (Bedwell et al., 2014; Bertolotti et al., 2015; Lansmann & Klein, 2018). Thus, consistent with the project literature’s emphasis on a contingency framework for understanding the success of different projects (Balachandra & Friar, 1997), future research could benefit from furthering these lines of research and examining the factors that encourage the positive connection between MTM characteristics and learning, productivity, and effectiveness.
Relatedly, future research could benefit from building on existing literature and theory to understand the recuperation and recovery process during multiteaming. In an early study of MTM, Zika-Viktorsson et al. (2006) demonstrated that project overload was prominent in an MTM setting and the lack of opportunity for recuperation was the predominant predictor of such overload. Following this finding, researchers have assumed that recuperation between projects is important for balance in MTM (Hooghiemstra et al., 2017) and there has been evidence that increased workplace demands interfere with the opportunity for recovery (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015). However, there has been a lack of empirical evidence regarding the implementation of recovery in an MTM setting. Recovery, referring to the opportunity for restoring depleted resources, is important for managing stressful experiences (Hobfoll, 1989). Similar to how the notion of leadership spillover in the MTM context was adapted from the work–family literature (G. Chen et al., 2019), there is substantial literature on recovery in the work–family domain that can inform MTM (e.g., Lapierre, Hammer, Truxillo, & Murphy, 2012; Sonnentag, 2003; Sonnentag & Zijlstra, 2006). Whereas much of this research on work–family recovery has focused on recuperative activities outside of the workplace (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2007), tangential streams of literature indicate that recovery is also possible within the workplace, especially when interactions are replenishing or considered breakthroughs (Lilius, 2012). This literature provides a basis for understanding recovery; however, there has yet to be substantial theorizing into the MTM recovery process.
Finally, future research should be cognizant of the level of analysis and its impact on the meaning of balance in MTM. Thus far, research has frequently assumed there is a similar relationship between MTM and both individual and team outcomes. For instance, the theory presented by O’Leary and colleagues (2011) offers similar propositions between MTM number and variety with learning and productivity for both individuals and teams but explained that the mechanisms underlying these connections manifest differently at each level. Furthermore, the limited research at the unit level has put forth theory that the lower-level MTM relationships act as microfoundations that emerge to inform collective outcomes at higher levels (Crawford et al., 2019). However, further research is needed to fully understand the relationship between organizations levels and MTM. For instance, the local rationality (Cyert & March, 1963) which accompanies singular project success may harm the organization or its portfolio of projects (Fricke & Shenbar, 2000). Accordingly, to further our understanding of balance in MTM, future research should continue to explore how MTM is similar or different across levels (within-person, individual, team, unit, organization, system) and how these similarities or differences influence our understanding of the optimal level of MTM.
Transferability of Existing Frameworks
As this review began, we need to . . . be willing to take great strides and in some cases leaps to ensure that we are capturing and embracing the complexities of current team arrangements and seeking to better understand them rather than to fit them into our current frameworks. (Mathieu et al., 2008, p. 463)
The current review supports this supposition, such that existing theories and frameworks have some transferability to the MTM context; however, many of these perspectives also require some level of reconsideration to fully be applicable to the MTM context. On one hand, MTM creates organizational and leadership complications that challenge the traditional hierarchical organizational structure; employees are in the unique position of reporting to more than one simultaneous manager or leader in the MTM setting. Because much of the existing literature adopts a “one manager for each employee” assumption (Vidyarthi, Erdogan, Anand, Liden, & Chaudhry, 2014, p. 468), these frameworks may not directly apply in the MTM context. Indeed, initial research has demonstrated that the alignment between multiple leaders has an impact on employee outcomes beyond their individual leadership qualities (Vidyarthi et al., 2014) and the effect of leaders’ behavior has the potential to spillover to concurrent teams (G. Chen et al., 2019).
On the other hand, MTM creates distinctive demands on employees and teams. Although some of the strains from MTM may be similar to what we see in a singular team environment (e.g., role conflict), there is evidence that there are also additional, unique demands that must be managed in the MTM context to encourage success. As a result, those tactics and perspectives that spur success when MTM is low may inadvertently harm success when MTM is high (Bertolotti et al., 2015; Lansmann & Klein, 2018). Following, the literature on MTM has highlighted that focusing one piece of the puzzle can lead to incorrect conclusions regarding MTM when the overall context is not considered. Van de Brake and colleagues (2018) prominently displayed this idea through demonstrating that although the conservation of resources theoretical perspective may dominate in the early stages of MTM, this relationship is overtaken by the social capital perspective in the long run.
Thus, research has begun to refine existing theories for the MTM context. For instance, although social identity theory has previously assumed that a person can hold multiple nested identities, recent research sought to propose and validate that parallel identities can also become prominent in the MTM context (Rapp & Mathieu, 2019). Beyond refining existing theories, researchers have also begun to integrate what previously may have seemed to be disparate literatures or theories to adequately understand MTM. One example of such integration is G. Chen and colleagues (2019) pulling from the work–family literature to introduce the idea of spillover to the MTM context.
Future directions
Multiple theoretical perspectives beyond those highlighted by this review could be refined or adapted to expand our understanding of MTM, two examples of which are provided here. The first recommendation is for researchers to further explore the life cycle of MTM. The extant research provided evidence that the performance implications of MTM have different effects in the short and long run (e.g., Gibson, 2018; van de Brake et al., 2018). This indicates that the effects of multiteaming may occur in phases, such that the immediate effects may not offer accurate insights into the long-term effects. To this extent, future research could pull on the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) framework of teams which evokes the cyclical nature of teamwork: Over time and contexts, teams and their members continually cycle and recycle. They interact among themselves and with other persons in contexts. These interactions change the teams, team members, and their environments in ways more complex than is captured by simple cause and effect perspectives. (Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt, 2005, p. 519)
For example, the tie vitality (Maloney, Shah, Zellmer-Bruhn, & Jones, 2019) resulting from a team experience under MTM may act as an input for concurrent or future teams. Alternatively, researchers could also benefit from adapting a process view of teamwork, examining how teams under MTM distinctively process their social identity orientation (i.e., teaming in, teaming out) and team member’s contributions and performance (i.e., teaming up and teaming down; Einola & Alvesson, 2019) throughout the life cycle of the team. In general, a cyclical framework could continue to guide future research regarding the dynamic nature of teams in the MTM environment.
Second, an examination of the comparison processes that occur during MTM could further our understanding of the experiential approach to MTM. Comparisons are likely to be prominent when environments are similar and relevant enough to warrant accurate comparisons and when the information to make these comparisons is readily available (Festinger, 1954). In an MTM setting, the relevance and availability of information is clear across teams, making it a potential hotbed for self and social comparisons. Consistent with evidence that reporting to multiple managers is associated with comparisons between these managers (Vidyarthi et al., 2014), social comparison theory is a relevant yet unapplied perspective to use in examining comparisons between teams under MTM. Accordingly, future research could benefit from furthering research questions in this domain, such as exploring how experiences in one team impact the perceptions and actions of employees in concurrent teams due to social and temporal comparisons.
Conclusion
MTM impacts the majority of employees in knowledge-based industries (O’Leary et al., 2011) and has received an abundance of recent scholarly attention. This review integrates the extant literature on MTM, provides insights into emerging themes, and highlights opportunities for future research.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Julian Virtue Professorship Endowment at the Graziadio Business School, Pepperdine University, USA.