Driven by views of teams as dynamic systems with permeable boundaries, scholars are increasingly seeking to better understand how team membership changes (i.e., team members joining and/or leaving) shape the functioning and performance of organizational teams. However, empirical studies of team membership change appear to be progressing in three largely independent directions as researchers consider: (a) how newcomers impact and are impacted by the teams they join; (b) how teams adapt to member departures; or (c) how teams function under conditions of high membership fluidity, with little theoretical integration or consensus across these three areas. To accelerate an integrative stream of research on team membership change, we advance a conceptual framework which depicts each team membership change as a discrete team-level “event” which shapes team functioning to the extent to which it is “novel,” “disruptive,” and “critical” for the team. We use this framework to guide our review and synthesis of empirical studies of team membership change published over the past 20 years. Our review reveals numerous factors, across conceptual levels of the organization, that determine the strength (i.e., novelty, disruptiveness, criticality) of a team membership change event and, consequently, its impact on team functioning and performance. In closing, we provide propositions for future research that integrate a multilevel, event-based perspective of team membership change and demonstrate how team membership change events may impact organizational systems over time and across levels of observation.

Many important “grand” challenges—such as sending a team of humans on a voyage to Mars—present superordinate goals that require coordinated efforts across “multiteam systems” comprised of multiple uniquely specialized and interdependent component teams. Given their flexibility and resource capacity, multiteam system structures have great potential to perform adaptively in dynamic contexts. However, these systems may fail to achieve their superordinate goals if constituent members or teams do not adapt their collaboration processes to meet the needs of the changing environment. In this case study of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Spaceflight Multiteam Systems (SFMTSs), we aim to support the next era of human spaceflight by considering how the history of manned spaceflight might impact a SFMTS’s ability to respond adaptively to future challenges. We leverage archival documents, including Oral History interviews with NASA personnel, in order to uncover the key attributes and structural features of NASA’s SFMTSs as well as the major goals, critical events, and challenges they have faced over 60 years of operation. The documents reveal three distinct “eras” of spaceflight: (1) Early Exploration , (2) Experimentation , and (3) Habitation , each of which reflected distinct goals, critical events, and challenges. Moreover, we find that within each era, SFMTSs addressed new challenges adaptively by modifying their: (1) technical capabilities; (2) internal collaborative relationships; and/or (3) external partnerships. However, the systems were sometimes slow to implement needed adaptations, and changes were often spurred by initial performance failures. Implications for supporting future SFMTS performance and future directions for MTS theory and research are discussed.

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