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This study describes the development and validity testing of a field measure of transactive memory systems. Transactive memory systems are especially important for teams designed to leverage members' expertise, but field research has lagged because there are no adequate measures of the construct. The author developed and tested a 15-item scale in a laboratory sample of 124 teams, a field sample of 64 Master of Business Administration consulting teams, and a field sample of 27 teams from technology companies. Results from the present study demonstrate that the scale is internally consistent, related to alternative measures and hypothesized causes and effects, and unrelated to theoretically distinct constructs, providing evidence of convergent, criterion-related, and discriminant validity. Suggestions for improving the scale, future validity testing, and possible boundary conditions are discussed.

This study examined how transactive memory systems (TMSs) emerge and develop to affect the performance of knowledge-worker teams. Sixty-four MBA consulting teams (261 members) participated in the study. I proposed that the role and function of TMSs change to meet different task and knowledge demands during a project. Hypotheses predicting that TMSs emerge during a project-planning phase as a function of a team's initial conditions, and later develop and mature as a function of the nature and frequency of communication were generally supported, as were hypothesized relationships between TMSs and team performance and viability. Findings suggest that teams with initially distributed expertise and familiar members are more likely to develop a TMS. Frequent face-to-face communication also led to TMS emergence, but communication via other means had no effect. Teams with more established TMSs later benefited from face-to-face communication, but they were less helped by frequent communication via other means, suggesting that transactive retrieval processes may have been triggered during face-to-face communication and suppressed during other types of communication. TMSs were positively related to team viability and team performance, suggesting that developing a TMS is critical to the effectiveness of knowledge-worker teams.knowledge-worker teams, transactive memory

This research investigated whether procedural and interactional justice affect workrelated outcomes through different social exchange relationships. The findings extend previous research by demonstrating that (1) interactional justice perceptions affect supervisor-related outcomes via the mediating variahle of leader-memher exchange and (2) procedural justice perceptions affect organization-related outcomes via the mediating variahle of perceived organizational support.

Transactive memory system (TMS) theory has been popularized in recent research on groups and other collectives. In this essay we outline current issues in TMS research and develop propositions that can be tested in future research. We describe issues concerning how researchers define and conceptualize TMSs, interpret the relationship between TMS measures and the TMS concept, and attend to the role of task type in TMS research. The potential to advance TMS research by incorporating multilevel and social network perspectives, reconsidering the role of information technology in supporting TMSs, and developing frameworks suited to complex, multiactivity tasks is considered.

Knowledge embedded in a group’s structures and processes can be leveraged to create sustainable advantage for organizations. We propose that knowledge embedded with a transactive memory system (TMS) helps groups apply prior learning to new tasks and develop an abstract understanding of a problem domain, leading to sustained performance. We present a framework for understanding TMSs as learning systems that affect group learning and learning transfer, and we test the major outcomes of the framework in an empirical study. We found that groups with a prior TMS and experience with two tasks in the same domain were more likely to develop an abstract understanding of the principles relevant to the task domain—a critical factor for learning transfer in general. We did not, however, find strong support for our contention that a TMS facilitates learning transfer after experience with only a single task. Further examinations of our findings showed that the extent to which members maintained expertise across tasks influenced the degree of learning transfer, especially for groups whose members had previously developed a TMS with another group. Our findings show that a TMS has broader benefits beyond the task for which it first developed because a TMS affects members’ ability to apply prior learning and develop a collective, abstract understanding of the task domain. More generally, our study demonstrates that TMSs influence group learning and learning transfer. We discuss our study’s implications for practice and for TMS and group learning theories.

This article reviews the research on employment discrimination in organizations. It focuses on discrimination perceptions, charges, and lawsuits and discusses the consequences of discrimination. Among the conclusions are the following: (a) The proportion of claimants filing under different antidiscrimination statutes differs by race; (b) the area needs theories that can explain wide variance in perceptions of events; (c) the consequences of discrimination are best viewed from individual, group, and organizational levels; and (d) if the results of instruments are used in legal settings, social scientists should pay careful attention to reliability and validity, as well as standards of legally admissible evidence.

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