Knowledge Utilization, Coordination, and Team Performance

Considerable research has established the superior performance of teams on which team members utilize specialized knowledge and also develop transactive processes that promote coordination. Less is known, however, about the consequences for team performance when team members only possess one of the two productivity factors. We develop and test a framework highlighting the distinct challenges these teams will face. In particular, our results show that each productivity factor contributed significantly more to team performance when the other factor was present. And our findings also illustrate a potential failure mode for knowledge utilization. If team members could not coordinate their collective efforts, utilizing knowledge undermined team performance. Our framework outlines a similar risk for too much coordination, if team members cannot utilize their specialized knowledge and are asked to perform a task with a “rugged” performance landscape. We discuss the implications of our framework and results for theory and practice.