Teams in the workplace are often tasked with completing big projects which can be allocated in incremental pieces, given to the team in their entirety, or some mixture of the two. Yet, the question remains: Which type of task allocation will help the team perform best? We suggest the answer lies in the examination of fit between the type of task allocation (TA) and the team’s task allocation preference (TAP). Given the nascency of research on team-level fit, we adopt a multi-method approach to shift individual-level person-task fit theory to the team level (i.e., team-task fit). First, we investigate the process through which team-level TA-TAP fit unfolds utilizing a qualitative study of visual effects (VFX) artists working on Marvel Studios projects (Study 1). The findings offer a deeper understanding of TA-TAP fit as a team-level phenomenon and highlight shared leadership as a key team-level mechanism connecting TA-TAP fit and team performance. We then deductively test these relationships in a natural project study (Study 2) and an experiment (Study 3), finding that TA-TAP fit, regardless of the type of TA, leads to higher levels of shared leadership and team performance. Our contributions highlight robust findings across research settings and extend fit theory to the team level.
