1594: How to Manage the Duality of Multiple Team Membership: The Role of External and Internal Diversity (13590)

It has long been recognized that multiple team membership is a double-edged sword for teams, but the search for mechanisms and contingencies continues to puzzle researchers. From a social network perspective, our theory posits that accessing heterogeneous external resources through a team’s external network ties underlies the benefits of multiple team membership for team performance. In the meanwhile, drawing upon attention and role theories, we suggest that multiple team membership can negatively impact team productivity by diminishing the heterogeneity of team members’ external roles. To reconcile these divergent theoretical perspectives on the team consequences of multiple team membership, we introduce an informational perspective. This perspective suggests that teams can strengthen the upsides of multiple team membership and mitigate the associated downsides by adjusting the level of their internal informational diversity. Through this integrated approach, our framework aims to provide theoretical insights into the mechanisms and contingencies determining why and when multiple team membership is beneficial or detrimental for teams.

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