Publications

Journal Article

Scholars have established that team membership has wide-ranging effects on cognition, dynamics, processes and performance.

Underlying that scholarship is the assumption that team membership – who is and who is not a team member – is straightforward, unambiguous and agreed upon by all members.

Contrary to this assumption, the author posits that mental models of membership increasingly diverge within teams as a result of changing environmental conditions. The author builds on the literatures on membership and on shared mental models to explore such “membership model divergence”.

In a study of 38 formally defined software and product development teams, the author tests a model of structural and emergent drivers of membership model divergence, and examines its effect on performance operating through team-level cognition.

The author uses the findings of this study to explore its implications for both management theory and managerial practice.