Knowledge Integration In Teams: A Systematic Knowledge Processing Perspective

Knowledge integration plays an important role in teams and prior research has found that knowledge integration can impact team performance positively. However, knowledge integration is not always effective in teams, especially in digital-enabled teams which are commonly used. To overcome the barriers to knowledge integration, it is important that team members process the individual held knowledge systematically. However, prior team knowledge integration literature neglected to study this issue. We intend to fill in this gap by studying the impact of systematic knowledge processing on team knowledge integration.Factors that can influence systematic knowledge processing were also studied. Based on motivated information processing literature, we studied the impact of task involvement, time pressure, process accountability, critical norm and task reflexivity on systematic knowledge processing.Furthermore, the impact of knowledge integration on team performance is likely to be contingent on task interdependence. Thus another goal of this dissertation is to study whether task interdependence can moderate the relationship between knowledge integration and team performance.Survey data was collected from teams which were conducting team projects using wikis. The results showed that knowledge integration positively impact team performance, and task interdependence can amplify this impact. Knowledge integration is positively related with systematic knowledge processing. And systematical knowledge processing is positively related with task involvement, task reflexivity, and critical norm. However, time pressure and process accountability don't appear to impact systematic knowledge processing. Implications for the research and practice were discussed.