Does Dormant Faultline Still Matter in Distributed Teams? Extending the Faultline Concept to Distributed Environment

摘要

Subgroup divisions based on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and race (the notion of dormant team fautlines) have been found to influence team processes and outcomes in face-to-face teams. This research extends the faultline concept to distributed environment, by proposing that recognized faultlines, instead of dormant faultline, will have a negative impact on distributed team performance and an important team cognitive process - Transactive Memory Systems (TMS). The research model was tested based on survey data collected from 156 MBA students in 42 distributed teams. Our results show that in distributed teams where each team member locates at a different location and never meet face-to-face, recognized faultlines have a negative relationship to both team performance and TMS, while dormant faultlines only have a negative link to TMS, but no significant relationship to team performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed together with potential avenues for future research.