Navigating Multiple Team Membership: A Review and Redirection of its Influence on Effectiveness Outcomes

In today's organizations, employees commonly work in more than one team at a time. As this practice of multiple team membership (MTM) has become a reality of daily work, researchers across disciplines have dedicated their efforts to study its influence on valued outcomes such as employee and team effectiveness. We review the MTM literature to provide an overview of the relationship between multiteaming and effectiveness and to discuss the underlying reasons that explain why this relationship is complex and findings remain inconsistent. Drawing from teams research, we particularly highlight three sources of variance in the effects of multiteaming that have not been discussed in an integrative manner: (a) what is being studied – the aspects and nature of multiteaming; (b) how multiteaming is thought to affect effectiveness – the processes through which multiteaming transforms into (in)effectiveness; and (c) who are the multiteamers – the characteristics of multiteamers. Our review thus offers a more fine-grained theoretical understanding of multiteaming's influence on effectiveness and uncovers exciting future research directions.