MTM switching and role interference per membership: the roles of intra-and interpersonal experience

Organizations increasingly implement project teams and assign employees to multiple projects simultaneously, known as multiple team membership (MTM). Existing research has predominantly focused on the number of simultaneous teams, assuming the frequent transition between teams. Besides, the literature has largely overlooked the “dual nested” nature of MTM, and less is well known about how and when the switching aspect of MTM, beyond the number of projects, affects multi-teamers’ experience at the per membership level and the downstream consequences on team coordination and performance. Based on role theory and task-switching literature in the MTM context, we adopt the cross-classified approach to develop the theoretical model. Using the archival and survey data of 261 multi-teamers from 133 project teams (455 per membership level observations) in a large financial software company, we found that MTM switching, rather than MTM number, positively predicts a multi-teamer’s role interference within the focal team. Furthermore, this positive association is attenuated when multi-teamers possess diverse project experiences and share higher familiarity with members across simultaneous projects. Furthermore, we found that the aggregated role interference among multi-teamers or team role interference is positively related to flux in team coordination, adversely affecting the team’s timeliness performance.