ABSTRACT
In an effort to improve their competitiveness, many organizations have become more dynamic. One feature of such organizations is teamwork, but teams in dynamic organizations differ in certain ways from more traditional work teams. Many of these differences have implications for knowledge management, especially transactive memory. Transactive memory, or a shared awareness of who knows what, can develop in both organizations and work teams. Research shows that stronger transactive memory systems lead to better team performance, and transactive memory is probably valuable for organizations as well. But the special features of teams found in dynamic organizations seem likely to strengthen transactive memory at the organizational level, while weakening it at the team level. Teams in dynamic organizations may also experience other special problems. The challenge, then, is to decide when it is more important to have a strong transactive memory system at each level, and then manage work teams and their members accordingly.
