The Impact of Information Technology and Transactive Memory Systems on Knowledge Sharing, Application, and Team Performance: A Field Study1

In contemporary knowledge-based organizations, teams often play an essential role in leveraging knowledge resources. Organizations make significant investments in information technology to support knowledge management practices in teams. At the same time, recent studies show that the transactive memory system (TMS)—the specialized division of cognitive labor among team members that relates to the encoding, storage, and retrieval of knowledge—is an important factor that affects a team’s performance. Yet little is known of how IT support for knowledge management practices in organizations affects the development of TMS. Furthermore, the precise role of TMS on knowledge sharing and knowledge application, which in…