The Transactive Memory Systems Approach to Social Capital

This is another in my occasional mentions of interesting literature related to social media and social capital. Kanawattanachai and Yoo publishing in the Dec. 2007 MISQ introduced me to the transactive memory systems (TMS) concept in virtual teams. Virtual teams of course are increasingly important in the modern global network organizations. (Note Sun’s recent purchase of MySQL for close to a billion dollars. That’s a powerful 400-person virtual team! Sun itself is no slacker at being a virtual organization.)

TMS has three coordination mechanisms: Recognizing, trusting, and coordinating specialized knowledge in teams. It is a means of analyzing the processes of knowledge sharing. The TMS variables are seemingly ways to mobilize social capital

Their longitudinal study found that early on in the life of the team, frequency and volume of task-oriented communication were important to building cognition-based trust and forming knowledge of expertise location. Toward the end of the team projects, just knowledge coordination communication was the only significant TMS variable related to performance.

The paper’s findings support the proposition that companies would be wise to invest the modest sums to support social media use. Build the networks before you need them.