The impact of social media usage on expertise coordination and team creative performance in distributed agile software development

Abstract

Purpose

This article explores how the social media usage affect team creative performance via transactive memory system, knowledge interaction and expertise coordination.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on the perspective of transaction memory system and expertise coordination theory. A research model was constructed and tested, involving 289 individuals from 67 distributed agile software development teams.

Findings

The results indicate that social media usage is positively correlated with transactive memory system, and social media usage and transactive memory system have positive relations to knowledge interaction and expertise coordination. Moreover, this analysis shows that knowledge interaction has a positive relationship with expertise coordination, and expertise coordination positively affects team creative performance. However, knowledge interaction has no direct relationship on team creative performance, and its indirect impact on team creative performance was fully mediated by expertise coordination. This research shows that social media usage by distributed agile software development teams can support the development of transactive memory system and promote expertise coordination. In addition, knowledge interaction alone is not enough, and expertise coordination must be achieved to increase team creative performance.

Originality/value

First, this paper explores the mechanism of transactive memory system in distributed Agile Software Development teams from the perspective of social media, which is different from the previous information processing theory framework that confined transactive memory system to the cognitive aspects of knowledge coding, storage and retrieval. Second, this research focuses on the knowledge interaction and expertise coordination formed by team members in the process of communication in the context of social media usage, which confirms the crucial roles of social media usage and transactive memory system in team knowledge management and team creative performance. Then, this research also shows that the development of transactive memory system in the team is indeed an important factor to promote knowledge interaction and professional expertise coordination.

Citation

Jiang, J., Yang, X. and Zhou, C. (2023), "The impact of social media usage on expertise coordination and team creative performance in distributed agile software development", Kybernetes, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-08-2022-1171