Transactive memory and exception handling in high-performance project teams

This paper describes empirical research in which we examined the operation of transactive memory in a project team at the Jet Propulsion Lab using real-time concurrent design processes to develop conceptual hardware designs for future Mars missions. Our preliminary findings suggest that in cases where the information encountered by a team is clearly partitioned into distinct functional domains, a team with a highly differentiated transactive memory structure might constitute a good fit. However, in task situations where teams encounter new information that isn\´t easily partitioned and allocated into well-defined functional domains, a team with a less differentiated transactive memory structure might be needed for greater information "uptake." This empirical research constitutes input for further work aimed at combining formal models of exception handling and transactive memory into an integrated framework that can be used to represent and model the operation of distributed information and expertise in project exception handling.