Abstract:
Individuals are increasingly involved in more than one project team. This implies that an employee
simultaneously has multiple memberships in these project teams, a phenomenon known as multiple team
membership (MTM). Previous, predominantly theoretical studies have acknowledged the impacts that MTM
has on performance but very scarce empirical evidence exists. The aim of this study is to provide empirical
support for some of these theoretical claims using data collected from 435 team members in 85 engineering
project teams in South Africa. Results show that MTM has an inverted-U shaped relationship with individual
performance and a positive linear relationship with team performance. When a person is working in multiple
project teams simultaneously, he/she may encounter more diverse sources of ideas across all teams and
thus enhances his/her innovative performance. However, as the number of MTM increases, the negative
effect of task switching and fragmented attention will negatively impact on individual performance. At the
project team level, a large number of MTM in a focal team allows the team members to integrate diverse
sources of knowledge and resources into the focal team. This study also found that individuals’ emotional
skills and cognitive skills impact on individual performance. It is recommended to programme and project
portfolio managers, who often are involved in scheduling human resources to multiple projects, to
acknowledge both the positive and negative impacts of MTM on performance. Moreover, in high MTM
situations, project team members with high emotional and cognitive skills should be selected.
