The impact of external and internal group activities on transactive memory systems formation and functioning

Transactive memory systems (TMS) theory has attracted increasing attention in the scholarly fields of cognitive, organizational, and social psychology; communication; information science; and management. TMS theory and research, focusing primarily on internal group activities, have paid scant attention to external group activities. This paper contributes to TMS theory and research by a set of proposals on the influence of internal and external group activities on TMS formation and functioning. More specifically, I propose that external group activities, depending on their intensity, influence TMS formation and functioning in project groups.A previous version of this paper was presented in the annual Academy of Management conference in the USA