Team Performance and Team Members’ Status: The Motives Underlying Boundary-Spanning Search Processes

The article analyses search processes in teams by focusing on problemistic search and slack search which are both dependent on team goals and performance-aspiration levels. Advancing existing literature, it focuses on team members’ social status – related to their embeddedness in the network of advice-giving ties - and on their perception of team performance. Our research draws on a sample of 174 professionals working within 23 multidisciplinary teams in the healthcare context. The study provides novel insights to team and performance feedback literature by demonstrating that team members engage in boundary-spanning activities as a form of problemistic search, hence, to search for fresh knowledge in response to performance setback. Interestingly, individuals with high informal status prove to be less inclined to engage in boundary spanning activities as problemistic search but more inclined to do so as a form of slack search, so in response to team performance above aspiration levels.