Interactions between dynamic team composition and coordination: an agent-based modeling approach

Abstract

This paper examines the interactions between selected coordination modes and dynamic team composition, and their joint effects on task performance under different task complexity and individual learning conditions. Prior research often treats dynamic team composition as a consequence of suboptimal organizational design choices. The emergence of new organizational forms that consciously employ teams that change their composition periodically challenges this perspective. In this paper, we follow the contingency theory and characterize dynamic team composition as a design choice that interacts with other choices such as the coordination mode, and with additional contextual factors such as individual learning and task complexity. We employ an agent-based modeling approach based on the NK framework, which includes a reinforcement learning mechanism, a recurring team formation mechanism based on signaling, and three different coordination modes. Our results suggest that by implementing lateral communication or sequential decision-making, teams may exploit the benefits of dynamic composition more than if decision-making is fully autonomous. The choice of a proper coordination mode, however, is partly moderated by the task complexity and individual learning. Additionally, we show that only a coordination mode based on lateral communication may prevent the negative effects of individual learning.