Knowledge-Sharing Effectiveness in Distributed Teams: The Interplay between Team's Transactive Memory and Virtual Workspace Technology Use (Research Seminar, September 28th, 2004) Ann Majchrzak University of Southern California, Los Angeles Abstract Firms are increasingly leveraging their globally distributed knowledge resources through deployment of distributed teams (DTs). Members of DTs rely extensively on information technology in general and virtual workspaces in particular to share and utilize knowledge available in the team. Previous research has indicated that group and contextual factors may shape how IT can be used to facilitate knowledge sharing effectiveness (KSE). One salient factor that has been mentioned as a possible moderator of the effect of IT on KSE is a group's transactive memory (TM). However, no empirical study has demonstrated this moderation effect. Moreover, research on IT support for DTs has not distinguished between support that virtual workspace technologies can provide for two characteristics of communication required to create common ground among team members: multi-channel synchronous and persistent support. Research has also not examined how a team's TM may differentially moderate the relationship between use of each type of communication support and the team's satisfaction with knowledge-sharing among members. We studied 54 DTs and found that, as hypothesized, teams with low TM reported higher satisfaction with their KSE when they used virtual workspace functionalities that facilitated multi-channel synchronous communication. On the other hand, contrary to our hypothesis, we found that email and audio-conferencing were adequate for knowledge sharing in teams with highly developed TM. For teams with moderate TM, there was an interaction effect of synchronous and persistent communication support.