关键词: 多团队成员身份, 创新绩效, 构型理论, 机缘巧合, 重组-质询

Abstract: Multiple team membership (MTM) has been widely adopted as a strategic talent management practice to build dynamic knowledge networks and facilitate cross-domain knowledge integration. However, empirical evidence reveals a paradox: some employees become trapped in a state of being “busy yet inefficient,” whereas others achieve innovation breakthroughs. This raises a fundamental question: Why does MTM practice produce differentiated outcomes? And how should managers configure employees into effective MTM patterns to facilitate innovation breakthroughs? To address this question, this study introduces resource orchestration theory as an overarching framework to systematically investigate how MTM can serve as an engine of organizational innovation, and it unfolds through three progressively advanced sub-studies.
First, from a “decomposition” perspective, this study moves beyond the homogeneous quantity-based view of MTM and focuses on two-dimensional role characteristics, examining the double-edged sword effects of individual MTM role separation and role centrality on employee innovation performance. As the initial stage of resource orchestration, Study 1 integrates social network theory and conservation of resources theory as complementary lenses to deconstruct the resource states of MTM employees, investigating how role separation and role centrality differentially influence employee innovation performance through external innovation network resource acquisition and internal cognitive resource states. Specifically, role separation enhances employees’ bridging social capital in multiple team memberships, thereby broadening access to innovation resources; simultaneously, it intensifies cognitive depletion and increases innovation burden, thus exerting a dual influence on innovation performance. Role centrality, by contrast, suppresses individual creative thinking through enhanced bonding social capital, while also alleviating cognitive depletion, thereby exerting a dual influence on innovation performance. This study breaks through the homogeneous assumptions based on MTM quantity, deeply revealing the benefits, costs, and inherent tensions of the two-dimensional fine-grained features of MTM in innovation network resources and cognitive resource acquisition, and opens the “black box” of MTM’s influence on employee innovation performance from a feature-characteristic perspective.
Second, from an “integration” perspective, this study introduces configurational theory to characterize the complex patterns of individual MTM configurations and, in conjunction with serendipity theory, deeply deconstructs the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which different MTM configurations influence employee innovation performance. Given the inherent tensions between cognitive resources and network resources, the core of resource orchestration lies in resolving conflicts through the synergistic integration of multidimensional elements (Sirmon et al., 2011). Using latent profile analysis, this study identifies four typical MTM configurations: focused-sustaining (high centrality × low role separation), focused-expanding (high centrality × high role separation), dispersed-sustaining (low centrality × low role separation), and dispersed-expanding (low centrality × high role separation). Furthermore, it introduces serendipity theory to explore how different configurations translate into individual innovation breakthroughs through dynamic resource integration and opportunity actualization. This study delineates typical patterns of multiple team membership in organizational practice, advancing MTM research from a unidimensional perspective to a multidimensional configurational perspective, and identifies MTM configurations that can effectively achieve innovation breakthroughs as well as their applicable contexts.
Third, from a team-level MTM configuration perspective, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms and boundary conditions through which MTM employees who successfully achieve innovation breakthroughs influence team innovation, thereby promoting the integration of MTM research with the “bottom-up” team paradigm. The ultimate goal of resource orchestration is to achieve the full release and maximization of resource value (Sirmon et al., 2011). Study 3 integrates minority influence theory and the “recombination-questioning” ambidextrous innovation logic to examine how MTM employees who achieve innovation breakthroughs—especially those in focused-expanding and dispersed-sustaining configurations—facilitate the synergistic emergence of individual resources to the team level through team reflexivity. It further examines the differential moderating roles of team decentralized problem-solving networks and individual-focused transformational leadership behaviors at different innovation stages in promoting the innovation processes of employees with different MTM configurations, thereby enabling the ripple diffusion from individual innovation breakthroughs to overall team innovation performance. This study helps answer how MTM configuration employees who achieve innovation breakthroughs generate positive ripple effects on overall team innovation, and extends research on the effects and boundary conditions of MTM on team innovation performance.
In summary, the three sub-studies progress from “decomposition” to “integration” and from the individual level to the team level, being both mutually independent and organically connected, jointly constructing a multilevel, systematic theoretical framework that reveals the internal logic through which MTM drives organizational innovation. This study not only theoretically advances MTM research from a quantity-based perspective to role-characteristic and configurational perspectives, but also provides practical scientific evidence for organizations to optimize MTM allocation, design differentiated human resource management practices, and stimulate employee and team innovation.

Key words: multiple team membership, innovation performance, configurational perspectives, serendipity, recombination-interrogation