Abstract - Transaction memory system (TMS) is attracted many scholars from different fields to investigate. Nevertheless, the application of TMS theory on the team of the early supplier involvement (ESI) is surprisingly scant. We propose to demonstrate the TMS helps suppliers’ early involvement by eliciting and drawing a causal loop diagram to explicitly and systematically illustrate the process of knowledge flowing and learning, which have some differences between the traditional new product development team (NPD) and the team of ESI. And further examinations of our findings are showed that, in a dynamic environment, the ESI team, the more prior TMS experiences and stronger interaction pattern, the more stable of expectations, which could led to low adaptation of the membership change, forming inertias against the TMS.

Keywords - Transaction memory system (TMS), early supplier involvement (ESI), team learning, causal-loop diagram

I. INTRODUCTION

The transactive memory system (TMS) is based on the concept of external memory: as member’s expertise recognition formed, it is used to adjust the order of information, discover the link among them and in so doing that they create new knowledge that missed in a group’s structures and processes. We want to improve the key factors which influence group learning and task performance, and finally optimize the order of the information. The TMS is appropriated for team learning when team members’ mindful attention interrelate their actions to launch a product faster .Early supplier involvement (ESI) has been advocated as a mean to integrate suppliers' capabilities in the buying firm's supply chain system and operations . Because there is typical information asymmetric in ESI team, the relationship between customer and supplier are become dynamic, which would influence the members’ credibility, the depth of communication and so on. So that we base on the feature of ESI team as starting point to investigate the transactive memory system in ESI team whether work or not. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2, as the research background, discusses the TMS theory, systems thinking and ESI theory. Section 3 integrates theories of and early supply involvement and ESI team into the causal loop, and analyzes role of interaction patter

between the TMS and the effectiveness of the ESI team. Section 4,5 are conclusion and discussion.

II. BACKGROUND

A. Transactive memory system

The transactive memory system(TMS), that is knowledge of who knows what in the team, is appropriated for team learning and launching a product faster when team members’ mindful attention interrelate their actions .TMS is based on the concept of external memory: as members’ expertise recognition formed, it is used to adjust the order of information, and discover the link among them, and in so doing that they create knowledge that missed in a group’s structures and processes. A TMS, in essence, impacts team learning by facilitating an integrative process of information/knowledge processing . Laboratory studies have demonstrated that when work teams have prior TMS experience, members own collective mind and understand specification and task about each one, and coordinate members’ knowledge more efficiently, resulting in higher team performance, compared with teams without TMS

.

B. Early supplier involvement

In many industries, many firms are seeking to cut customer development time, improve quality, reduce the cost of new products and facilitate the smooth launch of new products with the help of early supplier involvement (ESI).

In order to achieve the goals, increasingly, business organizations are concentrating on core activities and outsourcing other functions to external suppliers . The traditional pattern was being replaced by one consisting of complex networks of collaborating organizations, and chains of buyers and suppliers .

C. Systems thinking

System means a group of interconnected entities.. Systems thinking require the application of system view of the development of the organization. It guides the people to look from local to overall and from the surface to the underlying structure, as well as from the static analysis to understand the interplay of various factors, thus searching for a dynamic balance.

Research on the Transaction Memory System in the Team of Early Supplier Involvement

Qing TIAN , Hui-yu LIANG , Ming-jian ZHOU Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen,P. R. China

(tianq@hitsz.edu.cn)

___________________________________ 978-1-61284-449-7/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE

D. Key questions

The paper is aim to investigates: 1) the impact for the ESI team by TMS; 2) the impact of the TMS on the effectiveness of the customer-supplier relationship and task performance, i.e. co-operative behaviors, business relationship, dependence, costs, quality, satisfaction; 3) eliciting and drawing a causal loop diagram to explicitly and systematically illustrate the flowing and learning process of knowledge; and 4) analysis the positive and negative role of collective mind to the effectiveness of the ESI team.

III LITERATURE REVIEW AND METHOD

E. Literature review

At first, the transactive memory system is based on laboratory, which have demonstrated that when work teams have prior TMS experience, members own collective mind and understand specification and task about each one, and coordinate members’ knowledge more efficiently, resulting in higher team performance, compared with teams without TMS[3 5 7]. And it is found that team members have similar stereotype is conducive to the formation of TMS [2].

Some researches focus on the impact of TMS on new product development and visual team. Ali E. Akgün[10 ]

have demonstrated that team stability, team member familiarity, and interpersonal trust have a positive impact on the transactive memory system and task performance, at the same time, he[4] have demonstrated the relation among the TMS, team learning and speed-to-market, the collective mind. Youngjin Yoo[11] have found that the transactive memory system of a virtual team has a positive influence on the team's collective mind, and mediate by the team's collective mind as the collective mind's influence on the team's performance increases over time.

Kyle Lewis has listed three dimensionalities to measure level theory of TMS, specialization, credibility, coordination [12 13], comparing the different impact of three level of group cognition, membership change to TMS[14 15], and has considered the TMS as a sustained development process, depicting three cycle of TMS-learning framework[1]. Elisabeth Brauner has supposed the concept of transactive knowledge system to explain the highly effective work team members how to use their expertise and knowledge.

The collective mind refers to a social cognitive system in which individuals heedfully interrelate their actions [16].Transactive memory system is a “shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information” [17].

The researchers have considered the TMS from a view of system thinking, believing knowledge must be related with another factors. So we test the impact of transactive memory system for the early supplier involvement in a dynamic environment.

F. Method

Basing on the prior literature review, we pick on the key factors in the TMS with the tool of causal loop diagram to analysis the relationship between the factors and the impact for early supplier involvement.

IV THE THEORY AND THE CAUSAL LOOP DIAGRAM

The core reason of the need of knowledge flowing is that when the amount of data rapidly growth, just depending on oneself to remember all of the information is become impossibility, in order to reduce the cognition burden, employees unconsciously find the specification and the expertise among employees. So that the goal of this study introduce the tools of systems thinking, the casual diagrams, help us to know that the core part of TMS and collective mind optimizing the order of information and the directory of them. And explain how embedded knowledge as a leverage to create sustained effective group performance.

G. Prerequisite condition of transactive memory system--Loop1 and Loop2

Communication process Communication process could be divided into two parts:

the depth of communication and the frequency of communication, which are the premises of the mutual credibility and coordination relationship. The frequency of members’ communication could be benefit to increase the depth of mutual communication to learn about others’ expertise.

The communication helps members to learn about others’ expertise and develops shared perceptions about who knows what[6 10]. In the traditional view, communication not only helps TMS emerge, but also the directly influences it. But Youngjin Yoo has founded that later communication influence of frequency and depth of communication would be gradually weaken when team has developed their transactive memory systems and collective mind[11].

In the ESI team, the timing of suppliers’ involvement impact the depth of communication. The timing of supplier involvement refers to the stage that the customer begins to search for suitable suppliers to make them aware of the project. The earlier supplier involvement gives both sides an opportunity to learn about each other, at the same time, it means the greater responsibility by supplier. Tasks and environment

Tasks have mainly reflected in three aspects[18 19]:1) The tasks of the intrinsic links decide the

interdependence between team members; 2) The division of tasks will affect the understanding of

the structure of transactive memory system;

3) The structure of tasks decides the mutual relations, and the expertise team members.

When shorten the life cycle of products, development of knowledge is getting faster and faster, tasks and environment become dynamic even change any time, so that the new product development is no longer easily to predict. Ali E. Akgün has found that the effect of the TMS on team learning will change nonlinearly with respect to the environmental turbulence, which has negative relationship between the TMS and speed-to-market. Birou and Fawcett have suggested that environments which are conducive to highly cooperative relationships between buyers and suppliers are more likely to lead to suppliers’ involvement [4].Cognitive interdependence, credibility and members’ relationship

Cognitive interdependence means participants are interdependent with their group members; each individual’s outcome is tied to the performance of other members. The interdependence of the task will be to promote knowledge interdependence as well as members’ interdependence[16 17].

Credibility means that when accomplishing their tasks, the team members trust knowledge and information provided by other one. Lower credible suggests members can not rely on others’ knowledge, who should process all of information they met, the burden of cognition of them are heavier and heavier so that they will not have time and capability to develop specialized toward the task.

Members’ relationship refers to interpersonal trust, team member proximity and team member familiarity, all of them will be positively related to development of TMS in NPD project teams [10].

In the ESI team, the degree of competition among suppliers represent whether the customer trust the suppliers. Until recently, some manufacturer have opted cooperative relationship to emphasize a shared interdependence.

The reasons for this situation is that in ESI team, there is a typical information asymmetric, customer are not fully aware of suppliers and all the team members. Developing and investing the new product project together by customers and suppliers in ESI team is an effective incentive mechanism to enhance the mutual trust and interdependence. The degree of cognitive interdependence, credibility and members’ relationship between the customers and supplier decide the extent of new technology spread in the supply chain and relations for a long time.

H. The loops of TMS structure and TMS process

The initial TMS is divided into two interrelated parts: TMS structure and TMS process. TMS structure is an organized knowledge storage contained with members’ memories. And a set of transactive processes are used to encode, store, and retrieve knowledge. Information about members’ expertise is stored in the TMS structure as location information, which is involved in specific details,

or low order information possessed by different employee with a particular topic [3].Expertise recognition-Loop3

The location information and low-order information make up the initial TMS structure to affect what and how much each member decides to learn. In particular, an understanding of others’ expertise affects a member’s choice to learn in an area wasn’t familiar with other than those was familiar with [19].

Expertise recognition is benefit for specification, which making researchers could specify and understand the expertise domain of each team[12 13]. The team members of ESI develop novel solutions to problems, only focus on one specify domain rather than pay attention to all of domain, effectively improve the individual knowledge. Because supplier only focuses on its core strengths, they deeply understand the relative parts of products. Early supplier involvement is implemented in the initial stages of product manufacturing could reduce product deficiencies, unnecessary waste of time, accelerating the speed of new product development. Information allocation- Loop4 and loop5

With the help of expertise recognition, the low-order information is transfer into high order information [1],which is benefit for the prior information’s allocation and new information’s. If everyone remembers all of the information relating to the project, after a period of time, their cognition burden becomes heavier, the order of memories information will be confusion, and its directory of information is in a non-state organized status.

Because of effect of information allocation and expertise recognition, everyone’s cognitive burden is lower than had not TMS process. It makes members’ location information more similar and more accurate, and lead to what Wegner refers to as integrations of members’ knowledge [3]. High-order information helps to mine the relationship among different domain knowledge to discover links between members’ knowledge and create new knowledge that no member has previously possessed [1]. It improves the amount of location information, the stock of knowledge and task performance.

ESI team members need to share knowledge and respond quickly to each other in order to achieve the task. Additionally, an ESI team is required to access a larger pool of information to optimize the value of task-specific expertise and knowledge [10].Retrieval coordination- Loop6

On the base of expertise recognition, information allocation to form high-order information could lead to easier retrieval information in dynamic environment. The cooperative partnership between customers and suppliers in ESI team, make a high degree of information accord the directory to retrieve information. Retrieval coordination will simplify information searching process; shared. Information sharing can improve the resilience of suppliers, reducing information uncertainties and distortion of encountering unfamiliar situations, team members who has already known everyone’s specification and expertise could information. Customers can provide technical

support or information to the suppliers to improve product quality, making the product quality stabilization, and decrease the cost of quality inspection for no-confidence. Task performance and the stock of TMS knowledge

We defined the stock of TMS knowledge is partly owned by each member, of the sum of knowledge, and on who knows what the collective consciousness [3]. Task performance could stimulate the TMS learning continues after a TMS has developed, in contrast, learning improves initial task performance together. The continuance learning adjusts the order of information and helps to understand members’ knowledge. At last, a pattern established for communicating, which reduce uncertainty about how group interactions ought to proceed. Learning makes groups more effectively and efficiently to perform the same task. TMS initially developed memory systems on team performance will decrease as a team develops its collective mind.

I. The collective mind

Collective mind- Loop7 and loop 8 The collective mind refers to a social cognitive system

in which individuals heedfully interrelate their actions [16].Transactive memory system is a “shared system for encoding, storing, and retrieving information” [17].

The collective mind represents a more advanced form of socio-cognitive system in teams. Developing a collective mind could not without a transactive memory, but developing a transactive memory can without the collective mind. So it manifest that the transactive memory has a positive effect on collective mind [11]. And the directly influence of transactive collective mind would congregate the information to form collective induction. Collective induction refers to the processes by which a group infers some general principle or rule from concrete examples of that principle [17].

If members also recognize functional similarities between tasks, then it is likely that teams will apply the same routines to new tasks[12 13]. team is equally effective, but few of consider the collective mind also has negative impact on task performace. Hollingshea found that team members have similar stereotype is conducive to the formation of TMS, but in the long time, the oldtimers are used to the prior specification and experience, who are likely to perceive more similarities than differences between their previous and new groups, and trigger oldtimers are likely to expect the newcomer to specialize in an area of the task for which the oldtimers are not already knowledgeable [19].

V CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we considerate the NPD team in the early suppliers involvement environment, is so-called ESI team.

We analysis TMS influence the new product development, considering the special circumstances of early supplier involvement. From the result of casual loop diagrams can be seen in the diagram is included a total of

eight loops, six-enhancing loops and two balanced loops. The causal loop diagram is depicted the information, order of the directory of information flowing in the TMS and collective mind, and the impact of ESI team also included. Can be seen after the process of expertise recognition, information distribution and retrieval coordination, information and a directory of the order to effectively improve, transactive memory system for the ESI after the formation of collective memory there were two Balance loops. As the ESI team this special background, the project's repetitive relatively low, stored in the memory of the members of the collective memory may be hindered the team cope with the complex and volatile items, thus affecting performance. So team management, the old staff should be trained to maintain the ability to cope the mission changing environment, to avoid division of inertia, and the introduction of new staff, the establishment of the learning organization to enable enterprises to achieve sustainable development.

VI DISCUSSIONS

Just like most studies, our research consideration has its limitation. It is nor consider the ESI negative impact of factors, makes the analysis of the system is not complete, as well as the causal cycle plans not to do quantitative analysis of the data, only the use of qualitative analysis.

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Expertise Recognition Information Allocation Retrieval Coordination

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Fig. 1. Casual loop diagram: Loop1-8