Financial performance of fluid teams with undifferentiated member roles: the impact of vertical and horizontal team familiarity

Purpose This paper aims to examine how team familiarity, as a social resource accumulated through vertical and horizontal exchanges, in teams with undifferentiated member roles may satisfy the functional needs of a fluid team by facilitating operational effectiveness and contributing to its financial performance. Design/methodology/approach To analyze how vertical and horizontal team familiarity impacts team financial job performance, this paper collected three years of archival data from a moving services firm yielding a final sample of 306 moving jobs. This paper used a cross-sectional design and structural equation modeling to test the impact of vertical and horizontal familiarity on team financial job performance. Findings This paper found empirical evidence that vertical team familiarity affects horizontal team familiarity among teams with undifferentiated member roles. In addition, the analysis shows that horizontal team familiarity positively impacts financial team job performance. Finally, the results indicate that team leaders are capable of indirectly impacting financial job performance through their discretion to influence horizontal familiarity. Originality/value This study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of team familiarity in the organizational practices of organizing and assembling fluid teams with undifferentiated member roles. In particular, organizations relying on these types of fluid teams need to appoint the right leaders that, familiar to team members, allocate the right mix of member familiarity to increase team coordination and team performance.