Geographically dispersed teams whose members do not allocate all of their time to a single team increasingly
carry out knowledge-intensive work in multinational organizations. Taking an attention-based view of team design,
we investigate the antecedents and consequences of member time allocation in a multi-level study of 2055
members of 285 teams in a large global corporation, using member survey data and independent executive ratings
of team performance. We focus on two distinct dimensions of time allocation: the proportion of members’ time
that is allocated to the focal team and the number of other teams to which the members allocate time concurrently.
At the individual level, we find that time allocation is influenced by members’ levels of experience, rank, education,
and leader role on the team, as predicted. At the team level, performance is higher for teams whose members
allocate a greater proportion of their time to the focal team, but surprisingly, performance is also higher for teams
whose members allocate time to a greater number of other teams concurrently. Furthermore, the effects of member
time allocation on team performance are contingent on geographic dispersion: the advantages of allocating
more time to the focal team are greater for more dispersed teams, whereas the advantages of allocating time to
more other teams are greater for less dispersed teams. We discuss the implications for future research on new
forms of teams as well as managerial practice, including how to manage geographically dispersed teams with
the effects of member time allocation in mind. Copyright