Dynamic Team Composition: A Theoretical Framework Exploring Potential and Kinetic Dynamism in Team Capabilities

Organizations are increasingly called upon to solve complex problems in changing conditions that require the combined knowledge, skills, perspectives, and efforts of multiple individuals. These dynamic situationsoften require dynamic team composition. Dynamic team composition is sometimes thought of assynonymous to changes in membership, however, we contend that it also can occur through other meansincluding team member development, the alignment between team member capabilities and the team’stasks, and changes in the accessibility to team member capabilities. Given the lack of overarching theories toorganize and provide guidance on research and practice related to dynamic team composition, we take aninterdisciplinary approach and leverage the fundamental concepts of potential and kinetic energy as aguiding framework to integrate the disparate literatures on dynamic team composition. We bring dynamicteam composition to the forefront and delineate four types of dynamic team composition through staffing,development, situational relevance of member knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and access tomember KSAs through relational resources. Next, we provide tangible recommendations for the design,measurement, and analysis of dynamic team composition.