As the pace, scope, and complexity of work in organizations increases, traditional teams are too small and insufficiently specialized to meet the multifaceted demands of contemporary problems. This has resulted in an increased use of multiteam systems in business, government, medical, and military contexts. Scholars in the social and behavioral sciences have noticed the increased use of multiteam systems, and accordingly, research on this topic has expanded rapidly over the last 20 years. However, the growing research base on multiteam systems is imbalanced when it comes to theory building versus theory testing. Only a very small percentage of articles written on this topic describe empirical research that involves large multiteam systems (e.g., three or more teams and twelve or more members). This is problematic because the small amount of existing research conducted with multiteam systems makes it clear that size and specialization matter, and this precludes simple generalizations from teams to multiteam systems when it comes to theory and practice. The small amount of empirical work on this topic can be traced to the difficulties researchers working alone confront when it comes to recruiting a sufficient sample size of multiteam systems that are executing comparable tasks.

Methodologically, we seek to create a multi-university virtual multiteam system infrastructure that would allow team researchers from across the United States to conduct large sample empirical research on multiteam systems. As a first step toward building this national infrastructure, this research, supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense, will support three different university laboratories (Michigan State University, Arizona State University and Pennsylvania State University) that will connect standard teams to compose a set of virtual multiteam systems. In this new paradigm, each research group provides one set of component teams that would work interdependently with other component teams provided by other research groups. Theoretically,we derive and test several propositions regarding the interaction of task interdependence, communication medium, and team member diversity on outcomes in the context of multiteam systems. Although the critical role of task interdependence was central in the founding article that introduced the concept 20 years ago, task interdependence has not been manipulated in the empirical literature that followed this article.