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Show 211 THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Transactive memory systems are systems in which groups collectively collaborate to encode, store and retrieve information and knowledge. We found that importance coincides with expertise. The current research provides insight into the transactive memory systems (TMS) paradigm by examining how the importance of what is being remembered affects the pro-cesses and outcomes of groups and how this interacts with member expertise. We show that the process used by groups is affected dynamically by the interaction between importance and expertise such that when experts are available to handle important items, fewer group members share the burden of remembering these items whereas when an expert is not avail-able the group distributes the work of remembering the important items across more mem-bers, leading to poorer overall outcomes. Specifically, the more valuable information is, the better groups possessing an expert with the critical knowledge perform, even ignoring the differential value of these items. However groups without a critical expert perform worse as the differential value increases. Subjects also perform better if there efforts can lead to a level of performance that results in a reward that they value. For our research we gathered participants for sessions in groups as large as 16 and were randomly assigned to 4 person groups. These groups were given to experimental conditions. Among a few other things they were given a 2-part quiz to assess their understanding of the task given. One portion of the quiz was a short answer regarding the group's strategy. Once the experiment was concluded we analyzing these short answers and coding them to the ap-propriate categories. There were four different categories such as only expertise, only bonus, neither, and both expertise and bonus. From these answers, the most successful groups were the ones in which every group member was assigned to their expertise and a portion of the bonus. CRITICAL EXPERTS: THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENTIAL KNOWLEDGE IMPORTANCE IN TRANSACTIVE MEMORY SYSTEMS Ceslie Garza (Bryan Bonner) Department of Management University of Utah health sciences leap program Ceslie Garza Bryan Bonner |