TMS Development in Personal Professional Networks

Professionals interact with a range of people (both within and outside of their work organisations) to seek advice while resolving complex work problems. Such interactions can either be prescribed by their work organisations and/or developed through their self-initiatives. Frequent interactions between professionals develop informal (personal) information sharing ties. This paper suggests that informal information sharing through personal networking of professionals develops a form of transactive memory system (TMS) among them. Such TMS helps to coordinate and combine diverse experience and knowledge to solve complex or non-routine problems.