Marketing teams are increasingly using stand-alone, hybrid, or fully embedded temporary organizations to achieve desired outcomes. Temporary marketing organizations have varying team selection and participants’ effort enforcement mechanisms, which may create challenges for achieving targeted results. Here is a playbook to help managers select and oversee these organizations by considering task novelty, time duration, and team composition against their ability to generate creative output at desired decision-making speeds.

1. From:From:
 TMOs don’t have a shared future or a shared past, making it
“the organizational equivalent of a one-night stand” (Meyerson
et al. 1996).
 Examples:
 The stand-alone product development organization created to build the True
Story card game and mobile app
 The hybrid constellation of firms and independent contractors involved with
Boeing’s development of the 737 airplane
 The embedded R&D facility ‘Google x’ dedicated since 2010 to developing
“moonshot” new products with no direct link to Google’s internet search business
Temporary Marketing Organizations (TMOs)
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)

2. From:From:
 They are initiated by the commitment to a certain task and
terminated by its completion—or by reaching a predetermined
time-line.
 They consist of a team of individual agents assembled and
managed by a principal (project manager or top executive),
and who collectively possess the skills and resources required
to carry out the focal task.
Nature of TMOs
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)

3. From:From:
 Can’t use the same incentives to induce contributors’ effort
(e.g., member socialization, long-term rewards) as permanent
organizations.
 Have the potential to deliver innovative solutions while
containing costs.
 They have a mixed track record:
 Uneven performance: e.g., movies can be blockbusters or massive flops
 Frequent evidence of significant cost overruns: e.g., Sydney Opera House
How TMOs are different
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)

4. From:From:
 Without a common past, shared norms fail to develop, making
team selection more challenging.
 The problem lies with the ‘motley crew’ of individual members (Caves 2000)
 Without a planned future, built-in enforcement mechanisms
are absent (no traditional incentives for good performance).
 In essence, a TMO lacks inherent mechanisms for promoting team members’
cooperation
Why is the absence of a past and
future problematic?
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)

5. From:From:
 Selecting & assembling a movie cast:
 Problem: How do you identify a good candidate for playing the autistic lead
character in ‘Rain Man’?
 Solution: Create opportunities for self-selection; e.g., require candidates to read
books on neurobiology, analyse case studies, spend time with autistic individuals
 Enforcing good behavior & performance on set:
 Marlon Brando’s ‘shirking test’: Brando used to test directors by delivering both a
superficial and a profound performance on two takes on day one. Should the
director choose the superficial take, Brando would shirk during the rest of the
production process
Example: Feature film production
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)

6. From:From:
Forms of TMOs
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)
■ Stand-alone: significant selection issues
▫ Managers need to identify skills and knowledge bases for the particular
task, often starting from scratch. Enforcement mechanisms are also
needed to ensure that members, who have weak incentives for
cooperation, use their skills to the fullest.
▫ e.g., radical innovation, one-off product launch
■ Hybrid: parties interacted on prior tasks
▫ Need for limited enforcement mechanisms to drive results
▫ e.g., film production
■ Fully embedded: sits within a permanent organization
▫ High probability of continuing association, centralised promotions and
disciplinary measures limit the need for distinct enforcement procedures
▫ e.g., internal consulting units, new product development teams.

7. From:From:
■ It is best to identify matches between tasks and potential members
before starting. Examples:
▫ The more novel the task, the more likely a stand-alone temporary org will be created.
▫ The more time-limited the task, the more likely a hybrid temporary org will be formed.
■ Use these insights as a ‘playbook’ by using TMOs drivers (task novelty,
time duration, team heterogeneity), and forms (stand alone, hybrid, fully
embedded) as inputs to assist managers in:
▫ Using temporary orgs to best effect in a marketing context; and
▫ Deploying the most appropriate selection and enforcement mechanisms depending on the
form of temporary org
Key insights on TMOs
Hadida, Heide, and Bell (2019)