Teaming Metrics
Teams, Their Training and Performance 1992 (Swezey and Salas 1992)
· Toward an Understanding of Team Performance and Training (Salas, Dickinson et al. 1992)
o Definition of a team: a distinguishable set of two or more people who interact dynamically, interdependently, and adaptively toward a common and valued goal/object/mission, who have each been assigned specific roles or functions to perform, and who have a limited life span of membership.
o The different team models
§ Normative model (Hackman 83): takes a process-level look, and criticizes the descriptive approach for its “piecemeal” focus on a few variables and its failure to consider contextual variables. Also, the descriptive approach places too much emphasis on the theoretically idealized level of performance and the “process loss” leading to the actual performance. Lack of analysis of interaction between variables.
§ Time and Transition model (Gersick 85, 88): study of the dynamics of the transformation of the team from the first meeting to the task completion: most teams analyzed had an initial phase and a strategy correction phase afterward.
§ Task Group Effectiveness Model (Gladstein 84): good performance is a factor of group processes (open communications, discussion of strategy, weighing individual inputs) moderated by the group task demands. Last factors are task complexitym environmental uncertainty, the level of team interdependence necessary to complete the task at hand, group composition and structure, available resources and organizational structure.
§ Team Evolution and Maturation Model (TEAM, Morgan ’86): Combine Gersick with constructs from Tuckman (65) in order to be able to predict the stages a team will have to go through before, during, and after the performance task.
§ Team Performance Model (Nieva, Fleishman and Reick 78): team performance is viewd as a set of responses separate from the task itself, the latter being considered as an external set of stimuli. Team performance has 2 components: task behavior by individuals, and task functions at a team level. Individual performance OR team member interaction may dominate the performance.
§ Task Oriented Model (Dickinson 69, Shiflett 82): these models emphasize that team performance is a function of the subtasks that members must perform effectively for the accomplishment of team goal. The team performance must be analyzed as the interrelation between task structure, work structure and communication structure. The communication structure consists of a pattern of interaction between the team members that develop as a function of task organization, complexity and work structure.
§ Summary and overview:
· The Weakest Link: The Performance of Individual Team Members (Penner and Craiger 1992)
o What are the factors (psychological variables) affecting the performance of an individual team member?
o Historical perspective:
§ Social Facilitation: Triplett 1897, bicycle racing study showed that riders in pack went faster: an external observer improve an individual’s performance
§ Social Impairment: Ringelmann 1913, amount of force exerted on rope pulling task: people exert less force when in a team => process loss: cost of coordination
§ Facilitation and Impairment, Performance and Motivation: facilitation and impairment are 2 different phenonema in 2 different contexts: coaction vs. interaction. But more than that, one phenomena affected the performance, while the other affected the motivation to perform the task
o Individual performance vs. motivation
§ Factors that affect individual performance: social facilitation: may lead to better or worse performance through arousal, evaluation, distraction and conflict, self attention, and social impact
§ Motivation to perform: norms, social loafing (free riding), evaluation, self-attention, de-individualization
§ A lot of factors influence both motivation and performance.
· Can you study real teams in contrived settings? The value of small group research to understanding teams (Driskell and Salas 1992)
o Small group research has had a lot of criticism, with results sterile, artificial, and not generalizable
o Response: (1) people conduct research for different reaons, (2) small research group is lab work for testing theories (3) criticisms do not apply when the purpose of the experiments is to test theory
o Small group research
§ Artificial? We observe real behaviors, and then the data is either used to (a) predict real world behavior, (b) test hypotheses about the real world (c) apply hypotheses to the real world.
o Generalizability: external validity, notion of sampling
o The abstract nature of theory: a theory must be abstract, and not based on specific cases
o Making sense of common sense: “so what?”: common sense about research issues are often wrong.
· Cognitive Complexity and Team Decision Making (Streufert and Nogami 1992)
o Why teams? Hope that the team will be better equipped to handle difficult tasks than any one individual would be. -> use of the complexity theory to the analysis, prediction and training of team decision making
o Models of team decision making: would be nice to have a simple mathematical model that can predict how teams will make decisions
o Focus on cognitive structure: the effects of complexity
§ Cognitive structure is concerned with how information is processed, content refers to what decision makers think.
o Why team decision making? Can a team be replaced by an individual with an optimal computer?
§ Computer aided decision making
· Modeling individual decision making: involves a great deal of variance
· Computers (used to) not be able to follow something other than the rational of dialectic choice
· Modeling group or team decision making
· Computer assisted decision making
§ Team or individual?
· When are teams better than individual users? Team decision are usually better than that of individuals, but worse than that of the best member of the team (Tintale & Davis ‘83)
o Complexity Theory
§ Explanatory and predictive views of individual or team behavior tend to assume orderliness of the underlying scientific logic in the relationships among elements, in flux across time and in rationality of human functioning
§ We already know (Kahnenman & Tversky 74) that DM do not follow the probs, and that (Simon 53) some people are satisficers as opposed to optimizers: ppl don’t behave the way they should!
§ Number of distinct group-based behaviors that cannot be measures in individuals (for example groupthink (Janis 72,83), choice shift and group polarization (Burnstein & Schul 83))
§ Differentiation and Integration: differentiation is dividing the conceptual space of the team into multiple subsets, integration is preceded by differentiation, and can be either flexible or hierarchical
o Application of complexity variables to team decision making
§ Application of integration and differentiation, must distinguish what the team is doing from how it is doing it.
o Training for structural effectiveness
§ Communication among team members
§ Information and team functioning: optimality depends on what the team needs to accomplish: from a simple button pushing to a multidimensional information integration
§ Decision making: allocation of strategy toward goals
· Team Decision Making and Performance: A review and Proposed Modeling Approach Employing Petri Nets (Coovert and McNelis 1992)
o 2 philosophical perspectives: (1) team decision making should be unstructured (2) better team decision making will result from orderly and systematic strategies of decision making
o Unstructured process
§ Interacting groups: if no established process: voting works, but the processes between interacting groups are usually inhibitive (group think)
§ Consensus approach: a solution that everyone can live with
o Applications of consensus decision making approaches: case studies of assessment centers and quality circles
o Structured format: nominal group technique, Delphi technique, functional perspective and designing decision making groups.
o Overview of Petri nets
o Applications of Petri net modeling to teams
§ Levis: Petri nets to study the organizational structure of decision making. Each individual is considered a 2-stage model consisting of situation assessment and response selection. Constraints placed on the net model follow the performance of an individual decision maker with bounded rationality
§ Coovert approach: use of Petri nets in a sequential manner to answer questions about team performance
References:
Annett, J. and N. Stanton (2000). "Team Work--a problem for ergonomics?" Ergonomics 43(8): 1045-1052.
Coovert, M. D. and K. McNelis (1992). Team Decision Making and Performance: A Review and Proposed Modeling Approach Employing Petri-Nets. Teams : their training and performance. R. W. Swezey and E. Salas. Norwood, N.J., Ablex Pub. Corp.: 247-280.
Driskell, J. E. and E. Salas (1992). Can you study real teams in contrived settings? The value of small group research to understanding teams. Teams: Their Training and Performance. R. W. Swezey and E. Salas. Norwood, NJ, Ablex: 101-124.
Jones, P. E. and P. H. M. P. Roelofsma (2000). "The potential for social contextual and group biases in team decision making: biases, conditions and psychological mechanisms." Ergonomics 43(8): 1129-1152.
Paris, C. R., E. Salas, et al. (2000). "Teamwork in multi-person systems: a review and analysis." Ergonomics 43(8): 1052-1075.
Penner, L. A. and P. J. Craiger (1992). The Weakest Link: The Performance of Individual Team Members Teams: their Training and Performance. R. W. Swezey and E. Salas. Norwood NJ, Ablex: 57-73.
Salas, E., T. L. Dickinson, et al. (1992). Toward an Understanding of Team Performance and Training. Teams: Their Training and Performance. R. W. Swezey and E. Salas. Norwood, NJ, Albex: 3-29.
Stanton, N. A. and M. J. Ashleigh (2000). "A field study of team working in a new human supervisory control system." Ergonomics 43(8): 1190-1209.
Streufert, S. and G. Nogami (1992). Cognitive Complexity and Team Decision Making. Teams: Their Training and Performance. R. W. Swezey and E. Salas. Norwood, NJ, Ablex: 127-151.
Swezey, R. W. and E. Salas (1992). Teams : their training and performance. Norwood, N.J., Ablex Pub. Corp.