Integrating information and making effective decisions in teams

Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research

This paper proposes that team reflexivitya deliberate process of discussing team goals, processes, or outcomescan function as an antidote to team-level biases and errors in decision making. We built on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems and highlights reflexivity as a critical information processing activity. Prior research has identified consequential information-processing failures that occur in small groups, such as the failure to discuss privately held relevant information, biased processing of information, and failure to update conclusions when situations change. We propose that team reflexivity reduces the occurrence of information-processing failures by ensuring that teams discuss and assess the implications of team information for team goals, processes and outcomes. In this paper, we present a model of information-processing failures (TIPs) and of remedies involving team reflexivity. Next, we discuss the conditions under which team reflexivity is and is not likely to facilitate performance. In doing so, we integrate literature regarding team regulatory processes, emergent cognitive states, and team learning.

Journal of Applied Psychology, 2003

This article tests the degree to which personal and situational variables impact the acquisition of knowledge and skill within interactive project teams. On the basis of the literature regarding attentional capacity, constructive controversy, and truth-supported wins, the authors examined the effects of cognitive ability, workload distribution, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and structure on team learning. Results from 109 four-person project teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator indicated that teams learned more when composed of individuals who were high in cognitive ability and when the workload was distributed evenly. Conversely, team learning was negatively affected when teams were composed of individuals who were high in Agreeableness. Finally, teams using a paired structure learned more than teams structured either functionally or divisionally. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research.

Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2009

Decision-making groups often exchange and integrate distributed information to a lesser extent than is desirable for high-quality decisions. One important reason for this lies in group members' understanding of the decision task-their task representationsspecifically the extent to which they understand the importance of exchange and integration of information. The authors hypothesized that a group's development of a (shared) understanding of the information elaboration requirements of their task is influenced by collective reflection on the task. When not all group members initially realize the importance of information elaboration, team reflexivity increases the degree to which the group understands the importance of information elaboration. In an experiment, the authors showed that team reflection fostered the development of task representations emphasizing information elaboration and subsequent information elaboration and decision quality. When all members initially already held representations emphasizing information elaboration, team reflection promoted elaboration and performance to a lesser degree.

This research was conducted to understand whether complex information processing affects team performance. Specifically, information monitoring complexity was analyzed. The study used both subjective and objective measures. The subjective measures assess team effects in terms of team situation awareness (SA) and team informity (information sharing). The objective measures were signal sensitivity (d'), time and accuracy, and detection time-were used to analyze effects of task performance on the signal detection. There was no difference between the teams used in the study with respect to how they reported seeing the same thing (team SA) and team informity. For the team with 3 members, the distributions of the mean percentages of team SA tend to follow exponentially decreasing function (negative slopes) as the number of signal presented increases. The team with 5 members reported more team SA. It is not clear from these results whether teams with more members tend to identify more signals than teams with less number of members. It is possible that signal complexity and signal timing control may interact to affect signal monitoring performance-which in turn affects the way people report what they see under stress. The mean detection accuracy was more pronounced at signal timing control of 10-15 sec. Generally, the results show that signal complexity and signal timing control have effect on the dependent measures. The teams did not show any indication of differences in siMmal detection time-15. SUBJECT TERMS Collaborative team decision; Complex information processing; Detection sensitivity; Situation Awareness; Team informity 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17. LIMITATION 18. NUMBER 19a. NAME OF ABSTRACT OF PAGES OF a.

As part of an Engineer as Leader course, students learn to dynamically take leadership in problem solving teams when their unique skills, abilities, or knowledge can contribute to the shared objectives. Part of this development makes use of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ® Step II. This assessment provides scores on 40 facets of the eight Myers-Briggs Types. An objective of the course is to help students develop a richer vocabulary for thinking about themselves and others. An individual's clearest facets are used in the course by each student as part of their weekly reflections on assigned readings. A visual display of the team's integrated vocabulary is used as a guide in team decision making. A standard transition from Sensing to iNtuitive to Thinking to Feeling then back to Sensing is used as students learn to transition between decision making stages and individual team members' facets. The paper will present the process through which each student's vocabulary is developed and reinforced and the tools that support transitions and compensate for missing facets in the team decision process are described.

2018

This paper purposes to develop a system approach to team decision making by clarifying the concept of different team based decision-making approaches. This research is a qualitative study considered over different published research paper and books relating to type of team concepts, organizational changes, and information systems. Purposive sampling technique has been used with a focus on the narrative data, to produce the result of this study, all drew from secondary sources. The findings of this research presented the major verdicts of researchers and practitioners on the need that the 'information' required for different decision making in the organization must to 'make the best' for expected outcome from team process. In specific, this research is a pedestal for theorizing the conceptual framework for optimally fronting the new opportunities and challenges regarding changes with the use of team process. The value of this research is a conceptual framework for teaming up the human and the information systems components intended to bring efficiency over decisions in organizations. Decision making is more systematically presented to retreat from the traditional approach to team decision making. The proposed approach was contrasted to different team concepts and developed as a systematic decision-making approach named as Decision Stomach. The approach is expected to reduce the team process loss and thereby help enhancing the team performance.

2012

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed.

2016

Project performance is contingent upon the continuous ability of key decision-makers to collaborate effectively when solving emerging complex problems. In settings of large and complex projects, the ability to make sound decisions collectively across multiple tasks and phases increases in importance. Experimental studies have pointed to the existence of collective intelligence, i.e. the ability of groups to perform well across a variety of tasks. Nevertheless, we are not close to a process theory that clarifies why and how some groups are more 'intelligent' than are others, i.e. why and how they are better at solving a variety of complex problems. In order to answer these questions, we conduct an exploratory study of the drivers and manifestations of collective intelligence among a group of key decision makers in a large and dynamically complex project. The study reveals how these decision makers in general demonstrate a collective ability to solve a wide range of emerging problems in this project. This problem solving ability is characterized by very short and direct (face to face) lines of communication, the combination of divergent and convergent modes of thought, and small subgroups that are formed spontaneously dependent on the problem at hand and the expertise required to solve it.

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2000

Teams are increasingly asked to solve complex and novel problems. From a broad range of domains such as the military, healthcare, and industry, difficult problems requiring the adaptation of a diverse set of expertise to one-of-a-kind situations are becoming more commonplace. These types of performance contexts require collaborative problem solving; however, the bulk of research on teamwork has dealt with behavioral coordination in routine tasks. This leaves a gap in the theory available for guiding design and training interventions to support collaborative problem solving, or knowledge-work, in teams. This paper addresses this gap by 1) providing a review of relevant theoretical issues, specifically the team cognition and externalized cognition literature, 2) advancing a theoretical framework and propositions rooted in this literature that relate the role of group process and external representations of problem spaces on problem solving outcomes, and 3) discussing future directions for testing, applying, and refining this model.