In sort, effective team performance requires members to operate on similar or complementary knowledge bases, but under conditions of perceived threat to the team, groupthink often produces the opposite effect and can drive the team to undesirable behavior.
The amount of research on shared mental models is growing, but we still have much to learn about the process of forming a “team mentality” and how the performance of a team is effected by it. Marks, Zaccaro, and Mathieu (2000) found that shared mental models provided teams with a common framework from which to perceive, interpret, and response to novel environments. However, shared mental models were not as critical to team success in routine environments. Research by Mohammed and Dumville (2001) and Rentsch and Klimoski (2001) has expanded our understanding of the conventional statement “Great minds think alike.”
Decision Making in Teams
Guzzo (1995) asserted that decision making in teams is different from individual decision making. In teams, information is often distributed unequally among members and must be integrated. Choosing among alternatives is made more complicated by having to integrate the often-differing perspective and opinions of team members. The integration process usually includes dealing with uncertainty, with the effects of status differences among members, and with the failure of one member to appreciate the significance of the information he or she holds. Ambiguity, time pressures, heavy workloads, and other factors may become sources of stress that affect the group’s ability to perform its task.
Holleneck, LePine, and Ilgen (1996) described the development of a multilevel theory of team decision making. The theory is called multilevel because effective team decision making is related to characteristics of the individuals who make up the team, pairs of people within the team, and how the team functions as a team. The theory is based on three concepts. The first is the degree to which team members are adequately informed about the issue they are evaluating. Teams can be well informed on some decisions but poorly informed on other. The general level of how well informed the team is on the issues they must address is team informity. Second, teams are composed of individuals who differ in their ability to make accurate decisions. That is, some individuals can make poor decision, while others typically make very accurate decisions. The concept of staff validity is the average of the individual team members abilitiesto make accurate decisions. The final concept is dyadic sensitivity. A team leader must often listen to the differing opinions or recommendations of team members. The relationship between the leader and each team member is a dyad. The leader must be sensitive to weighing each team member’s recommendation in reaching an overall decisions. Thus an effective decision-making team leader knows which member’s opinion should be given more weight than others. The theory has been tested with computer-simulated military command-and-control scenarios in which the team is asked to decide on the level of threat posed by a series of unidentified aircraft. The results revealed that the three concepts of team informity, staff validity and dyadic sensitivity explained more variance in team-level decision-making accuracy than other concepts. The authors concluded that getting accurate information, making accurate recommendations, and ensuring that these recommendations are incorporated into the team’s over all decision are the core requirements for decision making in teams.
Virtual Team
Recent advances in computer technology and electronic communication networks allow for a form of social interaction that was previously unavailable. The boundaryless nature of cyberspace has resulted in a new dimension to our lives—the “virtual” environment. The definition of virtual is “begin in essence or effect, but not in fact. “ A more concise definition is “almost.” One application of the electronic communication technology virtual teams. According to Avoliotetal. (2001), virtual teams have several defining characteristics. First, communication among team members primarily takes place electronically. The electronic communication processes use multiple communication channels, which may include text, graphic, audio, and video communication. As Axtell, Fleck, and Turner (2004) reported, recent advances in electronic-based communication (such as instant messaging system) have further encouraged the use of virtual teams. Second, the team members are usually dispersed geographically. They may be in different cities, nations oreven continents. Itis not unusual for the members of a virtual team to never meet face to face. Third, virtual team members may interact synchronously or asynchronously.