Major theories of team effectiveness position emergent collective cognitive processes as central drivers of team performance. We meta-analytically cumulated 231 correlations culled from 65 independent studies of team cognition and its relations to teamwork processes, motivational states, and performance outcomes. We examined both broad relationships among cognition, behavior, motivation, and performance, as well as 3 underpinnings of team cognition as potential moderators of these relationships. Findings reveal there is indeed a cognitive foundation to teamwork; team cognition has strong positive relationships to team behavioral process, motivational states, and team performance. Meta-analytic regressions further indicate that team cognition explains significant incremental variance in team performance after the effects of behavioral and motivational dynamics have been controlled. The nature of emergence, form of cognition, and content of cognition moderate relationships among cognition, process, and performance, as do task interdependence and team type. Taken together, these findings not only cumulate extant research on team cognition but also provide a new interpretation of the impact of underlying dimensions of cognition as a way to frame and extend future research. Keywords: team cognition, mental model, transactive memory, shared cognition, meta-analysisWinning is about having the whole team on the same page.-Bill WaltonIf everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.-George PattonThe reality for many organizations today is that work has become complex enough to require the use of teams at all hierarchical levels. Organizational success hinges upon the ability of teams to collaborate effectively and work efficiently toward solving complex problems. Therefore, understanding how information is collectively processed has become critical (Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997). As the opening quotes illustrate, there are commonly held beliefs that effective teamwork requires members to hold similar cognitive structures, and also those suggesting distinctive knowledge configurations are key. Consistent with these commonsense views of cognition, researchers have invoked constructs such as shared mental models (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse, 1993) and transactive memory systems (Moreland, Argote, & Krishnan, 1996) to examine the role of emergent collective cognition in team functioning. Since the early 1990s, investigators have attempted to uncover the importance of collective cognition using a variety of conceptualizations, empirical methods, and research strategies. Despite this substantial progress, the substantive and methodological differences across studies present a challenge for discerning a clear pattern of relationships in a way that enables research in this area to move forward (CannonBowers & Salas, 2001).In the current study, we used meta-analysis to empirically organize prior work on the basis of underlying dimensions of cognition, team features, and study characteristics. In doing so, we h...

Information sharing is a central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources. The authors used meta-analysis to synthesize extant research on team information sharing. Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups ϭ 4,795; total N ϭ 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration. Although moderators were identified, information sharing positively predicted team performance across all levels of moderators. The information sharing-team performance relationship was moderated by the representation of information sharing (as uniqueness or openness), performance criteria, task type, and discussion structure by uniqueness (a 3-way interaction). Three factors affecting team information processing were found to enhance team information sharing: task demonstrability, discussion structure, and cooperation. Three factors representing decreasing degrees of member redundancy were found to detract from team information sharing: information distribution, informational interdependence, and member heterogeneity.Keywords: group, information sharing, information sampling bias, hidden profile, information processing Organizations are increasingly assigning complex decisionmaking tasks to teams rather than to lone individuals. Personnel selection decisions usually require input from a selection committee rather than a single hiring manager; homicide investigations are typically conducted by a group of detectives rather than by a single officer; the assignment of guilt or innocence to an accused criminal is the responsibility of a jury rather than a judge. A primary advantage of using small groups and teams in these situations is to expand the pool of available information, thereby enabling groups to reach higher quality solutions than could be reached by any one individual. Still, superior solutions to complex decision tasks require members to effectively integrate unique, relevant, and often diverse informational sets.Despite the intuitive importance of effective information sharing (IS) for team decision-making (e.g., Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002;Jehn & Shah, 1997), past research has shown teams often deviate from the optimal utilization of information when making decisions; discussion often serves to strengthen individual prediscussion preferences rather than as a venue to share new information (i.e., biased information sampling model; Stasser & Titus, 1985).These results raise a number of questions of significant importance to the research and practice of teams. We used meta-analysis to cumulate empirical findings culled from studies examining various task domains and discussion structures as well as different aspects of IS and performance criteria to address the following questions: First, to what extent does IS impact team performance? Second, what role do moderators play in this relationship (i.e., definition of IS, operationalization of performance criteria, discussion...

Teams are formed to benefit from an expanded pool of expertise and experience, yet 2 aspects of the conflict stemming from those core differences will ultimately play a large role in determining team viability and productivity: conflict states and conflict processes. The current study theoretically reorganizes the literature on team conflict--distinguishing conflict states from conflict processes--and details the effects of each on team effectiveness. Findings from a meta-analytic cumulation of 45 independent studies (total number of teams = 3,218) suggest states and processes are distinct and important predictors of team performance and affective outcomes. Controlling for conflict states (i.e., task and relationship conflict), conflict processes explain an additional 13% of the variance in both team performance and team affective outcomes. Furthermore, findings reveal particular conflict processes that are beneficial and others detrimental to teams. The truth about team conflict: conflict processes, that is, how teams interact regarding their differences, are at least as important as conflict states, that is, the source and intensity of their perceived incompatibilities.

The authors examined how networks of teams integrate their efforts to succeed collectively. They proposed that integration processes used to align efforts among multiple teams are important predictors of multiteam performance. The authors used a multiteam system (MTS) simulation to assess how both cross-team and within-team processes relate to MTS performance over multiple performance episodes that differed in terms of required interdependence levels. They found that cross-team processes predicted MTS performance beyond that accounted for by within-team processes. Further, cross-team processes were more important for MTS effectiveness when there were high cross-team interdependence demands as compared with situations in which teams could work more independently. Results are discussed in terms of extending theory and applications from teams to multiteam systems.

Information sharing is a central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources. The authors used meta-analysis to synthesize extant research on team information sharing. Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups ϭ 4,795; total N ϭ 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration. Although moderators were identified, information sharing positively predicted team performance across all levels of moderators. The information sharing-team performance relationship was moderated by the representation of information sharing (as uniqueness or openness), performance criteria, task type, and discussion structure by uniqueness (a 3-way interaction). Three factors affecting team information processing were found to enhance team information sharing: task demonstrability, discussion structure, and cooperation. Three factors representing decreasing degrees of member redundancy were found to detract from team information sharing: information distribution, informational interdependence, and member heterogeneity.Keywords: group, information sharing, information sampling bias, hidden profile, information processing Organizations are increasingly assigning complex decisionmaking tasks to teams rather than to lone individuals. Personnel selection decisions usually require input from a selection committee rather than a single hiring manager; homicide investigations are typically conducted by a group of detectives rather than by a single officer; the assignment of guilt or innocence to an accused criminal is the responsibility of a jury rather than a judge. A primary advantage of using small groups and teams in these situations is to expand the pool of available information, thereby enabling groups to reach higher quality solutions than could be reached by any one individual. Still, superior solutions to complex decision tasks require members to effectively integrate unique, relevant, and often diverse informational sets.Despite the intuitive importance of effective information sharing (IS) for team decision-making (e.g., Bunderson & Sutcliffe, 2002;Jehn & Shah, 1997), past research has shown teams often deviate from the optimal utilization of information when making decisions; discussion often serves to strengthen individual prediscussion preferences rather than as a venue to share new information (i.e., biased information sampling model; Stasser & Titus, 1985).These results raise a number of questions of significant importance to the research and practice of teams. We used meta-analysis to cumulate empirical findings culled from studies examining various task domains and discussion structures as well as different aspects of IS and performance criteria to address the following questions: First, to what extent does IS impact team performance? Second, what role do moderators play in this relationship (i.e., definition of IS, operationalization of performance criteria, discussion...