Representing one type of team cognition, team mental models (TMMs) are organized mental representations of the key elements within a team’s relevant environment that are shared across team members. Although introduced amid considerable confusion concerning their nature and potential usefulness, there has been a proliferation of published studies over the past decade that have directly measured TMMs using a variety of methodologies and research designs. Capturing these exciting research developments, the purpose of this review was to inventory what has been accomplished thus far and to offer an agenda for the next wave of research. Specifically, we overview the conceptual underpinnings of TMMs, discuss measurement issues, and review the empirical record related to the outcomes, antecedents, and longitudinal work on TMMs. We conclude by highlighting fruitful opportunities for further research.
The authors report the collaborative efforts of 2 research teams that independently investigated the effects of stable personality traits (the Big Five) and specific behavioral competencies (cultural flexibility, task and people orientations, and ethnocentrism) on key dimensions of expatriate effectiveness: psychological adjustment, assignment withdrawal cognitions, and job performance. Analyses of multiple-source and longitudinal data from 3 studies, including a diverse sample of expatriates in Hong Kong and separate samples of Korean and Japanese expatriates posted around the world, indicate several direct effects of individual differences. Further data show reliable distinctions between the traits and competencies as well as incremental prediction by either set of predictors in the presence of the others.
This study examined higher order perception, cognition, and individual-cultural differences as a basis for the rapid use of knowledge in complex problems requiring distributed team members. Previous research suggests that when complex problem-solving teams acquire perceptually anchored knowledge and engage in perceptual contrasts and comparisons, team members may spontaneously access knowledge given similarly situated problems. Our premise is that perceptual anchors may provide the basis for formulating shared mental models, which can be used to assess situations and resolve differences in individual, unique knowledge. However, distributed cognition settings may diminish the development of these models despite the advantages of perceptual anchors. Because distributed cognition often incurs through shared information spaces, this study utilized chatrooms to enact a distributed environment. Initial analyses partially support previous research (McNeese, 2000) that has examined the role of cognitive processes in facilitating knowledge acquisition and transfer. Individual problem solvers show positive transfer but distributed team members do not. Gender and ethnicity may also impact acquisition and transfer results. Results suggest the need for intelligent interfaces/collaborative technologies to improve effectiveness and efficiency in appropriating perceptual differentiation in distributed cognition.
This study continues research from McNeese (2000) and was designed to examine the effects of hidden knowledge profiles on perceptually anchored team cognition and knowledge transfer in distributed teams. Previous work showed that individuals in perceptually anchored distributed teams were able to quickly access applicable knowledge, then transfer that knowledge to answer similarly situated problems. Perceptual anchors provide the basis for formulating team mental models, which can be used to assess situations and resolve differences in individual, unique knowledge. In the present experiment, it was again hypothesized that individuals working in perceptually anchored distributed teams would be better able to transfer knowledge, than teams without anchors. It was also hypothesized that perceptually anchored distributed teams would be better able to share uniquely held information, make better decisions, identify information discrepancies, and overcome the presence of hidden knowledge profiles better than non-perceptually anchored teams. Preliminary findings are discussed.
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