Team Coordination in Escalating Situations: An Empirical Study Using Mid‐Fidelity Simulation

Abstract

Abstract. The performance of teams, with different levels of domain-and crisis management experience, managing unexpected and escalating situations was observed by using a mid-fidelity ship-bridge simulation and analysed by applying the central concepts of joint activity coordination (Klein et al., 2005) as well as Woods' (2002) theory building on data overload. The coordination strategies used by the teams were evaluated by applying coordination process indicators and the concept of control. The paper discusses how different aspects of team coordination in unexpected and escalating situations, e.g. that teams that maintain a high level of control in escalating situations avoid or minimise the effects of data overload by using explicit and agreed-upon goals rather than sharing as much incoming information as possible. The results presented in this paper shows the benefits of applying a broad set of theoretical concepts to illuminate the actual demands that escalating situations pose on people's data processing capacities and processes. It also provides guidance on successful performance of teams in such situations and thus support for development of successful strategies for management of them.

From Crew Resource Management To Operational Resilience

“…communication, coordination), and the organization (e.g. safety culture) (Bergström, Dahlström, Henriqson & Dekker, 2010;Dekker & Lundström, 2007;McManus, Seville, Brunsdon, Vargo, 2007). In this paper an agenda for the development of conceptual fundaments of sharp end team training, and team performance assessment, will be outlined.…”

Collaboration Exercises—The Lack of Collaborative Benefits

“…Bergström et al (2010) have shown that a lack of structure and the absence of routines, in favor of an exaggerated belief in prestigeless collaboration, lead to uncertainty. It was confirmed by interviews that participants in certain exercises became passive because of overambitious, unstructured, and messy exercises (Powley and Nissen 2012).…”

Bridging the Macro and the Micro by Considering the Meso: Reflections on the Fractal Nature of Resilience

“…It is operationalized as the result of different actors' ability to predict the behavior of each other, i.e., interpredictability, their common terminology, values and frameworks, i.e., common ground, their ways to exercise influence on each other, i.e., directability, together with their previous experiences, or assumptions, of working together, i.e., choreography (Klein et al 2004). It has been suggested that the macro cognitive framework is a promising one, and in further studies the language of control has been operationalized to map and follow the performance of a crisis management team, again based on their collective rather than individual performances (Bergström et al 2010, Palmqvist et al 2012). …”

“…Interest in how the ability to adapt to unexpected and escalating situations varies with different levels of experience in both the domain of working and that of crisis management. Studies have been conducted focusing on how teams reached different levels of control based on how they coordinated their actions (Bergström et al 2010, Palmqvist et al 2012. The notion of coordination provides an analytic language locating the target of analysis at the functional level of the system studied.…”