The effects of virtualness on teamwork behavioral components: The role of shared mental models

Schmidtke, James M.; Cummings, Anne L.

doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2016.12.011

Cited by 40 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…We thus argue that it is not enough to operate well as a team nor is it enough to solely execute tasks well, but rather there needs to be some convergence along all types of shared mental models. While it has been argued that not all types of mental models need to be shared (e.g., Cannon-Bowers et al, 1993;Mohammed et al, 2000Mohammed et al, , 2010Schmidtke & Cummings, 2017), we underline that previous studies have focused on team outcomes and performance; when the focus moves from team outcomes to perceived proximity, our findings show that all four need to be converging.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationscontrasting

confidence: 53%

Shared mental models and perceived proximity: a comparative case study

Zamani

Pouloudi

2021

ITP

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PurposeThe aim of this study is to understand how virtual teams experience perceived proximity. Existing literature suggests that perceived proximity can be achieved through quality communication and increased identification. However, not much is known as to how these two may be achieved within the context of virtual teams.Design/methodology/approachThe authors address their research question through a comparative case study, with the help of two virtual teams of software developers and the authors adopt a subset from the Constructivist Grounded Theory Method procedures for the purposes of coding to understand the potential explanations regarding the two teams' differences in perceptions of perceived proximity.FindingsThe authors’ study shows that shared mental models support quality communication and team members to identify with the shared values of their team. Quality communication is easier achieved when the team shares a dynamic and evolving understanding of the tools for communication and collaboration. The authors also draw attention to the importance of how work is organised and the influence of the temporal dimension on virtual teams beyond the temporal organisation of collaborative work.Originality/valueThe value of this study is found in its contribution towards the development of a formal connection between perceived proximity and shared mental models, that is empirically grounded, and which holds an explanatory value in addressing how perceived proximity can be supported rather than compromised.

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Section: Theoretical Implicationscontrasting

confidence: 53%

Shared mental models and perceived proximity: a comparative case study

Zamani

Pouloudi

2021

ITP

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“…The tendency for individuals to interpret tasks according to their own perspectives is exacerbated when working in a virtual environment, with its more varied individual settings and less opportunity for informal discussion and mutual observation. Schmidtke and Cummings (2017) note specifically the need for more complex shared mental models in teams facing a higher level of virtualness.…”

Section: Model Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional and Visionary Leadership in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

Eseryel

Crowston

Heckman

2020

Group & Organization Management

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In this conceptual article, we present a theory of leadership in self-managing virtual teams. We describe leadership in this setting as a process that results in the creation, reinforcement, and evolution of shared mental models and shared norms that influence team member behavior toward the successful accomplishment of shared goals. We distinguish two types of leadership. We identify leadership that works within and reinforces existing models and norms to influence team contributions as “functional” leadership. We identify leadership that results in changes in models and norms as “visionary” leadership. We propose that successful self-managing virtual teams require both types of leadership and that they will exhibit a paradoxical combination of shared, distributed functional leadership complemented by strong, concentrated, and centralized visionary leadership and that visionary leadership is enabled by functional leadership in the form of substantive team member contributions.

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“…However, no such automatic speech classification technology was available for this study due to the limited resources available, instead this study employs a very simple communication analysis strategy by counting the number of utterances and messages in each performance without trying to analyze their content, combined with the accumulated total time used for speaking. The rationale behind these metrics is that communication is essential to create shared mental models which in turn affects the effectiveness of virtual teams (Maynard and Gilson 2014;Schmidtke and Cummings 2017). An underlying assumption is that all or most communication is directly relevant to the team's performance, i.e., an insignificant amount nonsensical communication.…”

Section: The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards automated assessment of team performance by mimicking expert observers’ ratings

Granåsen

2018

Cogn Tech Work

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Automation is the holy grail of performance assessment. Cheap and reliable automated systems that produce consistent feedback on performance. Many such systems have been proposed that accurately measure the state of a product or the outcome of a process. Procedural faults can be detected and even mitigated without the need for human interference. In production industry and professional sports, this is a natural part of business. However, in macrocognitive team performance studies, human appraisal is still king. This study investigates the reliability of human observers as assessors of performance among virtual teams, and what they base their assessments on when only able to monitor one of the team members at a time. The results show that expert observers put a lot of emphasis on task outcomes and on communication and are generally reliable raters of team performance, but there are several aspects that they cannot rate reliably under these circumstances, e.g., team workload, stress, and collaborative problem-solving. Through simple algorithms, this study shows that by capturing task scores and different quantitative communication metrics, team performance ratings can be estimated to closely match how the expert observers assess team performance in a virtual team setting. The implication of the study is that numeric team performance estimations can be acquired by automated systems, with reasonable accuracy and reliability compared to observer ratings.

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The effects of virtualness on teamwork behavioral components: The role of shared mental models

Cited by 40 publications

References 106 publications

Shared mental models and perceived proximity: a comparative case study

Shared mental models and perceived proximity: a comparative case study

Functional and Visionary Leadership in Self-Managing Virtual Teams

Towards automated assessment of team performance by mimicking expert observers’ ratings

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