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Communication and Trust in Virtual and Face-to-Face Teams
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Virtual teams (VTs) accomplish shared goals by relying on technology-mediated communication to counteract geographic disparities. Rapid advances in technology have led to the near-ubiquity of VTs within modern organizations, but gaps in existing research designs afflict extant empirical VT research. This experiment evaluates the constructs of trust, communication, and effectiveness in VTs. Two-hundred six participants (103 teams) completed an interdependent task either face-to-face, mediated by a videoconferencing telepresence robot, or mediated by a voice call. I collected measures of cognitive trust, trust propensity, communication quality, and team effectiveness, and conducted in-depth communication analyses. Results suggest that while virtual teamwork does not result in effectiveness decrements, it does result in team trust decrements, but video teams demonstrated smaller trust decrements than voice-only teams. The expansive communication analyses utilized in the study produced inconclusive findings. Given the large sample size used and the breadth of constructs assessed, this experiment sets a milestone in empirical virtual teamwork research for future work to build upon.
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... The results from this study did not support this hypothesis. Other work (Baker, 2018) predictive and all variables except communication were significant. Therefore, procedure and modality type acted as suppressor variables; once they were added to the model, the contribution of shared leadership was evident. ...
... Other researchers have demonstrated the utility of sharing leadership to increase team performance in settings such as aircraft crews (Bienefeld & Grote, 2011), firefighting teams (Baran & Scott, 2010), and anesthesia teams Künzle et al., 2010). The frequency rate of communication did not significantly add to the model; this may be explained by the rationale that was provided for hypothesis 5 that the usage of certain communication behaviors like closedloop communication may actually lead to longer task times due to the time required (Baker, 2018 ...
The practice of delivering surgical care has evolved to be less invasive to the patients undergoing surgery. Minimally-invasive surgery can be practiced through traditional laparoscopic methods as well as with robotic technology that displaces the surgeon from the operating table. Robotic surgery has been cited to be safer and more effective than traditional laparoscopic surgery; however, little research has endeavored to investigate the role of surgical modality upon aspects of teamwork. This dissertation contributes to the human factors and teamwork literature by evaluating how surgical modality may influence communication, shared leadership, and team outcomes. Multiple methods were employed to study robotic and non-robotic (i.e., open and laparoscopic) surgical teams. Teams were evaluated through video analysis of surgical procedures as well as questionnaire methods. The results of this research revealed very few modality-specific differences which may represent the adaptive nature of teams and individuals. Robotic surgical team members did not perceive a statistically significant difference in communication quality which may indicate that the impact of the closed console design may be relatively benign in this regard. While there were no statistically significant differences between the degree to which robotic and non-robotic teams shared or perceived shared leadership, there were interesting role and leadership behavior type differences. For instance, the assists conducted significantly more leadership in robotic surgery than in laparoscopic surgery. In the video data, sharing leadership to a greater extent led to shorter operative durations. In the survey data, higher perceptions of communication quality and communication behavior significantly predicted higher perceptions of team effectiveness, indicating a strong positive relationship between perceived communication and perceived effectiveness. As robotic surgical systems and practices continue to inevitably advance in the coming years, developers should be keenly aware of the interdependencies between all aspects of the sociotechnical system including the providers and recipients of care, the environment and organization, and the tools and technologies.
Keywords: teamwork, communication, leadership, shared leadership, team performance, team effectiveness, minimally-invasive surgery, robotic surgery
... Further, the more complex and incomplete the knowledge that is being transacted, the more important is face-to-face transactions and "local buzz" (Storper and Venables 2004). It is possible that virtual reality in the future will provide increased sense of presence of those at other locations and thereby become similar to real face-to-face experiences, but so far, experiments show that face-to-face interactions result in higher trust (Baker 2018). The mechanisms by which knowledge is exchanged or trust built are all part of social capital research. ...
Research Question (RQ): What challenges did students recognize in the sudden transition to elearning due to the outbreak of COVID-19? Which suggestions facilitated in the improvement of
implementing e-learning and to what extent did the students think that following their
recommendations contributed to better e-learning?
Purpose: With the research, we wanted to determine what challenges students at higher vocational
schools perceived during the e-learning process. Due to the sudden appearance of COVID-19, the
educational approach swiftly changed, and both teachers and students were faced with many
challenges.
Method: Content analysis was used on domestic and international research studies. The literature
was reviewed and analyzed using keywords. For the empirical research, we collected data by
surveying students from the southeastern part of Slovenia in seven different short cycle higher
education programs. The questionnaire was designed based on self-evaluation reports and
previously analyzed professional literature dealing with this area.
Results: Results are depicted based on the challenges that students faced in the sudden onset of elearning due to the pandemic. By following recommendations provided by students, teachers were
able to improve their e-learning approach, in which everyone was involved, and thus facilitated the
learning process.
Organization: The results of the research enable schools to implement the identified challenges that
students perceived during the educational process to improve e-learning. The research findings
portray a possible answer on what needs to be improved in e-learning and how to adapt approaches
in a way that is tailored to the student.
Society: Recognizing students’ e-learning challenges is the foundation for improving the entire elearning process, which contributes to better achievement of educational goals and greater
contribution of knowledge to society.
Originality: Several studies on e-learning have already been conducted, but we have not found any
that address the challenges posed by short cycle higher education students in the face of the
immediate and unexpected introduction of e-learning due to the global health situation.
Limitations/Future Research: We have limited ourselves to research that has already been
conducted in this area. The resulting questionnaire was created as a pilot survey on a larger sample
to determine reliability and to obtain a starting point for implementing improvements in practice and
the possibility of further testing on an even larger number of students. The research also offers a
starting point for the preparation of a questionnaire intended for higher education teachers who
already have conducted e-learning.
This study examined the effects of team gender composition on combat identification ability. We investigated the relationship between gender composition and team success in decision making during combat identification scenarios. Participants were shown images and videos of various armored vehicles in both daytime and nighttime environments in order to elicit team decisions on how to identify each vehicle. Measures were taken to determine an individual’s potential role in the team and success of identification when presented with tanks at different angles. Results showed that male-male teams scored significantly higher on combat identification than male-female teams, and males outperformed females on spatial visualization. In addition, spatial visualization ability was a strong predictor of combat identification success. These findings lay a foundation for optimizing team performance in combat identification tasks when teams with different genders are utilized, and this study further supports future research into mixed-gender teams in combat roles.
The choice associated with words is a fundamental property of natural languages. It lies at the heart of quantitative linguistics, computational linguistics and language sciences more generally. Information theory gives us tools at hand to measure precisely the average amount of choice associated with words: the word entropy. Here, we use three parallel corpora, encompassing ca. 450 million words in 1916 texts and 1259 languages, to tackle some of the major conceptual and practical problems of word entropy estimation: dependence on text size, register, style and estimation method, as well as non-independence of words in co-text. We present two main findings: Firstly, word entropies display relatively narrow, unimodal distributions. There is no language in our sample with a unigram entropy of less than six bits/word. We argue that this is in line with information-theoretic models of communication. Languages are held in a narrow range by two fundamental pressures: word learnability and word expressivity, with a potential bias towards expressivity. Secondly, there is a strong linear relationship between unigram entropies and entropy rates. The entropy difference between words with and without co-textual information is narrowly distributed around ca. three bits/word. In other words, knowing the preceding text reduces the uncertainty of words by roughly the same amount across languages of the world.
Objectives:
During general thoracic surgery procedures, devices are often placed in the airway and oesophagus. This creates an opportunity for foreign body entrapment (FBE) during pulmonary and foregut surgery. Like retained foreign bodies (RFB), FBE is an entirely preventable event. Unlike RFB, there is minimal literature on FBE, thus little is known about its occurrence, risk factors, and prevention.
Methods:
A survey was distributed to 215 surgeons of the General Thoracic Surgical Club. The survey included questions about socio-demographics, procedural volume, occurrence of FBE and factors leading to FBE.
Results:
There were 110 responses (51%, 110/215). The majority of respondents worked in academic hospitals (75%, 82/110), in urban environments (63%, 69/110), and were male (85%, 94/110). One hundred and four respondents performed pulmonary resections and 92 performed foregut surgeries. In the pulmonary group, 40% (42/104) reported FBE with 67% (23/42) in open procedures. In the foregut group 38% (35/92) reported FBE with 69% (24/35) in open procedures. With both groups combined, 54.5% (60/110) of respondents reported FBE at least once and 29% (24/110) reported more than one FBE in their career. The most frequently reported contributing factor was communication errors between the surgical and anaesthesia teams.
Conclusions:
FBE during general thoracic procedures occurs in both minimally invasive and open pulmonary and foregut procedures. The greatest risk factor is communication error. Specific routine closed loop communication with the anaesthesia team prior to stapling/suturing the airway or oesophagus would minimize the risk of FBE.
Measuring and managing for team performance: Emerging principles from complex environments" Teamwork has always been an important component of successful military operations. However, as the nature of military operations evolves in the post-cold war era, the ability of teams to work effectively in a dynamic and complex environment may play an even more critical role. As the nature of military organizations evolves and becomes more complex, it will be important to understand why some teams function better than others and how to instill the requisite skills in numerous geographically dispersed teams. The authors of this paper extracted twenty principles of teamwork from studies of decision making teams working in three complex tactical naval settings. Nine of the principles regard the nature of teamwork; seven regard team leadership; four regard the roles of individual team members. The findings presented here provide suggestions for managing teams effectively, measuring team performance, and for training teams in complex settings. They have application to peacekeeping operations, which are highly complex.
Background:
Pediatric trauma care requires effective and clear communication in a time-sensitive manner amongst a variety of disciplines. Programs such as Crew Resource Management in aviation have been developed to systematically prevent errors. Similarly, teamSTEPPS has been promoted in healthcare with a strong focus on communication. We aim to evaluate the ability of closed-loop communication to improve time-to-task completion in pediatric trauma activations.
Methods:
All pediatric trauma activations from January to September, 2016 at an American College of Surgeons verified level I pediatric trauma center were video recorded and included in the study. Two independent reviewers identified and classified all verbal orders issued by the trauma team leader for order audibility, directed responsibility, check-back, and time-to-task-completion. The impact of pre-notification and level of activation on time-to-task-completion was also evaluated. All analyses were performed using SAS® version 9.4(SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC).
Results:
In total, 89 trauma activation videos were reviewed, with 387 verbal orders identified. Of those, 126(32.6%) were directed, 372(96.1%) audible, and 101(26.1%) closed-loop. On average each order required 3.85 minutes to be completed. There was a significant reduction in time-to-task-completion when closed-loop communication was utilized (p < 0.0001). Orders with closed-loop communication were completed 3.6 times sooner as compared to orders with an open-loop [HR = 3.6 (95% CI: 2.5, 5.3)]. There was not a significant difference in time-to-task-completion with respect to pre-notification by emergency service providers (p < 0.6100). [HR = 1.1 (95% CI: 0.9, 1.3)]. There was also not a significant difference in time-to-task-completion with respect to level of trauma team activation (p < 0.2229). [HR = 1.3 (95% CI: 0.8, 2.1)].
Conclusion:
While closed-loop communication prevents medical errors, our study highlights the potential to increase the speed and efficiency with which tasks are completed in the setting of pediatric trauma resuscitation. Trauma drills and systems of communication that emphasize the use of closed-loop communication should be incorporated into the training of trauma team leaders.
Level of evidence:
This is a prospective observational study with intervention level II evidence.
This chapter aims to define and describe teamwork as a set of actions and processes that contribute towards group and organizational goals. Teamwork consists of three psychological facets: attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions. The dimensions of teamwork may be further organized into specific categories. A study by Salas and colleagues (2015) consolidated and distilled findings in the field into a heuristic of nine critical considerations. Six of these involve core processes, or the conversion of inputs to outcomes through affective, behavioral, and cognitive mechanisms, and emergent states, or resultant properties of a team: cooperation, conflict, coordination, communication, coaching, and cognition. In addition to these core processes, Salas and colleagues (2015) identified three influencing conditions in their nine critical considerations: composition, culture, and context. These factors describe the contexts within which the core processes and emergent states operate. The variance in these dimensions can both directly impact team outcomes and indirectly influence performance.
Article is open access through 2017: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19312458.2016.1271116
Empirical communication scholars and scientists in other fields regularly use regression models to test moderation hypotheses. When the independent variable X and moderator M are dichotomous or continuous, the practice of testing a linear moderation hypothesis using regression analysis by including the product of X and M in a model of dependent variable Y is widespread. However, many research designs include multicategorical independent variables or moderators, such as in an experiment with three or more versions of a stimulus where participants are randomly assigned to one of them. Researchers are less likely to receive training about how to properly test a moderation hypothesis using regression analysis in such a situation. In this tutorial, we explain how to test, visualize, and probe interactions involving a multicategorical variable using linear regression analysis. While presenting and discussing the fundamentals—fundamentals that are not software specific—we emphasize the use of the PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS, as it greatly simplifies the computations and potential for error that exists when doing computations by hand or using spreadsheets based on formulas in existing books on this topic. We also introduce an iterative computational implementation of the Johnson-Neyman technique for finding regions of significance of the effect of a multicategorical independent variable when the moderator is continuous.