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The Science (and Practice) of Teamwork: A Commentary on Forty Years of Progress…
Abstract
Forty years ago, Dyer summarized team science research, finding that in many areas, we lacked theoretical backing and empirical evidence—sometimes to the point of meagerness. This commentary summarizes the last four decades of team research with Dyer’s seven leading questions—finding our progress far from scant. We have uncovered groundbreaking theories, moved past understanding teamwork as only the task, researched hundreds of team emergent states, and conducted vast meta-analytic research while continuing to uncover how to make teamwork more effective and what conditions foster greatness. We also find we continue to require work in other areas, from developing better methodological practices to considering teamwork’s dynamic nature. This commentary seeks to revisit team science’s most significant breakthroughs, such as the vast improvement of team training research, and weak spots, such as our continued lack of longitudinal research. By doing so, we highlight how much progress we can make together.
... Following the trend of team science, we believe team members who develop interpersonal relationships, even synthetic ones, will perform better on interdependent tasks [76]. In the past, researchers have studied autonomous agents as a tool to complete repetitive tasks and assist with human performance. ...
This article is open access. There is no abstract, it can be viewed at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2024.1282173/full
Team training is a systematic initiative for developing the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required for effective teamwork and team performance. Research on team training has had a significant impact on science and practice in the field throughout history, fundamentally changing the way organizations develop workers and address complex societal issues. We reviewed the team-training literature to examine how theorizing through practical application has evolved with major turning points in team science. In this article, we provide a historical overview of team-training research and then discuss critical contributions to the science and practice of team training. In doing so, we highlight the breakthroughs that propelled team training from its infancy to a thriving field with resounding practical impact. Finally, we offer a collection of research directions that respond to current gaps in theory and changes in the modern workplace.
Team workload is a team-level construct considered similar to, but not reducible to, individual workload and mediated by team coordination. Despite this, the conceptualization and measurement of team workload in action teams lags behind that of individual workload. In most empirical studies, team workload is often simply considered as the sum or average of individual team members’ workload. However, unique characteristics of action teams, such as interdependence and heterogeneity, suggest that traditional approaches to conceptualizing and measuring team workload may be inadequate or even misleading. As such, innovative approaches are required to accurately capture this complex construct. This paper presents the development of a simulation designed to investigate the influence of interdependence and demand levels on team workload measures within a 3-person action-team command and control scenario. Preliminary results, which suggest that our manipulations are effective, are provided and discussed.
Scholars often implicitly assume that team size is associated with team effectiveness, but there is evidence of meaningful variability in this relationship that may correspond with competing theoretical perspectives. In particular, positive effect sizes between team size and team effectiveness correspond with a human capital perspective; negative effect sizes correspond with a process loss perspective. This study tests a series of contextual moderators aimed at evaluating these competing theories. Our team‐level meta‐analysis ( k = 208, N = 21 435) confirmed a null, yet extremely variable, relationship ( = .00) between team size and team task performance. Importantly, we find support for both theoretical perspectives through our moderator analyses, with team size being more strongly associated with performance when tasks are complex, consistent with a human capital perspective, but less strongly associated with performance when high coordination requirements are coupled with low task complexity, consistent with a process loss perspective. Contrary to our expectations, the relationship between team size and team task performance did not vary as a function of national culture. Meta‐analyses of associations between team size and other team‐level effectiveness indicators revealed connections with deviant behaviors ( = .17) and passive withdrawal behaviors ( = .13) and a small negative relationship ( = −.04) with team attitudes. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Research on teamwork has considered the effects of different types of feedback and information exchanged as teams coordinate their actions and has described team processes in terms of phases of task performance. Interpersonal communication processes represent the behavioral mechanism by which teams create shared mental models, but it is not clear how teams use and exchange feedback as part of these processes as they perform together. Using a 5-year-period, grounded theory methodology, we investigated how action teams exchange feedback to achieve teamwork. We examined the feedback process of three different elite French military teams. Our findings offer new evidence that action teams working in extreme/high stakes contexts use different types of feedback from multiple sources and that certain feedback sources are more relevant and certain feedback practices are more prevalent at certain stages. Specifically, throughout briefing, team task performance, formal debriefing, and informal debriefing stages, the teams we studied used information from multiple sources as they engaged in technique, reflexive, and socialization feedback practices. Teamwork was evident as the teams coordinated their action during recurring performance cycles. We use our findings to model the feedback process for teamwork and discuss implications for research and practice.
Objective
To provide insights for organizations that must rapidly deploy teams to remote work.
Background
Modern situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are rapidly accelerating the need for organizations to move employee teams to virtual environments, sometimes with little to no opportunities to prepare for the transition. It is likely that organizations will continually have to adapt to evolving conditions in the future.
Method
This review synthesizes the literature from several sources on best practices, lessons learned, and strategies for virtual teams. Information from each article deemed relevant was then extracted and de-identified. Over 64 best practices were independently and blindly coded for relevancy for the swift deployment of virtual teams.
Results
As a result of this review, tips for virtual teams undergoing rapid transition to remote work were developed. These tips are organized at the organization, team, and individual levels. They are further categorized under six overarching themes: norm setting, performance monitoring, leadership, supportive mechanisms, communication, and flexibility.
Conclusion
There is a significant deficit in the literature for best practices for virtual teams for the purposes of rapid deployment, leaving it to organizations to subjectively determine what advice to adhere to. This manuscript synthesizes relevant practices and provides insights into effective virtual team rapid deployment.
Background
Coordination is critical to successful team-based healthcare. Most clinicians, however, are not trained in effective coordination or teamwork. Audit and feedback (A&F) could improve team coordination, if designed with teams in mind.
Aim
We tested effectiveness of a multifaceted, A&F-plus-debrief intervention at improving coordination in primary-care teams, compared to controls.
Design & setting
Case-control trial within U.S. Veterans Health Administration Medical Centers.
Method
We compared 34 primary-care teams selected from four geospaced hospitals to 34 administratively matched control teams. Intervention-arm teams received monthly A&F reports about key coordination behaviours and structured debriefings over 7 months. Control teams were followed exclusively via their clinical records. Outcome measures included a coordination composite and its component indicators (appointments starting on time, timely recall scheduling, emergency department utilisation, and electronic patient portal enrollment). Predictors included intervention arm, extent of exposure to intervention and degree of multiple-team membership.
Results
Intervention teams did not significantly improve over control teams, even after adjusting for multiple-team membership. Follow-up analyses indicated cross-team variability in intervention fidelity; although all intervention teams received feedback reports, not all teams attended all debriefings. Compared to their respective baselines, teams with high debriefing exposure improved significantly. Teams with high debriefing exposure improved significantly more than teams with low exposure. Low exposure teams significantly increased patient portal enrollment.
Conclusion
Team-based A&F including adequate reflection time can improve coordination; however, the effect is dose dependent. Consistency of debriefing appears more critical than proportion of team members attending a debriefing for ensuring implementation fidelity and effectiveness.
This study examined the effectiveness of the after-action review (AAR)—also commonly termed debrief—and four training characteristics within the context of Villado and Arthur’s (2013) conceptual framework. Based on a bare-bones meta-analysis of the results from 61 studies (107 ds [915 teams and 3,499 individuals]), the AAR leads to an overall d of 0.79 improvement in multiple training evaluation criteria. This effect is larger than some of the largest training method effects reported in Arthur et al. (2003), and it is also larger than Tannenbaum and Cerasoli’s (2013) estimate of the effect of the AAR on task performance (d = 0.67). Two training characteristics consistently contributed to the effectiveness of the AAR: (1) alignment to the individual or the team, and (2) objective performance review media. The effects of the other training characteristics were often interactive. Most notably, the facilitation approach contributes to the effectiveness of the AAR in combination with the individual vs. the team and the type of review media, with the most effective combinations being the self-led facilitation approach coupled with a team-aligned AAR, and the self-led approach coupled with objective media. Additionally, the AAR that is highly structured is more effective than a less structured AAR in the military, but high and low structured AARs display comparable effectiveness in healthcare. Overall, this study suggests that the effectiveness of the AAR should be understood as a function of the combined influence among multiple interacting characteristics. Future theoretical development and research should be directed at better understanding these interactions.
Workplace team resilience has been proposed as a potential asset for work teams to maintain performance in the face of adverse events. Nonetheless, the research on team resilience has been conceptually and methodologically inconsistent. Taking a multilevel perspective, we present an integrative review of the workplace team resilience literature to identify the conceptual nature of team resilience and its unique value over and above personal resilience as well as other team concepts. We advance resilience research by providing a new multilevel model of team resilience that offers conceptual clarification regarding the relationship between individual-level and team-level resilience. The results of our review may form the basis for the development of a common operationalization of team resilience, which facilitates new empirical research examining ways that teams can improve their adversity management in the workplace.
Team trust is gaining attention in research and practice due to its benefits for team performance, yet clarity about the intricacies of its measurement is needed. Therefore, we meta‐analyzed 118 studies (N= 7,738) to untangle the role of measurement features by investigating the degree to which they influence the trust‐performance relationship. Results showed that the trust‐performance relationship is contingent upon time lag and source of measurement. Specifically, cross‐sectional and single‐source studies produced higher effect sizes than time‐lagged and different‐source studies. In contrast, the moderating roles of conceptualization‐operationalization alignment and referent of trust measures were not supported. Post‐hoc analyses revealed that affective trust is more strongly related to global, versus specific team outcomes, and that mixed‐referent items are particularly effective within intact teams, whereas the trust‐performance relationship is constrained when direct consensus items are used within ad hoc teams. Furthermore, we provided a critical review which highlights the importance of composites, multi‐level forces, as well as item content and wording. Finally, we clarified key gaps in the literature, calling for research where needed. This review serves as a bridge between conceptualization and measurement, and lays the groundwork for advancing knowledge of team trust.
Objectives To investigate the relationship between teamwork and clinical performance and potential moderating variables of this relationship.
Design Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Data source PubMed was searched in June 2018 without a limit on the date of publication. Additional literature was selected through a manual backward search of relevant reviews, manual backward and forward search of studies included in the meta-analysis and contacting of selected authors via email.
Eligibility criteria Studies were included if they reported a relationship between a teamwork process (eg, coordination, non-technical skills) and a performance measure (eg, checklist based expert rating, errors) in an acute care setting.
Data extraction and synthesis Moderator variables (ie, professional composition, team familiarity, average team size, task type, patient realism and type of performance measure) were coded and random-effect models were estimated. Two investigators independently extracted information on study characteristics in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.
results The review identified 2002 articles of which
31 were included in the meta-analysis comprising 1390 teams. The sample-sized weighted mean correlation was r=0.28 (corresponding to an OR of 2.8), indicating that teamwork is positively related to performance. The test of moderators was not significant, suggesting that the examined factors did not influence the average effect of teamwork on performance.
Conclusion Teamwork has a medium-sized effect on performance. The analysis of moderators illustrated
that teamwork relates to performance regardless of characteristics of the team or task. Therefore, healthcare organisations should recognise the value of teamwork and emphasise approaches that maintain and improve teamwork for the benefit of their patients.
What if artificial intelligence (AI) machines became teammates rather than tools? This paper reports on an international initiative by 65 collaboration scientists to develop a research agenda for exploring the potential risks and benefits of machines as teammates (MaT). They generated 819 research questions. A subteam of 12 converged them to a research agenda comprising three design areas – Machine artifact, Collaboration, and Institution – and 17 dualities – significant effects with the potential for benefit or harm. The MaT research agenda offers a structure and archetypal research questions to organize early thought and research in this new area of study.
Objective:
The purpose of this meta-analytic review is to examine the role of three work environment support variables (i.e., peer, supervisor, and organizational support) in training transfer and sustainment or long-term use of learned knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs).
Background:
Estimates demonstrate that little training is transferred to the job, wasting billions in organizational spending each year and resulting in significant loss to safety and individual and team performance. Prior research shows the importance of a supportive work environment to facilitating transfer; however, we know little of the relative importance of specific support variables. This study seeks to examine the unique roles of distinct support variables in training transfer.
Method:
A meta-analysis was conducted with multiple regressions to answer three primary research questions.
Results:
All work environment support variables demonstrate moderate and positive correlations with transfer of training. Furthermore, multiple regressions demonstrate that each factor of the work environment explains unique variance as a predictor, with the model accounting for 32% of transfer and peer support accounting for most of R2. Motivation to transfer mediates the relationship between all three work environment support variables and transfer. Furthermore, three support variables are positively related to sustainment, with peer and supervisor support showing the strongest relationships.
Conclusion:
Findings illuminate the relative contribution of peer, supervisor, and organizational support to transfer and sustainment of training. As transfer continues to be an important yet understudied measure of the effectiveness of workplace training, these findings hold implications for both research and practice.
Team training contributes to improved performance, reduced errors, and even saving lives-and it exists today because psychologists collaborated across domains to contribute their expertise. Our objective was to highlight the salient role of multidisciplinary collaboration in the success of team training, an area driven by psychologists responding to real-world problems. In this article, we deliver (a) a historical account of team training research, acknowledging critical turning points that shaped the science; (b) a synthesis of major contributions from subdisciplines of psychology; and (c) a collection of lessons learned in the science and practice of team training. We begin with the history of problems that created a need for solutions and the psychologists across domains who worked together to develop a science to improve teamwork. We give poignant examples of fatal mistakes that incited action and enabled scientific breakthroughs through research partnerships. Next, we detail the theoretical drivers behind the science and the hands-on approach of investigating how we turn a team of experts into an expert team. We discuss the spectrum of team training research throughout time, including major influences that shifted dominant paradigms of thought, while emphasizing its multidisciplinary nature and the contributions of psychologists. Finally, we provide a list of lessons learned from a half-century of multidisciplinary research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
This chapter summarizes the authors’ joint development of the goal setting theory. The basic concept was based on more than 50 years of research and the formal theory has endured for 28 years (Locke & Latham, 1990). The theory was not developed through overgeneralization from only a few studies or by deduction but rather by induction. The inductions involved the integration of hundreds of studies involving thousands of participants. The theory initially focused solely on consciously set goals. To date, the goal setting theory has shown generality across participants, tasks, nationality, goal source, settings, experimental designs, outcome variables, levels of analysis (individual, group, division, and organizational), and time spans. The theory identifies both mediators and moderators of goal effects. Numerous subsequent studies since 1990 have supported the main tenets of the theory. New findings have enlarged our knowledge of the relevant mediators and moderators as well as showing new applications (Locke & Latham, 2013). Among these discoveries are when to set learning rather than performance goals, the effect of goals primed in the subconscious on job performance, and that goal effects are enhanced by having people write at length about them.
We conceptualize organizational teams as dynamic systems evolving in response to their environments. We then review the past 10 years of team effectiveness research and summarize its implications by categorizing studies under three main overlapping and coevolving dimensions: compositional features, structural features, and mediating mechanisms. We highlight prominent work that focused on variables in each of these dimensions and discuss their key relationships with team outcomes. Furthermore, we review how contextual factor impact on team effectiveness. On the basis of this review, we advocate that future research seek to examine team relationships through a dynamic, multilevel perspective, while incorporating new and novel measurement techniques.We submit that the future of teams research may benefit from a conceptualization of them as dynamic networks and modeling them as small complex systems. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Volume 6 is January 21, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Work teams have become an essential part of organizations, but how implementation of work teams influences performance outcomes over time still remains unclear. This study aims to explore this issue by examining implementation of high-performance work teams (HPWTs) in a manufacturing context. We draw upon team development and adaptation literature and organizational change literature to propose a 2-phase adaptation model whereby the growth rates of performance outcomes initially decline after implementation of HPWTs and later increase and become higher than the rates before implementation. Over a 4-year period, a field quasi-experiment was conducted in 20 plants producing automation and control equipment for a Fortune 500 firm and collected monthly data regarding plant-level labor productivity and inventory turnover before and after implementation of HPWTs. Results based on piecewise growth modeling indicate that the growth rate of labor productivity declines immediately after conversion to HPWTs and recovers to the original level but not higher, whereas the growth rate of inventory turnover does not decline significantly but shows a long-term improvement. We discuss the effects of HPWT implementation on the 2 dependent variables and provide implications for practices and future research.
Research on transactive memory systems (TMS) has been conducted in a variety of teams, a range of task types and increasingly, in settings around the world. Despite this proliferation, there has been relative inattention to contextual factors that produce TMS and explain heterogeneity in the TMS to team performance relationship. TMS studies are typically conducted in homogeneous settings (i.e., teams located in a single country) and often with sources of potential variation (i.e., environmental volatility, leadership, team human capital, and diversity) in TMS development controlled. Collating these individual studies, we use meta-analytic techniques to illuminate key contextual factors that may shape TMS and influence the TMS-performance association. Using 76 empirical studies representing 6,869 sampling units, we find that the strength of the TMS to performance relationship varies, depending on features of the national cultural context—the impact of TMS is stronger in cultural contexts where power distance and in-group collectivism are higher. Our results also suggest that environmental volatility, leadership effectiveness, and team human capital are positively associated with TMS, and informational and gender diversity are negatively associated with TMS development. Our findings also indicate fruitful areas for future research specifically aimed toward disentangling the effects of environmental, team, and national cultural context on TMS and team performance.
Teams are the foundational building blocks of the military, which uses a hierarchical structure built on and around teams to form larger units. Consequently, team effectiveness has been a substantial focus of research within the military for decades to ensure military teams have the human capabilities to complete their missions and address future challenges successfully. This research has contributed greatly to broader team theory and informed the development of evidence-based interventions. Team-focused research supported or executed by the military has yielded major insights into the nature of team performance, advanced the methods for measuring and improving team performance, and broken new ground in understanding the assembly of effective teams. Furthermore, military research has made major contributions to advancing methodological and statistical techniques for studying teams. We highlight the military contributions to the broader team literature and conclude with a discussion of critical areas of future research on teams and enduring challenges for both the military and team science as a whole.
Psychologists have studied small-group and team effectiveness for decades, and although there has been considerable progress, there remain significant challenges. Meta-analyses and systematic research have provided solid evidence for core team cognitive, motivational, affective, and behavioral processes that contribute to team effectiveness and empirical support for interventions that enhance team processes (e.g., team design, composition, training, and leadership); there has been substantial evidence for a science of team effectiveness. Nonetheless, there have also been concerns that team processes, which are inherently dynamic, have primarily been assessed as static constructs. Team-level processes and outcomes are multilevel phenomena that emerge, bottom-up from the interactions among team members over time, under the shifting demands of a work context. Thus, theoretical development that appropriately conceptualizes the multiple levels, process dynamics, and emergence of team phenomena over time are essential to advance understanding. Moreover, these conceptual advances necessitate innovative research methodologies to better capture team process dynamics. We explicate this foundation and then describe 2 promising streams of scientific inquiry—team interaction sensors and computational modeling—that are advancing new, unobtrusive measurement techniques and process-oriented research methods focused on understanding the dynamics of cohesion and cognition in teamwork. These are distinct lines of research, each endeavoring to advance the science, but doing so through the development of very different methodologies. We close by discussing the near-term research challenges and the potential long-term evolution of these innovative methods, with an eye toward the future for process-oriented theory and research on team effectiveness.
The rate of teamwork and collaboration within the workforce has burgeoned over the years, and the use of teams is projected to continue increasing. With the rise of teamwork comes the need for interventions designed to enhance teamwork effectiveness. Successful teams produce desired outcomes; however, it is critical that team members demonstrate effective processes to achieve these outcomes. Team development interventions (TDIs) increase effective team competencies and processes, thereby leading to improvements in proximal and distal outcomes. The effectiveness of TDIs is evident across domains (e.g., education, health care, military, aviation), and they are applicable in a wide range of settings. To stimulate the adoption and effective use of TDIs, the current article provides a review of four types of evidence-based TDIs including team training, leadership training, team building, and team debriefing. In doing so, we aim to provide psychologists with an understanding of the scientific principles underlying TDIs and their impact on team dynamics. Moreover, we provide evidence-based recommendations regarding how to increase the effectiveness of TDIs as well as a discussion on future research needed within this domain.
The term teamwork has graced countless motivational posters and office walls. However, although teamwork is often easy to observe, it is somewhat more difficult to describe and yet more difficult to produce. At a broad level, teamwork is the process through which team members collaborate to achieve task goals. Teamwork refers to the activities through which team inputs translate into team outputs such as team effectiveness and satisfaction. In this article, we describe foundational research underlying current research on teamwork. We examine the evolution of team process models and outline primary teamwork dimensions. We discuss selection, training, and design approaches to enhancing teamwork, and note current applications of teamwork research in real-world settings.
We need teams in nearly every aspect of our lives (e.g., hospitals, schools, flight decks, nuclear power plants, oil rigs, the military, and corporate offices). Nearly a century of psychological science has uncovered extensive knowledge about team-related processes and outcomes. In this article, we draw from the reviews and articles of this special issue to identify 10 key reflections that have arisen in the team literature, briefly summarized here. Team researchers have developed many theories surrounding the multilayered aspects of teams, such that now we have a solid theoretical basis for teams. We have recognized that the collective is often stronger than the individual, initiating the shift from individual tasks to team tasks. All teams are not created equal, so it is important to consider the context to understand relevant team dynamics and outcomes, but sometimes teams performing in different contexts are more similar than not. It is critical to have teamwork-supportive organizational conditions and environments where psychological safety can flourish and be a mechanism to resolve conflicts, ensure safety, mitigate errors, learn, and improve performance. There are also helpful teamwork competencies that can increase effectiveness across teams or tasks that have been identified (e.g., coordination, communication, and adaptability). Even if a team is made up of experts, it can still fail if they do not know how to cooperate, coordinate, and communicate well together. To ensure the improvement and maintenance of effective team functioning, the organization must implement team development interventions and evaluate relevant team outcomes with robust diagnostic measurement. We conclude with 3 main directions for scientists to expand upon in the future: (a) address issues with technology to make further improvements in team assessment, (b) learn more about multiteam systems, and (c) bridge the gap between theory and practice. In summary, the science of teams has made substantial progress but still has plenty of room for advancement.
The present review synthesizes existing evidence and theory on the science of health care teams and health care team training. Ten observations are presented that capture the current state of the science, with applications to both researchers and practitioners. The observations are drawn from a variety of salient sources, including meta-analytic evidence, reviews of health care team training, primary investigations, and the authors’ collective expertise in developing and implementing medical team training. These observations provide insight into the team (e.g., psychological safety) and organizational-level (e.g., culture for teamwork) factors that drive effective health care teamwork, as well as advancements and best practices for designing and implementing team training initiatives (e.g., multilevel measurement). We highlight areas where new knowledge has emerged, and offer directions for future research that will continue to improve our understanding of health care teams in the future.
Recent estimates suggest that although a majority of funds in organizational training budgets tend to be allocated to leadership training (Ho, 2016; O'Leonard, 2014), only a small minority of organizations believe their leadership training programs are highly effective (Schwartz, Bersin, & Pelster, 2014), calling into question the effectiveness of current leadership development initiatives. To help address this issue, this meta-analysis estimates the extent to which leadership training is effective and identifies the conditions under which these programs are most effective. In doing so, we estimate the effectiveness of leadership training across four criteria (reactions, learning, transfer, and results; Kirkpatrick, 1959) using only employee data and we examine 15 moderators of training design and delivery to determine which elements are associated with the most effective leadership training interventions. Data from 335 independent samples suggest that leadership training is substantially more effective than previously thought, leading to improvements in reactions (δ = .63), learning (δ = .73), transfer (δ = .82), and results (δ = .72), the strength of these effects differs based on various design, delivery, and implementation characteristics. Moderator analyses support the use of needs analysis, feedback, multiple delivery methods (especially practice), spaced training sessions, a location that is on-site, and face-to-face delivery that is not self-administered. Results also suggest that the content of training, attendance policy, and duration influence the effectiveness of the training program. Practical implications for training development and theoretical implications for leadership and training literatures are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
The concept of roles is ubiquitous in the social sciences, and a number of scholars have examined the operation of roles in task teams. In fact, this research has resulted in a seemingly unlimited number of roles that have been described as relevant to team performance. In this study, we attempt to integrate this research by deriving a model that describes three primary behavioral dimensions that underlie team role behavior: (a) dominance, (b) sociability, and (c) task orientation. Based on this model, we conduct a cluster analysis of the 154 team roles described in previous research. We identify 13 primary team role clusters, and discuss the implications of this approach for gaining further insight into team role structure and performance. We believe this is one step toward speaking a common language in discussing team roles.
Background:
Work-related burnout is common in primary care and is associated with worse patient safety, patient satisfaction, and employee mental health. Workload, staffing stability, and team completeness may be drivers of burnout. However, few studies have assessed these associations at the team level, and fewer still include members of the team beyond physicians.
Objective:
To study the associations of burnout among primary care providers (PCPs), nurse care managers, clinical associates (MAs, LPNs), and administrative clerks with the staffing and workload on their teams.
Design:
We conducted an individual-level cross-sectional analysis of survey and administrative data in 2014.
Participants:
Primary care personnel at VA clinics responding to a national survey.
Main measures:
Burnout was measured with a validated single-item survey measure dichotomized to indicate the presence of burnout. The independent variables were survey measures of team staffing (having a fully staffed team, serving on multiple teams, and turnover on the team), and workload both from survey items (working extended hours), and administrative data (patient panel overcapacity and average panel comorbidity).
Key results:
There were 4610 respondents (estimated response rate of 20.9%). The overall prevalence of burnout was 41%. In adjusted analyses, the strongest associations with burnout were having a fully staffed team (odds ratio [OR] = 0.55, 95% CI 0.47-0.65), having turnover on the team (OR = 1.67, 95% CI 1.43-1.94), and having patient panel overcapacity (OR = 1.19, 95% CI 1.01-1.40). The observed burnout prevalence was 30.1% lower (28.5% vs. 58.6%) for respondents working on fully staffed teams with no turnover and caring for a panel within capacity, relative to respondents in the inverse condition.
Conclusions:
Complete team staffing, turnover among team members, and panel overcapacity had strong, cumulative associations with burnout. Further research is needed to understand whether improvements in these factors would lower burnout.
Work groups are a vital link between individuals and organizations. Systematic psychological research on the nature and effects of work groups dates back at least to the Hawthorne studies of the 1920s and 1930s. Yet little to none of this work appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology until the 1950s when groups were treated primarily as foils against which to compare the performance of individuals. From the 1990s to the present, the volume of research and the nature of topics addressing work group/teams expanded significantly. The authors review the evolution of team research over the past century with a particular focus on that which has appeared in this journal. They chronicle the shift from a focus on individuals within teams, or on individual versus team comparisons, to a focus on the team itself and larger systems of teams. They describe the major outcomes studied within this literature, and how they relate to the nature of team tasks and structures. Further, the authors consider the roles of team members’ characteristics and composition, and team dynamics in terms of processes and emergent states. They close with a call for future research that models dynamic team relationships in context and as they operate in complex systems.
As the nature of work becomes more complex, teams have become necessary to ensure effective functioning within organizations. The healthcare industry is no exception. As such, the prevalence of training interventions designed to optimize teamwork in this industry has increased substantially over the last 10 years (Weaver, Dy, & Rosen, 2014). Using Kirkpatrick’s (1956, 1996) training evaluation framework, we conducted a meta-analytic examination of healthcare team training to quantify its effectiveness and understand the conditions under which it is most successful. Results demonstrate that healthcare team training improves each of Kirkpatrick’s criteria (reactions, learning, transfer, results; d = .37 to .89). Second, findings indicate that healthcare team training is largely robust to trainee composition, training strategy, and characteristics of the work environment, with the only exception being the reduced effectiveness of team training programs that involve feedback. As a tertiary goal, we proposed and found empirical support for a sequential model of healthcare team training where team training affects results via learning, which leads to transfer, which increases results. We find support for this sequential model in the healthcare industry (i.e., the current meta-analysis) and in training across all industries (i.e., using meta-analytic estimates from Arthur, Bennett, Edens, & Bell, 2003), suggesting the sequential benefits of training are not unique to medical teams. Ultimately, this meta-analysis supports the expanded use of team training and points toward recommendations for optimizing its effectiveness within healthcare settings.
Team trust has often been discussed both as requirement and as challenge for team effectiveness, particularly in virtual teams. However, primary studies on the relationship between trust and team effectiveness have provided mixed findings. The current review summarizes existing studies on team trust and team effectiveness based on meta-analytic methodology. In general, we assumed team trust to facilitate coordination and cooperation in teams, and therefore to be positively related with team effectiveness. Moreover, team virtuality and documentation of interactions were considered as moderators of this relationship because they should affect perceived risks during teamwork. While team virtuality should increase, documentation of interaction should decrease the relationship between team trust and team effectiveness. Findings from 52 studies with 54 independent samples (representing 12,615 individuals in 1,850 teams) confirmed our assumptions. In addition to the positive overall relationship between team trust and team effectiveness criteria (ρ = .33), the relationship between team trust and team performance was stronger in virtual teams (ρ = .33) as compared to face-to-face teams (ρ = .22), and weaker when team interactions were documented (ρ = .20) as compared to no such documentation (ρ = .29). Thus, documenting team interactions seems to be a viable complement to trust-building activities, particularly in virtual teams. (PsycINFO Database Record
Cumulating evidence from 112 independent studies (N = 7,763 teams), we meta-analytically examine the fundamental questions of whether intrateam trust is positively related to team performance, and the conditions under which it is particularly important. We address these questions by analyzing the overall trust-performance relationship, assessing the robustness of this relationship by controlling for other relevant predictors and covariates, and examining how the strength of this relationship varies as a function of several moderating factors. Our findings confirm that intrateam trust is positively related to team performance, and has an above-average impact (ρ = .30). The covariate analyses show that this relationship holds after controlling for team trust in leader and past team performance, and across dimensions of trust (i.e., cognitive and affective). The moderator analyses indicate that the trust-performance relationship is contingent upon the level of task interdependence, authority differentiation, and skill differentiation in teams. Finally, we conducted preliminary analyses on several emerging issues in the literature regarding the conceptualization and measurement of trust and team performance (i.e., referent of intrateam trust, dimension of performance, performance objectivity). Together, our findings contribute to the literature by helping to (a) integrate the field of intrateam trust research, (b) resolve mixed findings regarding the trust-performance relationship, (c) overcome scholarly skepticism regarding the main effect of trust on team performance, and (d) identify the conditions under which trust is most important for team performance. (PsycINFO Database Record
The healthcare industry is inadvertently a teamwork industry – and yet – little time is devoted to improving teamwork on the field. As a response to this issue, team development intervention (TDI) tools have flourished. Findings suggest the capability for TDIs to better team competencies, and potentially mitigate prominent healthcare problems. However, team coaching has been excluded as a potential TDI for healthcare. For this reason, we seek to 1) discuss existing team coaching models, integrating findings across the literature, 2) highlight the advantages of Hackman and Wageman (2005)’s model over others, 3) display its empirically-corroborated propositions, and finally, 4) provide general guidance on how to move forward. We move beyond extant literature by providing an outline on what outcomes team coaching can and cannot yield, accumulating evidence from fields outside of healthcare and incorporating team coaching into the TDI literature. By doing so, we hope empirical research on team coaching is incentivized, resulting in an efficient and accessible TDI for healthcare professionals and the field of interprofessional care. Access can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UCHJDP8XYSYPNT6PFMUE/full?target=10.1080/13561820.2023.2285030
Teamwork can have great benefits, but several predictable challenges can negatively impact team performance.
In this paper, we examine these challenges, and summarize nine of the most common barriers to effective teamwork (i.e., competing demands, undervaluing teammates, power differentials, a leader not promoting collaboration, inexperience working together, dynamic demands, interdisciplinary teams, team member overload, and lack of resources). We describe each barrier, explain the path of least resistance that should be avoided, and provide evidence-based advice. In doing so, we provide a practical guide for team members and leaders, increasing their awareness of what can make teamwork more challenging and equipping them with ideas for
addressing emergent obstacles they may encounter.
Team cohesion is an important antecedent of team performance, but our understanding of this relationship is mired by inconsistencies in how cohesion has been conceptualized and measured. The nature of teams is also changing, and the effect of this change is unclear. By meta-analyzing the cohesion-performance relationship ( k = 195, n = 12,023), examining measurement moderators, and distinguishing modern and traditional team characteristics, we uncovered various insights. First, the cohesion-performance relationship varies based on degree of proximity. More proximal measures –task cohesion, referent-shift, and behaviorally-focused– show stronger relationships compared to social cohesion, direct consensus, and attitudinally-focused, which are more distal. Differences are more pronounced when performance metrics are also distal. Second, group pride is more predictive than expected. Third, the cohesion-performance relationship and predictive capacity of different measures are changing in modern contexts, but findings pertaining to optimal measurement approaches largely generalized. Lastly, important nuances across modern characteristics warrant attention in research and practice.
Plain Language Summary
Team cohesion is an important antecedent of team performance, but our understanding of this relationship is mired by inconsistencies in how cohesion has been conceptualized and measured. The nature of teams has also changed over time, and the effect of this change is unclear. By meta-analyzing the cohesion-performance relationship ( k = 195, n = 12,023), examining measurement moderators, and distinguishing between modern and traditional team characteristics, we uncovered various insights for both research and practice. First, the cohesion-performance relationship varies based on degree of proximity. Measures that are more proximal to what a team does – those assessing task cohesion, utilizing referent shift items, and capturing behavioral manifestations of cohesion – show stronger relationships with performance compared to those assessing social cohesion, utilizing direct consensus items, and capturing attitudinal manifestations of cohesion, which are more distal. These differences are more pronounced when performance metrics are also more distal. Second, despite being understudied, the group pride-performance relationship was stronger than expected. Third, modern team characteristics are changing both the overall cohesion-performance relationship and the predictive capacity of different measurement approaches, but findings pertaining to the most optimal measurement approaches largely generalized in that these approaches were less susceptible to the influence of modern characteristics. However, in some contexts, distal cohesion metrics are just as predictive as their more proximal counterparts. Lastly, there are important nuances across different characteristics of modern teams that warrant additional research attention and should be considered in practice. Overall, findings greatly advance science and practice pertaining to the team cohesion-performance relationship.
Due to their distinctive features, multiteam systems (MTSs) face significant coordination challenges—both within component teams and across the larger system. Despite the benefits of informal mechanisms of coordination for knowledge-based work, there is considerable ambiguity regarding their effects in MTSs. To resolve this ambiguity, we build and test theory about how interpersonal interactions among MTS members serve as an informal coordination mechanism that facilitates team and system functioning. Integrating MTS research with insights from the team boundary spanning literature, we argue that the degree to which MTS members balance their interactions with members of their own component team (i.e., intrateam interactions) and with the members of other teams in the system (i.e., inter-team interactions) shapes team- and system-level performance. The findings of a multimethod study of 44 MTSs composed of 295 teams and 930 people show that as inter-team interactions exceed intrateam interactions, team conflict rises and detracts from component team performance. At the system level, balance between intra- and inter-team interactions enhances system success. Our findings advance understanding of MTSs by highlighting how informal coordination mechanisms enable MTSs to overcome their coordination challenges and address the unique performance tension between component teams and the larger system.
To reconcile the inconsistencies and complexities in the relationship between team diversity and performance, our meta‐analysis takes a more nuanced approach to the relationship between team deep‐level diversity and team performance. We examine the type of deep‐level diversity (personality, values, culture), task complexity, and executive team status as moderators of the relationship between team deep‐level diversity and positive emergent states, positive team processes, and team conflict. In addition, we examine the mediating role of positive team emergent states, positive team processes, and team conflict in explaining how team deep‐level diversity relates to team performance. We test our hypotheses with a meta‐analytic database of 94 papers reporting 280 effect sizes based on 24,425 teams. Findings show that team deep‐level diversity is associated with fewer positive emergent states and positive team processes and more team conflict. There is an indirect relationship between team deep‐level diversity and team performance through each of the mediators: positive emergent states, positive team processes, and team conflict. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
As robots become more autonomous, their roles shift from being operated and controlled by humans to interactively teaming with humans. The current research focuses on how human operators can effectively team with autonomous urban search and rescue agents in a dynamic and complex task environment. To do so, we empirically examined how shared cognition and restricted language capabilities impacted performance of human-robot dyad search teams using a simulated Minecraft task environment. In order to examine the effects of shared mental models and language the following modified conditions were applied: (1) participants were either able to communicate using natural language or the internal participant's communication was limited to three-word utterances; and (2) shared mental models were manipulated by either the internal participant being made fully aware of the external participant's restricted representation of the environment and inaccurate map or the internal was unaware of these challenges. The primary findings from this study are: (1) teams in the natural language and shared mental model conditions performed better than teams in the limited language and restricted model conditions; (2) when the internal participant was unaware of the challenges of the external, the external perceived higher workload than when there was a shared mental model; (3) teams with natural language and shared mental model demonstrated more predictable behavior than the other teams; (4) some amount of systems’ predictability was good but too much predictability was not good. Overall, these results indicate that effective team interaction and shared cognition play an important role in human-robot dyadic teaming performance.
Studies of team-level constructs can produce new insights when researchers explicitly take into account several critical conceptual and methodological issues. This article explicates the conceptual bases for multilevel research on team constructs and discusses specific issues relating to conceptual frameworks, measurement, and data analysis. To advance programmatic research involving team-level constructs, several future research directions concerning issues of substantive content (i.e., changes in the nature of work and teams, member-team fit, linking team-level constructs to higher-level constructs) and strategic approaches (i.e., the construct's theoretical roles, dimensionality and specificity, malleability and changes over time, relationships with Big Data) are proposed.
With empirical research on team resilience on the rise, there is a need for an integrative conceptual model that delineates the essential elements of this concept and offers a heuristic for the integration of findings across studies. To address this need, we propose a multilevel model of team resilience that originates in the resources of individual team members and emerges as a team‐level construct through dynamic person–situation interactions that are triggered by adverse events. In so doing, we define team resilience as an emergent outcome characterized by the trajectory of a team's functioning, following adversity exposure, as one that is largely unaffected or returns to normal levels after some degree of deterioration in functioning. This conceptual model offers a departure point for future work on team resilience and reinforces the need to incorporate inputs and process mechanisms inherent within dynamic interactions among individual members of a team. Of particular, importance is the examination of these inputs, process mechanisms and emergent states, and outcomes over time, and in the context of task demands, objectives, and adverse events.
Practitioner points
• Team resilience as a dynamic, multilevel phenomenon requires clarity on the individual‐ and team‐level factors that foster its emergence within occupational and organizational settings.
• An understanding of the nature (e.g., timing, chronicity) of adverse events is key to studying and intervening to foster team resilience within occupational and organizational settings.
Background: Healthcare work and training are increasingly team-based and interprofessional. This research examines how occupational self-efficacy and psychological safety perceptions influence active and honest participation in simulation-based learning.
Methods: Surveys captured self-assessments and reactions to learning experiences over a two-year period at a European simulation center.
Results: Participants with greater occupational self-efficacy levels spoke up more to clarify faculty explanations. Participants who perceived greater psychological safety spoke up more to discuss colleagues’ mistakes and clarify faculty explanations.
Conclusions: Internal and external factors influence the quality of engagement in simulation-based learning. Improving psychological safety and engaging learners with lower self-efficacy levels improves the quality of learning experiences.
Although it is consistently identified as a critical component of team performance, team communication is often conceptualized in a variety of manners. The present meta-analysis addresses this inconsistency by examining the moderating influence of communication characteristics, as well as other salient team and task characteristics, on the relationship between team communication and performance. The findings revealed several fundamental insights. First, communication quality had a significantly stronger relationship with team performance than communication frequency. Second, further distinguishing between different communication types, classifying communication into the eight most commonly measured communication forms (e.g., knowledge sharing, information elaboration), has further value; information elaboration has the strongest relationship with performance while self-report frequency and objective frequency have the weakest relationships. Third, familiar and face-to-face teams exhibited a stronger relationship between communication and performance. These results indicate the necessity of distinguishing between different communication types in both practical and theoretical applications of team science.
The use of team-based organizing has become the norm in many organizations, especially those characterized by complexity. However, research has shown that teams are not always effective, despite their popularity (Sims & Salas, 2007). The complex endeavor of creating and maintaining the enabling conditions for team performance is further compounded when teams are culturally diverse. While cultural diversity can provide synergies, research has shown that it can also lead to process loss as members attempt to navigate differences in attitudes, beliefs, and values that often remain hidden under the surface and impact team interaction. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, to highlight some of the areas that may prove challenging for culturally diverse teams to navigate; and, in turn, provide insight into what constructs to measure. Second, to identify a set of measurement considerations that must be navigated when assessing collaboration within culturally diverse teams.
Although psychological safety research has flourished in recent years, and despite the empirical support for the important role of psychological safety in the workplace, several critical questions remain. In order to address these questions, we aggregate theoretical and empirical works, and draw on 136 independent samples representing over 22,000 individuals and nearly 5,000 groups, to conduct a comprehensive meta-analysis on the antecedents and outcomes of psychological safety. We not only present the nomological network of psychological safety, but also extend this research in four important ways. First, we compare effect sizes to determine the relative effectiveness of antecedents to psychological safety. Second, we examine the extent to which psychological safety influences both task performance and organizational citizenship behaviors over and beyond related concepts such as positive leader relations and work engagement. Third, we examine whether research design characteristics and national culture alter validities within the nomological network, thus promoting a more accurate and contextualized understanding of psychological safety. Finally, we test the homology assumption by comparing the effect sizes of the antecedents and outcomes of psychological safety across individual and group levels of analysis. We conclude with a discussion of the areas in need of future examination.
This study extends previous work reviewing the cohesion-performance relationship by using meta-analytic techniques to assess the effects of level of analysis and task interdependence on the cohesion-performance relationship. A totel of 51 effect sizes from 46 empirical studies were obtained for the meta-analytic integration. Results suggest that level of analysis and task interdependence moderate the cohesion-performance relationship. Implications of the findings for future research on group cohesion and performance are discussed.
Theories of team processes have focused on content and temporal relevance, while largely ignoring implications of structure. We apply social network concepts to propose theory that articulates structural configurations of taskwork and teamwork processes in terms of closure, centralization, and subgrouping. Our theory challenges the conventional view that increases in team processes are inherently and uniformly beneficial and explains how structural configurations involve trade-offs that must be acknowledged in our research and practice.