Advances in measuring team cognition.

Abstract

Teams have become an integral and essential social component in organizations. There is no doubt that there are more businesses, industries and agencies implementing team-based systems than ever before. Organizations believe that teams, teamwork and effective team functioning can provide a competitive edge. Teams are, after all, dispatched to tackle difficult and complex problems. Why? Organizations think teams hold the solution to many problems. The perception is that teams can manage stress; teams can adapt and be flexible; team can make better decisions, and teams can be more productive than individuals. So, teams are a popular commodity in organizations. While the evidence of the efficacy of teams remains open, social scientists have begun to provide much needed answers to this issue. In fact, the amount of research effort and resources aimed at understanding what comprises effective team performance is overwhelming. Military, human factors, social, cognitive and industrial/organizational psychologists have been studying teams for decades (see Levine & Moreland, 1990; Guzzo & Shea, 1992). And so progress has been made. We understand better what teams do, how they do it, why they do it and how we can improve what they do. We can