The Wisdom of Collectives in Organizations: An Update of the Teamwork Competencies

Abstract

What do we mean by the wisdom of collectives? This is best illustrated by examining the trend toward discussing emergence within teams (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000) and other social systems (Chu, Strand, & Fjelland, 2003; Streufert, 1997). Emergence is characterized by the creation of “novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems” (Goldstein, 1999, p. 49). Emergent properties are the result of the interaction of the components of the system from which these emergent properties arise but cannot be reduced to or described wholly in terms of the elementary components of the system considered in isolation. The whole truly is greater than (or at least different from) the sum of its parts. In this way some teams are able to synergistically combine the attributes of its members to produce outcomes well beyond the capacity of any one individual member or of the pooled or summated output of all its members (Cannon-Bowers, Salas, & Converse, 1993; Salas, Cannon-Bowers, & Johnston, 1997; Salas, Rosen, Burke, Goodwin, & Fiore, 2006). This is what we refer to with the phrase the wisdom of collectives: the increased capacity for performance of various types afforded by the interactions of team members.

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