Trust in Military Teams

Neville A. Stanton

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317006213
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The objective of this book is to report on contemporary trends in the defence research community on trust in teams, including inter- and intra-team trust, multi-agency trust and coalition trust. The book also considers trust in information and automation, taking a systems view of humans as agents in a multi-agent, socio-technical, community. The different types of trust are usually found to share many of the same emotive, behavioural, cognitive and social constructs, but differ in the degree of importance associated with each of them. Trust in Military Teams is written by defence scientists from the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK, under the auspices of The Transfer Cooperation Programme. It is representative of the latest thinking on trust in teams, and is written for defence researchers, postgraduate students, academics and practitioners in the human factors community.

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Trust in Military Teams

Neville A. Stanton

School of Civil Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

An Introduction to Trust in Military Teams

Trust is something of a nebulous concept; whilst most would agree that establishing trust in teamworking is important (essential even), it can be difficult to define and measure. The Oxford English Dictionary defines trust as the ‘firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something’ but this definition does not seem to lend itself easily to the concept of trust within and between teams, as the focus of the definition is upon the singular person or artefact. Ashleigh and Stanton (2001) point out that there is no single, universal definition of trust that everyone agrees upon. This may reflect the state of the art, that trust is a concept in development, and the myriad of different situations and domains where trust is being investigated. Perhaps there can be no single overarching definition that would suit every eventuality, situation or domain. Nevertheless, investigations into trust have been a significant challenge on the research agenda for decades. In this book, trust is examined at various levels, including interpersonal, interteam (i.e., between teams), intra-team (i.e., within teams), inter-organisation (i.e., between organisations) and intra-organisational (i.e., within organisations), as well as trust in technology. This variety puts strain on any theoretical and measurable concept. To return to the work of Ashleigh and Stanton (2001), they identified nine constructs that appeared to be common to intra-team, inter-team and technological trust in a study based on the human supervisory control domain (which bears some similarities to command and control: Stanton, Baber and Harris, 2008). These factors are shown in Table 1.1, with rankings of the importance of each construct for intra-team, inter-team and technology trust.

Table 1.1 Rankings of trust constructs

Construct	Intra-team	Inter-team	Technology
Honesty	1	3	6
Understanding	2	2	4
Respect	3	5	6
Quality of interaction	4	1	1
Reliability	5	4	2
Communication	5	4	4
Ability	6	5	5
Performance	6	6	3
Expectancy	7	6	4

The rankings in Table 1.1 show that the inter-team rakings are similar to the intra-team rankings apart from the ‘quality of interaction’ and ‘respect’ constructs, where they are similar to the technology constructs. The constructs in this table show that trust is multi-dimensional, and the importance of each construct may change depending on the situation and domain under investigation. It is likely that the rankings of these constructs would be different for interpersonal, interorganisation and intra-organisational trust. One of the strengths, or weaknesses, of the trust domain is the reliance upon self-report measures. It is a strength by virtue of the fact that the reports are an indication of how a situation is perceived at that moment in time, but it suffers from all the normal drawbacks of subjective assessments. Annett (2002) identifies four key issues for subjective rating scales: subjectivity, measurement, multiple dimensions and fitness. First, he argues that subjectivity is all-pervasive. Even so-called objective methods are inevitably influenced by subjectivity. Second, he argues that subjective judgement can quite successfully be mapped onto ordinal scales for the purpose of measurement. This offers the analyst a means of collecting data about a phenomenon that might not otherwise be available. Third, he argues that it is possible to have both physical and subjective components of multi-dimensional constructs. The critical issue is to establish their validity. There has been much research on the need to establish reliability and validity of Human Factors methods in recent years (e.g., Stanton et al., 2005a, b). Finally, he argues that care should be taken to make sure that a subjective rating scale is fit-for-purpose. Rather than selecting a technique because of its ease of administration, researchers need to determine that the approach is appropriate and will yield useful data for the study they are undertaking. Each of these issues is just as pertinent to subjective measures of trust as to any other subjective assessment.

This book is arranged in three sections. The first section presents chapters on experimental studies into mood, personality and training. In the second section, chapters on multinational challenges for trust are presented. Chapters on trust in technology are presented in the third section.

Experimental Studies into Mood, Personality and Training

This section focuses on trust at the team level. It contains three chapters: Stokes, Lyons and Schneider (Chapter 2: The impact of mood on interpersonal trust), Lyons, Stokes and Schneider (Chapter 3: Predictors and outcomes of trust in teams) and Lyons et al. (Chapter 4: Exploring the impact of cross-training on team process).

In Chapter 2, Stokes et al. note that computer-mediated communication and coordination are increasingly prevalent in military systems. These systems may be putting more stress on trust in multinational operations if there is a commensurate reduction in face-to-face contact. Trust may be viewed as an essential component for effective cooperation and performance of teams. Stokes et al. argue that the boundaries between affective and cognitive states are somewhat blurred, as trust appears to occupy both types of state. Mood states seem to have an effect on trust, which suggests that affective states may affect cognitive states and vice versa, there being permeable boundaries between both states. This effect appears to diminish over time as cognitive states develop evidence from experience. The authors report on a study to investigate whether positive mood is related to higher levels and negative mood is related to lower levels of team trust. Small teams of five participants undertook an interdependent, computer-mediated task which required a high degree of coordination and communication via instant messaging. The results of the study provide evidence to support the hypothesised link between mood and trust, both at the individual and team level. This suggests that a relatively simple way of increasing team trust would be to manage the mood of the team.

Lyons et al., in Chapter 3, investigate the reasons why face-to-face teams have higher levels of trust than distributed teams. Part of the reason for the high level of trust is simply exposure. Distributed teams are likely to interact less than colocated teams, as there will be more opportunities for interactions when teams are face-to-face, and these interactions are likely to be ‘richer’, including non-work (social) interactions. There are also bandwidth restrictions for distributed teams, which often reduce the fidelity of non-verbal communication. An analysis of the relationship between personality characteristics and trust led to the identification of positive links between ‘agreeableness’, ‘extroversion’ and ‘openness’ and trust, as well as potential negative links between ‘neuroticism’ and trust. Small teams of five participants took part in a computer-mediated task communicating via instant messaging. Measures were taken of cohesion, cognitive ability, personality, interpersonal trust and task performance. The results of the study showed that ‘agreeableness’ and ‘openness’ did predict trust. The results did not show any links between ‘extroversion’ and neuroticism’ and trust. The authors suggest that the computer-mediated nature of the task did not allow these latter two personality characteristics to exhibit themselves and therefore negated any effect that they may have had.

In Chapter 4, Lyons et al. argue that cross-team training can help the team develop as a functionally interdependent unit, establishing common ground, trust and cohesion through coordination of activity and development of shared mental models. Team process variables such as communication, interaction, cohesion and trust are developed in cross-training activities. Trust, in particular, is dynamic in nature and open to change during cross-training as people gain experience of working together. Positive aspects of trust within teams have significant benefits, such as reducing the team process overheads, increasing collective responsibility and encouraging sharing behaviour. Lyons et al. conducted studies with small five-person teams in a simulated command and control task over five days (with members of the team either performing the same task over the five consecutive days in the ‘permanent’ condition or a different task in the ‘rotation’ condition). It was hypothesised that people in the ‘rotation’ condition would report higher levels of trust, as the rotational cross-training would promote more common ground and shared understanding of each other’s roles. Measures were taken of team performance, communications, cohesion, trust and collective efficacy. The finding worth highlighting is that, contrary to expectations, ‘permanent’ teams reported a higher level of trust than the ‘rotation’ teams. The authors speculate that the rotation of the roles may have been more disruptive to team processes than first anticipated, as rotation effectively created a new team structure each time the roles changed. This change may have inhibited team development.

Multinational Challenges for Trust

There are four chapters on the multinational challenges for trust: Wildman et al. (Chapter 5: Trust in swift starting action teams), Cianciolo et al. (Chapter 6: Trust in distributed operations), Gill, Thompson and Febrarro (Chapter 7: Trust in international military missions) and Hughes et al. (Chapter 8: Cultural influences on trust).

In Chapter 5, Wildman et al. discuss the role of swift starting action teams in multinational collaborative operations. The idea behind swift starting action teams is that they are able to develop appropriate levels of trust quickly to enable them to function at the optimum level in their performance of teamwork in the shortest possible time. By their very nature, swift starting action teams do not have the luxury of time to build up trusting relationships in the normal manner. Inappropriate levels of trust may lead to process inefficiencies (e.g., wasted effort checking another party’s work or failure to identify inaction by another person due to a failure to monitor them appropriately). Rapid calibration of swift starting action teams is required but most models of interpersonal trust assume a period of trust building before trust is calibrated. By contrast, ‘swift trust’ proposes that trust can be transferred from one domain to another. Swift trust would seem to rely upon trust schemata, developed through experience in other domains that appears to suit the current situation. These schemata appear to offer possible ‘trust templates’ for immediate initial calibration of trust in team members that can be modified through experience and stored for new situations. One might assume that swift starting action teams become more adept at selecting the appropriate ‘trust template’ as they gain more experience of swift team operations. Wildman et al. are keen to point out that swift trust may be mis-calibrated, which could be detrimental to team performance. If swift teams only come together for brief periods, any mis-calibration might not be detected for the time the team is together. The authors propose a range of training strategies that could help mitigate against trust biases in swift starting action teams.

Cianciolo et al. examine the nature of interpersonal trust in Chapter 6, within the context of network enabled command and control. New systems and d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Biographies of Authors
• 1 An Introduction to Trust in Military Teams
• SECTION ONE EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES INTO MOOD, PERSONALITY AND TRAINING
• SECTION TWO MULTINATIONAL CHALLENGES FOR TRUST
• SECTION THREE TRUST IN TECHNOLOGY
• Author Index
• Subject Index