The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Team Working and Collaborative Processes

Eduardo Salas, Ramon Rico, Jonathan Passmore, Eduardo Salas, Ramon Rico, Jonathan Passmore

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781119673705
  9781118903261
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118909980
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A state-of-the-art psychological perspective on team working and collaborative organizational processes

This handbook makes a unique contribution to organizational psychology and HRM by providing comprehensive international coverage of the contemporary field of team working and collaborative organizational processes. It provides critical reviews of key topics related to teams including design, diversity, leadership, trust processes and performance measurement, drawing on the work of leading thinkers including Linda Argote, Neal Ashkanasy, Robert Kraut, Floor Rink and Daan van Knippenberg.

Part I
Overview of Team Effectiveness

2
Factors that Influence Teamwork

Julie V. and Dinh Eduardo Salas

Introduction

Today, the word “team” often calls to mind the highly visible groups seen in the media, such as the Manchester United football team or the US Navy SEALs. In truth, however, teams are all around us, running critical day‐to‐day processes. As smaller, more specialized units of organizations, teams are involved in many facets of society, from military operations and healthcare systems to research groups and private companies. Together, individuals are able to accomplish work possible only through united efforts – that is, through teamwork, or the funneling of interdependent actions of individuals towards a common goal (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001). By harnessing the strengths of many, teams have the potential to offer greater adaptability, productivity, and creativity than can be offered by any one individual (Gladstein, 1984; Hackman, 1987). Furthermore, they can provide more complex, innovative, and comprehensive solutions to organizational problems (Sundstrom, de Meuse, & Futrell, 1990). Increasingly, organizations are turning to team‐based structures in order to contend with growing complexities of the environments in which their employees operate (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993).

Given the benefits and increasing awareness of teams, it is worthwhile exploring the underlying factors that influence teamwork. This chapter aims to define and describe teamwork as a set of actions and processes that contribute towards group and organizational goals.

Defining Teamwork

In discussing teamwork, it is first important to define teams themselves. Teams are “a distinguishable set of two or more people who interact dynamically, interdependently, and adaptively towards a common and valued goal/objective/mission” (Salas, Dickinson, Converse, & Tannenbaum, 1992, p. 4). As mentioned above, teams can exist and perform in a number of contexts – from private industries to governmental research. Within each of these teams, it is key to organize members’ efforts internally and align them towards external goals.

In order for teams to be effective, they must successfully engage in both taskwork and teamwork (Burke, Wilson, & Salas, 2003) – two distinctly different dimensions. Taskwork refers to the performance of specific tasks needed to achieve team goals. Tasks are those work‐related activities that individuals or teams engage in as an essential function of their organizational role (Wildman et al., 2012). Taskwork typically becomes the key focus as teams work towards their goals, but is majorly aided by teamwork. Teamwork involves the shared behaviors, attitudes, and cognitions that make team functioning and the achievement of their goals possible (Morgan, Salas, & Glickman, 1993). This adaptive, dynamic, and episodic process can make the difference between success and failure, regardless of team members’ task‐relevant expertise (Gregorich, Helmreich, & Wilhelm, 1990; Salas, Shuffler, Thayer, Bedwell, & Lazzara, 2015; Schmidt, Keeton, Slack, Leveton, & Shea, 2009; Smith, 1979). For example, a surgical team’s taskwork involves successfully completing the many stages of an operation, from perioperative patient preparation to postoperative recovery. In order to accomplish these goals, the members must engage in teamwork and effectively orchestrate their actions; the anesthesiologist must coordinate the administration of anesthesia, while the surgeon must communicate with the supporting staff as he or she operates. Both taskwork and teamwork are crucial to effective team performance, with each one bolstering the other. This chapter, in particular, will focus on teamwork, specifically as it describes the more general conditions within a group necessary for success.

Teamwork consists of three psychological facets: attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions (Cannon‐Bowers & Bowers, 2011; Cannon‐Bowers & Salas, 2014; Cannon‐Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995; Salas, Cooke, & Rosen, 2008). Team‐level attitudes are those internal states which affect interactions, such as mutual trust, cohesion, and collective efficacy. Team‐level attitudes have been associated with improved team outcomes, including satisfaction, organizational commitment, and performance (Costa, 2003). Team behaviors refer to the processes necessary to engaging in teamwork, including information exchange, support of team members during critical stressors, and monitoring progress in order to detect errors and problems. Clearly, behaviors are vital for successful outcomes, or performance, in a variety of domains (Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008). Finally, team cognition describes the structure and representation of knowledge among members, allowing teams to plan and execute actions efficiently. In a meta‐analysis of 65 studies, DeChurch and Mesmer‐Magnus (2010) found that cognition has consistently been linked to outcomes. Indeed, even when a team possesses extensive task‐related knowledge, they will fail if members cannot trust one another and successfully coordinate behavior and share knowledge (Mathieu et al., 2008). As such, it is critical to foster all three dimensions of teamwork – positive attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions – within teams.

Critical Considerations

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, as shown in Table 2.1. 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 (Marks et al., 2001): (1) cooperation; (2) conflict; (3) coordination; (4) communication; (5) coaching; and (6) cognition. In addition to these core processes, Salas and colleagues (2015) identified three influencing conditions in their nine critical considerations: (1) composition; (2) culture; and (3) context. These factors describe the contexts within which the aforementioned core processes and emergent states operate. The variance in these dimensions can both directly impact team outcomes and indirectly influence performance through the above‐mentioned processes and emergent states (Salas et al., 2015). Indeed, there are interdependent relationships between each of these nine critical considerations, which are illustrated in Figure 2.1.

Table 2.1 Critical considerations.

Source: Salas et al. (2015).

	Critical consideration	Definition
Core process and emergent factor	Cooperation	The motivational drivers of teamwork. In essence, this is the attitudes, beliefs, and feelings of the team that drive behavioral action.
	Conflict	The perceived incompatibilities in the interests, beliefs, or views held by one or more team members.
	Coordination	The enactment of behavioral and cognitive mechanisms necessary to perform a task and transform team resources into outcomes.
	Communication	A reciprocal process of team members’ sending and receiving information that forms and reforms a team’s attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions.
	Coaching	The enactment of leadership behaviors to establish goals and set direction that leads to the successful accomplishment of these goals.
	Cognition	A shared understanding among team members that is developed as a result of team member interactions including knowledge of roles and responsibilities; team mission objectives and norms; and familiarity with teammate knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Influencing condition	Composition	The individual factors relevant to team ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Series Preface
• Supported Charity
• Introduction
• Part I: Overview of Team Effectiveness
• Part II: Antecedents to Team Effectiveness
• Part III: Team Effectiveness
• Part IV: Team Effectiveness Tools and Outputs
• Part V: The Future of Teams
• Index
• End User License Agreement