Expert Teams: Do Shared Mental Models of Team Members make a Difference?

The purpose of the present thesis was to investigate whether and how familiarity influences coordination, resilience, and efficiency in high performance teams in safetycritical organizations. Research has accumulated solid support for the general presumption that shared mental models are associated with team effectiveness (see overview, Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). Unfortunately, familiarity and shared mental models have seldom been the subject of investigation. This is surprising since the importance of team members having a shared understanding is underlined in dynamic situations that require high levels of flexibility and adaptability in the team (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Salas & Fiore, 2004). The first study investigated whether knowledge about individual team members would augment the effect of operational skills in predicting operational effectiveness in trained expert teams. The second study investigated the consequences of shared mental models (SMM) of team members in teams that are forced to coordinate their activities towards a shared goal in a distributed team setting. The third study investigated whether shared mental models of team members would transfer across new tasks or situations and, through better coordination, result in improved efficiency and less physiological arousal. Study 1 included samples from 24 active duty officers who made up four submarine attack teams. Studies 2 and 3 included a total of 177 cadets from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy. The findings from these three studies indicate that familiar teams used coordination strategies that enhanced efficiency. The coordination strategies used by familiar teams are characterized by less overt communication (statements per minute) during high workload (Study 1), a higher global anticipation rate (Study 2), and more adaptability and back-up statements during cross-training (Study 3). In addition, familiar teams showed more overt communication (e.g., confirmation) when confronted with a novel situation (Studies 2 and 3). Familiar teams outperformed unfamiliar teams, being more accurate, quicker and achieving greater mission success (i.e., more hits). Familiar teams were more physiologically aroused (HR) during low workload (Study 2), and less during high workload (Study 1), recovery (Studies 2 and 3), and decreasingly so during training (Study 3). These three studies extend previous research by presenting new empirical data on the significance of shared mental models of team members. Study 1 demonstrated that knowledge about team members (i.e., shared mental models of team members) adds to performance over and above the contribution of operational skills (Aim 1). Studies 2 confirmed Study 1 (within teams) and provide empirical evidence for the effect of shared mental models of team members in distributed teams (Aim 2). The findings from Study 3 suggest that shared mental models of team members are transferable across tasks and enhance the effects of cross-training (Aim 3). All studies extend previous research, but Study 3 in particular indicates that shared mental models of team members are distinctly different from transactive memory systems (Aim 3). Hence, a shared mental model of team members represents an independent, adaptive asset at team level that enhances team performance and efficiency. These studies are the first to provide empirical evidence in support of the notion that shared mental models of team members are a mechanism that improves teams’ efficiency, resilience, and coordination. This thesis confirms shared mental models of team members as an important and independent construct with an added value in relation to team performance and efficiency. It thus expands previous knowledge, where the focus has been on equipment, tasks, and team interaction. The findings are a contribution to and fill an important gap in the literature on Shared Mental Models. Implications are discussed for training, staffing and safety issues in teams in safety-critical organizations

A new model for understanding teamwork onboard: the shipmate model

The increasing complexity onboard a ship underline the importance of crews that are able to coordinateand cooperate with each other to facilitate task objectives through a shared understanding of resources (e.g. team members’ knowledge, skills and experience), the crew’s goals, and the constrains under whichthey work. Rotation of personnel through 24/7 shift-work schedules and replacements often put crews ina position of having little or no previous history as a team. Findings from 3 studies indicated that unfamiliarteams used less efficient coordination strategies which reduced efficiency and increased levels of stress insituations where team members where experts on task, distributed or unknown to task and environment.Implications for staffing, safety and training are discussed

Why Our Next President May Keep His or her Senate Seat: A Conjecture on the Constitution’s Incompatibility Clause

Heart diseases are common and significant contributors to worldwide mortality and morbidity. During recent years complement mediated inflammation has been shown to be an important player in a variety of heart diseases. Despite some negative results from clinical trials using complement inhibitors, emerging evidence points to an association between the complement system and heart diseases. Thus, complement seems to be important in coronary heart disease as well as in heart failure, where several studies underscore the prognostic importance of complement activation. Furthermore, patients with atrial fibrillation often share risk factors both with coronary heart disease and heart failure, and there is some evidence implicating complement activation in atrial fibrillation. Moreover, Chagas heart disease, a protozoal infection, is an important cause of heart failure in Latin America, and the complement system is crucial for the protozoa-host interaction. Thus, complement activation appears to be involved in the pathophysiology of a diverse range of cardiac conditions. Determination of the exact role of complement in the various heart diseases will hopefully help to identify patients that might benefit from therapeutic complement intervention

Police Dyads Within an Operational Simulation: an Empirical Test of the Research Propositions Made in the “Big Five” Teamwork Approach

Based on the impact of the theoretical big five of teamwork model proposed by Salas et al. (2005), the present study aimed at investigating the model within an operational police simulation. One hundred and sixty-seven frontline police officers participated in the study. Based on path analyses, a reduced model excluding trust and leadership obtained a good fit with the data. The results provided some support for the model by confirming six out of 10 proposed direct effects and four out of seven indirect pathways. Shared mental models directly affected team adaptability, and backup behavior affects adaptability and team effectiveness. Team orientation affects mutual performance monitoring and backup behavior, and finally, reciprocal monitoring affects backup behavior. Monitoring influenced both team effectiveness and adaptability through backup behavior. Two paths from team orientation towards effectiveness were found. One flowing through monitoring and another through back-up behavior. Our study expands former knowledge of the big five theory by empirically testing the totality of the model and identifying important pathways.publishedVersio

Exploring the core of crew resource management course: speak up or stay silent

The Norwegian Costal Express travels 24/7 along a coast considered as one of the most dangerous littoral areas of the world. It is crucial for safe voyage to speak up when one of the crewmembers discovers a discrepancy or vital new information to the passage that needs to be shared and acted upon. Crew resource management courses are intended to increase safety and we suggest that the key is to enhance the ability to speak up. Watch keepers valued a 4-h course intended to enhance the ability to speak up and improve listening skills as highly relevant (89%) and educational (69%). These high scores indicate that this type of training is necessary to improve safety.

Team og moralsk handlekraft

I mange sikkerhetskritiske organisasjoner må team ta vanskelige og moralske valg i pressede situasjoner. I artikkelen diskuteres hvilken kompetanse som er nødvendig. Felles moralske mentale modeller holdes frem som en forutsetning for å få et samlet team til å forstå hva som skjer og dermed bli i stand til å koordinere hurtig internt i teamet, noe som kan være avgjørende når utfordrende moralske situasjoner oppstår. Artikkelen fremholder særlig et teams evne til å utøve gjensidig monitorering, støtteatferd, tilpasningsatferd, teamorientering og team lederskap i kombinasjon med de to koordineringsmekanismene sirkelkommunikasjon og gjensidig tillit som avgjørende for å skape gode felles moralske mentale modeller og dermed styrke teamets moralsk handlekraft. Flere forslag til nyere forskning blir foreslått

Compartmentalization of TNF and IL-6 in meningitis and septic shock

We examined the compartmentalization of bioactive tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin 6 (IL-6) to the subarachnoid space and systemic circulation in patients with meningococcal meningitis and septic shock/bacteraemia. In patients with meningitis, median levels of TNF in 31 paired samples of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum were respectively 783 pg/ml and below detection limit (p < 0.001) and median levels of IL-6 were 150 ng/ml and 0.3 ng/ml (p < 0.0001). In patients with septic shock without meningitis, median levels in paired samples of CSF and serum were respectively below detection limit and 65 pg/ml (not significant, (ns)) (TNF, eleven patients) and 1.3 ng/ml–3 ng/ml (ns) (IL-6, nine patients). The data show that TNF and IL-6 are localized to the subarachnoid space in patients with meningitis although the blood–brain barrier is penetrable to serum proteins. On the other hand, patients with septic shock tend to have cytokines in both serum and CSF

Pappapermisjon- en nøkkel til likestilling?

Oppgaven omhandler hvordan pappapermisjon har blitt fremstilt som en nøkkel til likestilling i Norge. Her blir det en kortfattet oversikt over debatten som har omhandlet fedrekvoten og hvordan fedrekvoten har blitt brukt som et argument for legge til rette for likestilling mellom foreldrene.This thesis is about how paternity leave has been presented as a key to equality in Norway. There will be a brief overview of the debate that has dealt with the father quota and how the father quota has been used as an argument to facilitate equality between the parents