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Abundant research supports a cognitive foundation to teamwork. Team cognition describes the mental states that enable team members to anticipate and to coordinate. Having been examined in hundreds of studies conducted in board rooms, cockpits, nuclear power plants, and locker rooms, to name a few, we turn to the question of moderators: Under which conditions is team cognition more and less strongly related to team performance? Random effects meta-analytic moderator analysis of 107 independent studies ( N = 7,778) reveals meaningful variation in effect sizes conditioned on team composition and boundary factors. The overall effect of team cognition on performance is ρ = .35, though examining this effect by these moderators finds the effect can meaningfully vary between ρ = .22 and ρ = .42. This meta-analysis advances team effectiveness theory by moving past the question of “what is important?” to explore the question of “when and why is it important?” Results indicate team cognition is most strongly related to performance for teams with social category heterogeneity ( ρ = .42), high external interdependence ( ρ = .41), as well as low authority differentiation ( ρ = .35), temporal dispersion ( ρ = .36), and geographic dispersion ( ρ = .35). Functional homogeneity and temporal stability (compositional factors) were not meaningful moderators of this relationship. The key takeaway of these findings is that team cognition matters most for team performance when—either by virtue of composition, leadership, structure, or technology—there are few substitute enabling conditions to otherwise promote performance.

First responders are on the front line of patient care and service, but research has shown that they are also on the front line of exposure to violence. Currently, there is a lack of evidence-based interventions that prepare first responders to handle violence on the job. With the increase in emergency medical services (EMS) call volume and reports of at least 57% of the EMS responders having experienced workplace violence, there is a need to develop scientifically systematic solutions to improve emergency responder safety. Using an adapted version of the hackathon method, academic scholars and practitioner conference attendees at the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) Conference were deployed into three multidisciplinary teams to analyze the issue and develop specific solutions. These solutions offer unique interventions to improve first responder safety.

Space crews venturing beyond low Earth orbit will experience unprecedented levels of autonomy and unpredictable challenges. Mission success will require effective teamwork. How do teamwork capabilities change over time in isolation and confinement? To explore this question, 4, 4-member crews who participated in the 30-day campaign of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)'s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) were observed. Crews endured isolation, confinement, and communication delays. Teamwork capabilities were observed along four critical dimensions: generate (creativity tasks), choose (intellective tasks), negotiate (cognitive conflict tasks), and execute (psychomotor tasks). A battery of team task was administered requiring the crew to generate, to choose, and to negotiate. Execute performance was assessed using NASA's multi-mission space exploration vehicle (MMSEV) task. Team task batteries were performed on Mission Days 11, 16, and 30. Execute performance was assessed on 18 of 30 days. Findings show behavioral team performance (cognitive conflict and psychomotor tasks) increases over time, whereas conceptual team performance (creativity and intellective tasks) declines. Implications of these results were considered for future research and the design of countermeasures that support crew functioning.

Purpose Team cognition is known to be an important predictor of team process and performance. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) reported the results of an extensive meta-analytic examination into the role of team cognition in team process and performance, and documented the unique contribution of team cognition to these outcomes while controlling for the motivational dynamics of the team. Research on team cognition has exploded since the publication of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analysis, which raises the question: to what extent do the effect sizes reported in their 2010 meta-analysis still hold with the inclusion of newly published research? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The authors updated DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analytic database with newly published studies, nearly doubling its size, and reran their original analyses examining the role of team cognition in team process and performance. Findings Overall, results show consistent effects for team cognition in team process and performance. However, whereas originally compilational cognition was more strongly related to both team process and team performance than was compositional cognition, in the updated database, compilational cognition is more strongly related to team process and compositional cognition is more strongly related to team performance. Originality/value Meta-analyses are only as generalizable as the databases they are comprised of. Periodic updates are necessary to incorporate newly published studies and confirm that prior findings still hold. This study confirms that the findings of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ (2010) team cognition meta-analysis continue to generalize to today’s teams.

Our highly globalized and technologically-enabled world is allowing organizations to solve more complex challenges than ever before. Thus, organizations are increasingly focusing on their ability t...

Amidst considerable scholarly and practical interest, leadership research has made substantial theoretical advances in the past decade. In particular, scholars have highlighted the dynamic, complex...

Digital technologies are changing the nature of teamwork in ways that have important implications for leadership. Though conceptually rich and multi-disciplinary, much of the burgeoning work on technology has not been fully integrated into the leadership literature. To fill this gap, we organize existing work on leadership and technology, outlining four perspectives: (1) technology as context, (2) technology as sociomaterial, (3) technology as creation medium, and (4) technology as teammate. Each technology perspective makes assumptions about how technologies affect teams and the needs for team leadership. Within each perspective, we detail current work on leading teams. This section takes us from virtual teams to new vistas posed by leading online communities, crowds, peer production groups, flash teams, human-robot teams, and human-artificial intelligence teams. We identify 12 leadership implications arising from the ways digital technologies affect organizing. We then leverage our review to identify directions for future leadership research and practice.

This study investigates leadership emergence in multiteam systems comprised of four, 4-person disciplinary teams tasked with solving a complex and interdisciplinary problem in a lab setting. It adv...