Keeping it together: The role of transactional situation awareness in team performance

Abstract

It has been argued that communications in teams are a means of transmitting Situation Awareness to improve performance. This study explored the frequency and types of situation awareness transactions in two groups of teams. Twelve teams were grouped into either more effective or less effective teams, based on performance measures. Distributed Situation Awareness theory predicts that Situation Awareness transaction are a medium for co-ordinating teamwork, and that more of these transaction will lead to improved performance. Differences in the frequency and type of transactions were observed between the more effective teams and the less effective teams with the former having a higher frequency of overall communications and, more importantly, a higher number of relevant situation awareness transaction types compared to less effective teams. Situation awareness transactions supported the team in making sense of the situation they found themselves in as it unfolded and enabled team members to perform their discrete tasks and therefore contribute to overall team success.Relevance to industry: Teams are a major feature of most industrial applications of work and communication play an important role in coordinating team work. Communication has been found to be linked to both team performance and situation awareness. Situation awareness is distributed in teams through transactions of information. A study was devised to explore the differences between more effective and less effective teams on a number of situation awareness transactional factors. Analysing the team as a functional unit of situation awareness is presented for future work.