Mitigating Information Ambiguity through TSM and Reflexivity for Team Judgment Performance

Abstract

Part of the work of hierarchical temporary teams found in Professional Service Firms (PSF), is to form judgments based on ambiguous information. In this study, we propose that teams that hold a similar understanding of their client’s situation, in other words, have similar team situation models (TSM), achieve stronger team judgment performance. In addition, we investigate whether a reflexivity intervention helps teams cope with information ambiguity. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from 94 ad-hoc, hierarchical teams of financial auditors from a Big 4 firm, participating in a 2x2 experiment of a judgment task, varying information ambiguity and participation in the reflexivity intervention. We examined two types of TSMs relevant to the context. On the one hand, we looked at the teams’ similarity of perception of the relevant information (TSMinfo) and on the other, the similarity of perception of the judgment complexity (TSMjdm). Our results show that (1) information ambiguity is not directly related to team performance, (2) teams facing high information ambiguity have stronger TSMinfo, (3) teams achieve higher judgment performance with more similar TSMinfo and more dissimilar TSMjdm and (4) reflexivity helps the formation of TSMinfo when information ambiguity is moderate but hurts when it is high.