Team Task Performance Research Articles

Reducing Medical Error and Improving Patient Safety: A Methodology for Studying Pharmaceutical Error in Teams

It has been noted that as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a consequence of medical error. In comparison to even the lowest estimated figures of medical error occurrence, it is believed that the number of deaths due to preventable events is still greater than deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. Of those errors committed, one type that occurs all too frequently, are those related to the dispensation of medications. Consequently, efforts are currently underway to develop methods for the study of this class of medical error. The current paper describes one such methodology and its use thus far for the study of individual performance, as well as recommending a research agenda that would be useful for investigating pharmaceutical error in the context of a team task performance situation.

How Leaders Foster Self-Managing Team Effectiveness

This multi-method field study examines the relative effects of two kinds of leader behaviors--design choices and hands-on coaching--on the effectiveness of self-managing teams. Findings show that how leaders design their teams and the quality of their hands-on coaching both influence team self-management, the quality of member relationships, and member satisfaction, but only leaders' design activities affect team task performance. Moreover, design and coaching interact, so that well-designed teams are helped more by effective coaching--and undermined less by ineffective coaching--than are poorly designed teams.

TIME, TEAMS, AND TASK PERFORMANCE: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF THE CHANGING EFFECTS OF DIVERSITY ON GROUP FUNCTIONING.

We hypothesize that as time passes and allows for greater collaboration among team members,the negative effects of surface-level (demographic) diversity are weakened, but the negative effects of deep-level (psychological) diversity are strengthened. We also propose that perceived diversity mediates the impact of actual demographic and psychological differences on team social integration and team task performance. These hypotheses were tested by tracking the development of 144 student project teams over 15 weeks. Theoretical constructs were measured at multiple times using a four-wave design. Data were collected prior to team formation (Time 1)and used to derive surface-level diversity measures for age, race, gender and marital status, as well as deep-level diversity measures for personality (conscientiousness), and values. Measures of collaboration, perceived diversity, and deep-level diversity were collected after teams had worked together for approximately one-third of their designated term (Time 2). ...

Improving Team Coordination: A Case for Behavior-Based Training

In this article, we integrate the findings of three studies that focused on improv- ing team performance in a military aviation setting. In the first two studies, we investigated the effect of exposing subject aviators to standardized, behavior- based training for improving team coordination and performance. In the third study, we investigated the effect of increased intrateam familiarity (battle rostering) on team coordination and performance. In these studies, we measured effect in terms of attitudinal change, coordination behavior change, and team task performance change. The general findings suggest that standardized, behavior-based training produces team coordination and performance superior to that achieved through battle fostering. Findings also demonstrate that behavioral change is a more reliable marker of training impact than attitudinal change.