Social: Social Cognition and Teamwork - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 233

hierarchy. For larger teams (and where the size of the team can increase over
time), it may become necessary to provide system support for communication and
collaboration. This can be done through facilities for sharing information, or for
allowing close grained collaboration with version histories to enable task aware-
ness (e.g., Churchill et al. 2000 ) or by enabling team members to maintain a more
general current awareness of what other team members are doing, as in the
example of the control room operators mentioned above (Heath and Luff 2000 ).
This latter kind of awareness is sometimes called shared situation awareness.
The optimal structure will depend on the team members, their relationships, the
social context, and the task. In the ideal case, the team is balanced to the task, with
appropriate KSAs to perform the task and the team coordination tasks. For com-
plex, unpredictable tasks, or for situations where there is a broad range of tasks,
flexible structures are better. For static tasks, static structures can help the teams to
be more efficient. Thus in assembly line work, where tasks do not vary, structures
tend to be more rigid. In academic research, and in creative pursuits such as
design, where the tasks vary quite a bit, teams will have more varied and more
variable structures. In Fig. 8.3 this would influence the factors of adaptability and,
to a certain extent, the communication and team leadership.
Within the field of system design, Brooks ( 1975 ), has famously explored the
issue of team structure. He argues that having a single system design architect is
the best approach. He also notes that adding more people to a project can slow
down development at certain times. There are two main reasons for this: first, you
need to spend time and effort bringing the new people up to speed, and second, you
often also increase the communication overhead (based on size and structure).
In addition to the structure, the composition of the team is also important: you
need to have people who are capable of working together. Several researchers
(Kozlowski and Ilgen 2006 ; Salas et al. 2002 ) note that teams work better when
they leverage the knowledge of the team members, are cohesive and confident,
allocate resources appropriately, coordinate well, and learn over time.
There is significant evidence that differences between group members nega-
tively affect group performance (Byrne 1971 ; McGrath 1984 ; Newcomb 1961 ).
This literature generally describes the level of group performance as a function of
the organization's level of social integration, or the degree to which group
members are psychologically linked or attracted towards interacting with one
another in pursuit of common objectives (O'Reilly et al. 1989 ). Social integration
constitutes a goal-driven process arising out of the daily interactions of team
members, mediated by both the length of contact between members and their
respective organizational roles.
Promoting interaction between team members also helps. Birnbaum ( 1988 ,
p. 94) and others, have noted that people who interact with each other in groups
tend to like each other. The interaction and liking are related, in that liking leads to
more interaction, which leads to more liking.
The importance of diversity among team members is questioned by some,
however. Mannix and Neale ( 2005 ), for example, have argued that the effect of
diversity of team members is not as clear cut as some people say. They note that