Communication, Shared Mental

Models and Team Performance

Robert Kraut

Susan Fussell

Javier Lerch

Carnegie Mellon University

Coordination is the Glue for

Teamwork

• Coordination = Extra effort multiple agents

must provide to achieve a goal, above what
they would need if they were working
independently

• Techniques for coordinating

– Division of labor
– Communication
– Shared models

What Roles Do Mental Models

Play in Coordinating?

• Mental model

– Mental representation of some dynamic process or

system

– One type is knowledge of teammate’s competencies =

transactive memory

• Mental models can improve coordination by:

– Substituting for direct communication
– Allowing effective task assignment
– Providing common ground for communication

efficiency

– Improving project planning and execution

• May lead to improved performance

Secondary question:

What leads to shared mental

models?

• History together => opportunities to

observe

• Communication

– More communication
– Evenness of communication

• Division of labor

– Read expertise from roles

Method

• Setting: Management game

– 50 teams manage a simulated consumer products

company over 14 weeks & 2 simulated years

• Data collection

– 3 waves of questionnaire administration
– Evaluations by external “board of directors”, based

on plans and performance

– Firm price based on stock market

• Analysis

– Predicting changes in coordination & outcomes
– Panel design, using mixed model

• Team as a random factor
• Auto-regressive error structure

Model and Hypotheses

•Predictions

:



Experience together, more communication, and more even communication

will enhance development shared models



Communication and consensus will influence performance through

coordination



Communication and consensus will have their beneficial effects early



Communication and consensus will substitute for one another

Communication

& structure

Shared
models

Task

process

Outcomes

History

Communication

Amount (mean)

Evenness
(reversed gini)

Functional expertise

Amount (mean)

Distribution
(reversed gini)

Agreement
about who
knows what

(mean r)

Coordination

Board

evaluation

Stock

price

Important Measures

• Communication

– Volume = Mean amount of pairwise communication
– Evenness = Reverse gini coefficient on volume of

communication

• Shared mental models = Consensus on who knows

what

– Mean correlation of members’ assessment of each others

knowledge of marketing, finance and production

• Coordination = Multi-item, self report scale

– E.g., Each member of my team had a clear idea of the team's

goals.

– E.g., Tasks were clearly assigned. I knew what I was supposed

to do

• Performance

– Stock price
– Evaluations by boards of directors after review

Summary of Results

Amount

Communication

Shared

Model

Coordination

Stock

Price

Board

Evaluations

Division of

Labor

History

Group

Expertise

Evenness of

Communication

.48

-.33

.62

.05

.11

.41

.38

-.32

.14

-.38

.31

.78



Standardized beta weights



All dependent variables control for lags => measurement of change



Only relationships p < .06 have been retain

-.14

Predicting shared mental models

• Shared mental model= Shared person

perception

• Average correlation among team members about

how much each person knows about finance,
marketing, production

• Predictors:

• Passage of time - No
• Communication

– Amount - No
– Evenness - Yes

• Division of expertise- Yes

Do communication & consensus make a

difference in performance?

• Only through their influence on

coordination

• What is associated with improvements in

coordination?

– History
– Evenness of communication, but not amount
– Level of functional knowledge
– Shared models of who knows what

Interactions

•

Shared models have greater benefits early

•

Even communication has greater benefits early

•

Models and communication volume substitute

Consensus X

Wave

-1

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Early

Late

Questionnaire Wave

Low consensus

Hiigh

Communication X

Wave

-1

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Early

Late

Questionnaire Wave

Uneven

communicaton

Even

Consensus X

Communication

-1

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

Low

High

Communication

Low consensus

High

Summary

• Communication and shared models influence

performance mainly through coordination

• Interesting results were the interactions predicting

coordination:

– Shared models and communication substitute. Using both

may hurt performance since too much effort is going into
communication.

– Shared models about the internals of the team and within-

group communication are important early in the team’s
history

– We’d expect team functioning will become routinized with

time

– Models about and communication with the external world

will probably become more important after routinization

• Shared models have unexplained, direct negative

association with declines in stock price

Limitations and plans

• Data problems

– Measures of accuracy, consensus, and dispersion were

constrained by low variation within a team

– Common input to measures of level and evenness

• Weak causal claims

– Panel design examined changes in process and outcomes, but

grossness of time granularity limits causal ordering

– Currently running lab experiments to manipulate

communication and recursors of shared models

• Scope

– Examined only small teams whose members had history
– Examined only shared models of who knows what

• Current work

– Current data collection is examining models of internal (e.g.,

who knows what) and external (e.g., competitive enviroment).

– Current data collection adds objective accuracy measures