Study of mental subgroping pattern in a workteam

Abstract

Nowadays, the role of teams and teamwork in many kinds of tasks and organizations is inevitable. It is widely recognized that a team is not merely a set of individuals. A set of high performance individuals will not always make a high performance team. The performance of the team is determined also by their interaction to each other. To improve the quality of teamwork, first the mechanism of how individuals interact and work as a team need to be understood. One important aspect of it is the team cognition. It has been argued that team cognition should not be seen as derivation of individual cognition, but instead as an observable phenomenon in team level. To approach that issue, a reductivist point of view can be used. According to this approach, team cognition consists of individual mental models (self and partners) and also interaction between them called mutual belief. In this research, a new model of team cognition called Extended Mutual Belief model is proposed. This model can make a breakdown of team cognition, divides it into several layers and cells. Using this model, the mechanism of team cognition can be better understood. One important aspect of this model is mental subgrouping. In this research, an experiment has been done to observe that phenomenon. Using the result from the experiment and also comparing with previous studies, a series of hypothesis regarding team cognition have been proposed. One important hypothesis is that team members (not just observers from the outside of the team) tend to see the team as a single entity instead of a set of individuals. Some theoretical and practical implications of this research and also several potential applications were also provided.