Browsing by Subject "Team"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The impact of computer decision support on military team decision making.
    (2010-08) Larson, Adam Donavon
    This dissertation work highlights extremely valuable results regarding significant costs and benefits of using a computer decision aid by analyzing the impact of such a decision support tool on military team decision making. Decision support systems (DSS) are becoming increasingly popular as an approach to aid decision makers in making better decisions in a more efficient and effective manner. However, DSSs have both costs and benefits in their utilization, and there is no guarantee that a DSS will actually improve decision making or problem solving performance. This work shows that although a DSS has many advantages and can facilitate user problem solving, brittle DSS behavior can significantly degrade user decision making. The primary goals of this work are to improve scientific understanding of situations in which DSSs may improve decision making performance and those where the use of a DSS may actually degrade performance. Specifically, the heart of this work focuses on understanding and measuring the performance benefits and costs of a solution generating DSS on individuals versus teams, and on situations in which the DSS produces "brittle," or questionable solutions. Understanding the impact of brittle behavior is especially important given the domains in which DSSs are often utilized, including military, medical, and business operations. The results of decisions in these areas greatly impact dollars and most importantly, human lives, that may be saved or lost. The decisions teams make in military situations play a vital role in determining the success or failure of operations. Decision support in this study was provided by a component of a DSS tool called Weasel. A previous study in 2004 analyzed Weasel with respect to individual decision makers' performance and behavior [9]. This study analyzed team behavior and performance in a military context with military personnel working together in three person teams. The primary questions addressed by this work are: What is Weasel's overall impact on team versus individual performance and what is the effect on user performance when Weasel exhibits brittle behavior? Brittle behavior refers to the automated decision tool offering questionable, low quality courses of action for a given situation. As all DSSs will at sometime or another exhibit some degree of brittle behavior, the impact of such behavior on user decision making is vitally important. The results showed brittle behavior does indeed negatively impact user decision making behavior, and that individuals and teams demonstrated the same levels of performance with the use of the automated decision tool. The results of this experiment will help researchers and military personnel to better understand when it is appropriate to use decision support and to better understand both the benefits and the costs in team decision making by assessing when the DSS tool facilitated improved decision making and when performance was hindered by the tool. Additionally, information may be gained regarding situations where computer support and automation use may degrade performance.
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    Interactive Ideation: Online Team-Based Idea Generation versus Traditional Brainstorming
    (2019-06) Russell, Theodore
    Social media and social collaborative platforms are becoming ever more integrated into our lives at all levels. Past research has shown electronic brainstorming and idea generation can be viable options when compared to traditional methods. Building on existing research into the benefits and challenges of ideating through online environments, this study asks if an established collaborative planning platform can be more conducive to generating a high quantity of ideas and high-quality ideas than traditional methods. In this context, the number of ideas generated, the quality of ideas as rated by participants and experts, and group success building upon ideas are evaluated as metrics. The two conditions are compared on performance in an idea generation session. The analysis demonstrated that idea generation through the digital platform Slack, compared to traditional brainstorming, produced more ideas, approximately twice as many high-quality ideas as rated by experts, and nearly twice as much building upon ideas. The results of the study suggest existing online social platforms are viable options for conducting idea generation in small groups and provide an option for collaboration without meeting in person.
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    The mechanisms and work group context in the victimization of high performers
    (2012-05) Kim, Yui Jin Eugene
    This study develops and tests a social context model of the victimization of high performing employees with a focus on (1) unfavorable social comparison mechanisms that occur between high performers and other fellow employees and (2) work group contextual factors that may exacerbate or mitigate these social comparison mechanisms. Multisource data collected at two time points support the proposition that high performers are more likely to be targets of victimization because of unintentional instigations (i.e., fellow group members' envy and competition), but not because of intentional instigations (i.e., high performers' condescending behaviors). Next, this study generally supports the proposition that collective identity and justice climate mitigate unfavorable social comparison mechanisms and high performance victim phenomenon whereas climate of concern for employees, social interaction, and transformational leadership did not mitigate these phenomena.
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    Team intelligence and team personality predicting team performance
    (2013-09) Simon, Kara Marie
    Teams have become an important part of many organizations. In order to create effective teams, it is important to know how team composition affects team performance. This study meta-analytically assesses the impact of team intelligence and team personality on team performance. This study expands on previous meta-analyses in several ways. While previous studies have tended to focus on sample-weighted mean correlations (e.g. Prewett et al., 2009) or population correlations (corrected for unreliability in predictor and criterion; e.g. Bell, 2007), this study presents operational validities, which correct for unreliability in the criterion but not unreliability in the predictor. These validities are more useful from an applied standpoint, because in the field, practitioners use intelligence and personality tests as they are; they do not use an intelligence construct or personality constructs to determine who will participate in a team. This study also expands on previous studies by examining additional moderator variables. For each team predictor variable-team performance relationship, the effects of task complexity, number of members per team, type of performance (i.e. task, OCB, CWB), and purpose of performance rating (i.e. research or development, administrative) are examined. In addition, for team agreeableness-team performance and team extraversion-team performance relationships, whether the task is people-oriented or not is examined as a moderator. For team agreeableness-team performance and team emotional stability-team performance relationships, the current study investigates the effect of whether the team existed for the same length of time as the study (e.g. lab studies) vs. whether team existed prior to and/or after the study.