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The purpose of this paper is to find the new analysis method of virtual team effectiveness in team building, as well as various HR tools.

This paper investigated 62 virtual teams, distinguished between identified mental models and distributed mental models, tested the relation among team characteristics, and shared mental models and virtual team effectiveness using hierarchical linear modeling.

Results demonstrated that time would enhance the effect of shared mental models on task effectiveness; virtual team size would affect the relation between shared mental model and cooperative effectiveness, team size could enhance the effect of identified mental model on cooperative effectiveness, but weaken the relation between distributed mental model and cooperative effectiveness. A need is found for application of hierarchical linear modeling of shared mental model on virtual team effectiveness.

Accessibility and availability of data are the main limitations which apply.

This paper presents a new approach of optimal choice of virtual team building. The paper is aimed at HR and psychological researches and managers, especially those who dealt with people, and provides very useful advice for team management in enterprises.

Mental model convergence occurs as team members interact. By collecting information and observing behaviors through their interactions, team members’ individual mental models evolve into shared mental models. This process requires a cognitive shift in an individual's focal level. Specifically, the individual assigned to the team must shift his or her focus from thinking about the team domain using an individual perspective to thinking about it from a team perspective. Thus, mental model convergence may be the key to understanding how individuals are transformed into team members. This chapter presents a framework describing the mental model convergence process that draws on the extant research on group development and information processing. It also examines temporal aspects of mental model convergence, the role of mental model contents on the convergence process, and the relationship between converged mental models and team functioning. Preliminary evidence supporting the framework and the important role that converged mental models play in high-performing teams is provided. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of this mental model convergence framework for research and practice.

This qualitative study investigated how small group communication influences the development of shared mental models in a committee of public librarians addressing a problem-solving task. It examines the influence of communication themes, functions, roles, and rules on the group's development of shared mental models about the task and about team interaction. Data were collected over the course of a year from group meetings, email messages, group documents, and participant interviews and then analyzed using existing coding schemes and qualitative coding techniques. The findings indicate that within the group there was a strong superficial convergence around the task mental model and the team interaction mental model but a weaker convergence at a deeper level. Analysis of the group communication data shows that the group focused discussion on understanding the problem and identifying tasks, enacting group roles and rules that facilitated sharing information. The functions of their messages focused on task communication. The findings suggest that, in this group, communication themes most heavily influenced the development of a shared mental model about the task, while communication roles, rules, and functions were more influential toward the development of a shared mental model about team interaction. Implications for practice include adopting intentional tactics for surfacing mental models at various points in the group life and anchoring the emerging model within the collective cognition of the group through devices such as narratives, objects, or documentary materials.

The construct of shared mental models has garnered interest among team researchers as a means to explain how teams develop into highly coordinated units. McComb (this volume) contributes to this body of work by synthesizing a host of empirical findings and theoretical assertions into a model of mental model convergence. This advancement is significant, because it begins to shed light on how shared mental models may develop in teams. The present commentary takes McComb's work a step further by combining it with findings from the area of team training. The result is a set of propositions describing when various training interventions may be most beneficial to the team and the mental model convergence process, and why. These propositions are intended to stimulate further efforts to empirically validate team-training strategies as a means to foster development of shared mental models.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the characteristics of strategic decision-making team’s mental model and its performance. The authors propose that the relationship between mental models and performance is two-way, rather than one-way. Thus, performance feedback should, in turn, influence strategic behavior and future performance by either triggering or hindering the learning process.

The authors conduct the research in the setting of a simulation experiment. A longitudinal data set was collected from 36 teams functioning as strategic decision makers over three periods.

This study provides support for the positive impacts of both the complexity and centrality of a team’s mental model on its performance. The authors also find that positive performance feedback reduces changes in complexity and centrality of team mental models due to cognitive inertia.

The study contributes to the literature by investigating the specific mechanisms that underlie mental model evolution. Different from the existing studies on team mental models that mainly focus on similarity of these shared cognitive structures, this study examines another two characteristics of team mental model, complexity and centrality, that are more relevant to the strategic decision-making process but has not been extensively studied in the team literature. In addition, this study reveals that performance feedback has different effects on team mental models depending on the referents – past performance or social comparison – which advances the understanding of the learning effects of performance feedback.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the roles of team mental models (TMMs) and backup behaviors for teams operating under emergent and dynamic situations. Specifically, the authors used a biased-corrected bootstrapping approach to assess the mediation effects of backup behaviors between the similarity of TMMs and team performance.

TMMs are a representation of the common understanding and beliefs in terms of task requirements or teamwork skills among different team members. It has wide implementations in various teams that are required to adapt quickly to an emergent and dynamic environment. The construct of TMMs has been studied extensively in previous literature, indicating a strong relationship between TMMs and team performance. However, how TMMs affect team performance under emergent and dynamic situations is only partially understood.

The findings of this study suggest that the similarity of task-focused mental models positively affects team performance through the mediation effects of backup behaviors. In contrast, the similarity of team-focused mental models does not positively affect backup behaviors and team performance.

This study contributes to the TMMs literature by investigating how teams perform in an emergent and dynamic environment. It not only provides theoretical support to the similarity of TMMs–backup behaviors–team performance relationships but has important implications in terms of team training and decision-making for teams operating under such conditions.

Severe misunderstandings have been proved to cause significant delays and financial overruns in large engineering projects with teams consisting of people from Western and Asian cultures. The purpose of this study was to determine if differences in shared cognition may explain some of the crucial misunderstandings in intercultural production teams.

The study has used systematizing the person–group relationship (SPGR) survey methodology, supported by interviews, to study mental models in six South Korean teams that also includes Norwegian engineers (52 individuals). In so doing, the study uses the theoretical framework of Healey et al. (2015), where X-mental representations involve actions that are automated and subconscious and C-mental representations involve actions that are verbalized reasonings and conscious. People may share mental models on the X-level without sharing on the C-level, depicting a situation where teams are coordinated without understanding why (surface discordance).

The findings of the study are that people with different cultural backgrounds in an intercultural team may learn to adapt to each other when the context is standardized, without necessarily understanding underlying meanings and intentions behind actions (surface discordance). This may create a perception about team members not needing to explicate opinions (sharing at the C-level). This in turn may create challenges in anomalous situations, where deliberate sharing of C-mental models is required to find new solutions and/or admit errors so that they may be adjusted. The findings indicate that the non-sharing of explicated reasonings (C-mental models) between Norwegians and Koreans contributed in sharing C-mental models, despite having an implicit agreement on how to perform standard tasks (sharing X-mental models).

The study is limited to Norwegians and Koreans working in production teams. Future studies could benefit from more cultures and/or different team contexts. The authors’ believe that the findings may also concern other standardized environments and corroborate previous perspectives on intercultural teams needing to both train (develop similar X-mental representations) and reflect together (develop similar C-mental representations).

Based on our findings we suggest the using of cross-cultural training at a deeper level than previously suggested, training in both social interaction patterns as well as verbalizing logical reasoning together. This entails reaching a shared and joint understanding of not only actions but also values, feelings and teamwork functions. This can be enabled by group conversations and training in dynamic team patterns. Important is, however, that standardized contexts may dampen the perception of the need to do both.

The study contributes to current research on intercultural teams by focusing on a dual-mode perspective on shared cognition, relating these to contextual factors. In this, the authors’ answer the call in previous research for more information on contextual matters and a focus on interaction in intercultural teams. The study also shows how the differences between X-mental and C-mental shared mental models play out in a practical setting.

This article aims to examine considerations and strategies for improving team performance in decision‐making by teaching teams to use collaborative modeling based on team mental models.

The article describes the nature of shared mental models and collaborative modeling, the potential effects of collaborative modeling on team performance, and a perspective on communication imperatives that facilitate collaborative modeling. The articles builds upon this information to suggest five imperatives for teams to help them develop collaborative modeling skills

The article offers strategies in the form of five imperatives for teams to observe in order to build skills in collaborative modeling and improve team performance by improving team members’ ability to effect collaborative modeling to accomplish team tasks and goals.

Research over the years in mental modeling and communication has created a powerful argument that effective communication and shared mental models improves team performance. However there is little about application of this concept in the literature. The next step for researchers is to develop application models for collaborative modeling and test those models through empirical research. This paper offers an application model based on imperatives to be observed by decision‐making teams in order to facilitate the creation of shared mental models of team tasks and processes.

Although previous research proved positive impacts of team reflection on team outcomes, especially team performance and innovation, there are only a few insights in to which factors (mediators) account for these positive effects and over what period these effects unfold (temporal effects). To close this gap, this paper aims to investigate the direct effects of team reflection on team performance over time, as well as indirect effects because of the development of similar and accurate team mental models to explain this relationship.

Within a longitudinal experimental study on 22 student project teams working on a complex problem-solving task, the effects of repeated team reflection interventions on the development of team performance and team mental models over six measuring times were analysed.

Results show that team reflections caused significant increases in team performance and team mental models over time. Results also provide evidence that team mental models’ quality mediates the effects of team reflections on team performance.

The results are interesting for both research fields, team reflection and team mental models, as the findings indicate the merits of recurrent reflection for improving team mental models’ quality.

For organisational practice, the question of how reflection processes can be deliberately triggered in teams and effectively integrated into the daily routine should be considered.

The findings accentuate the role of team reflections for improving team performance team mental models over time. By continuous reflecting teams increase awareness and insights into effective team processes and strategies (i.e. shared and accurate team mental models), which lead to better performance.

This paper aims to explore the role of mental models in knowledge development in order to demonstrate how the type and strength of the mental models held by a team contribute to its success in general and to innovation in particular.

Two cases are analysed (a successful and an unsuccessful team) which were developed via observation and interviews. The mental models in each case were analysed to map them to the success or otherwise of the teams.

The first case demonstrates that mental models in a multidisciplinary team can provide opportunity for a shared generation of knowledge for process innovation while open to external influence. The second case demonstrates that, where there are strongly shared mental models that prevent the team from constructing an accurate picture of their present by closing out external influences and pre‐selecting desired knowledge, opportunities for innovation are shut down.

Where mental models provide a sharing framework without closing out the networks and systems that sustain them, they can foster and support innovation. Managing team openness becomes a priority for supporting innovation. Team leaders will need to consider what types of mental models are developing and foster a focus on innovative outcomes and not processes. A concentration on understanding the current context via challenging given assumptions is recommended.

The paper offers clear, practical examples of the results of teams being encouraged to utilise open and closed systems of mental models.