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Organizations are increasingly using team-based work structures to solve complex challenges and issues. Such teams require team members to have shared cognitions – a shared, accurate and complimentary understanding of team processes – to enhance team performance. The purpose of the current research is to explore the impact of shared cognitions on team processes and team performance.

The current research focused on shared cognitions of teammate knowledge and expertise while working in a team environment. Using an experimental design with 20 teams collaborating on six problem-solving questions, the authors test hypotheses pertaining to the relationship between shared cognitions about team member expertise and team processes and team performance.

Analysis of variance finds that teams with a greater level of shared cognitions of team member expertise have enhanced team process and greater team performance than teams without shared cognitions.

Recommendations are made for future research and practice based on such findings. The authors discuss ways in which the findings of this study can contribute to greater team process and performance in schools, organizations and athletic teams, noting the additional ability to apply such findings in virtual settings.

Team cognition is known to be an important predictor of team process and performance. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) reported the results of an extensive meta-analytic examination into the role of team cognition in team process and performance, and documented the unique contribution of team cognition to these outcomes while controlling for the motivational dynamics of the team. Research on team cognition has exploded since the publication of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analysis, which raises the question: to what extent do the effect sizes reported in their 2010 meta-analysis still hold with the inclusion of newly published research? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors updated DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ meta-analytic database with newly published studies, nearly doubling its size, and reran their original analyses examining the role of team cognition in team process and performance.

Overall, results show consistent effects for team cognition in team process and performance. However, whereas originally compilational cognition was more strongly related to both team process and team performance than was compositional cognition, in the updated database, compilational cognition is more strongly related to team process and compositional cognition is more strongly related to team performance.

Meta-analyses are only as generalizable as the databases they are comprised of. Periodic updates are necessary to incorporate newly published studies and confirm that prior findings still hold. This study confirms that the findings of DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus’ (2010) team cognition meta-analysis continue to generalize to today’s teams.

This chapter introduces electroencephalography (EEG), a measure of neurophysiological activity, as a critical method for investigating individual and team decision-making and cognition. EEG is a useful tool for expanding the theoretical and research horizons in organizational cognitive neuroscience, with a lower financial cost and higher portability than other neuroimaging methods (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging). This chapter briefly reviews past work that has applied cognitive neuroscience methods to investigate cognitive processes and outcomes. The focus is on describing contemporary EEG measures that reflect individual cognition and compare them to complementary measures in the field of psychology and management. The authors discuss how neurobiological measures of cognition relate to and may predict both individual cognitive performance and team cognitive performance (decision-making). This chapter aims to assist scholars in the field of managerial and organizational cognition in understanding the complementarity between psychological and neurophysiological methods, and how they may be combined to develop new hypotheses in the intersection of these research fields.

Corporate digital transformation (DT) and top management team (TMT) internationalization seem to be concomitant phenomena in recent years, the former is a major change and a thorough transformation requiring continuously new technologies and ideas. Excitingly, the latter shows a relatively broad vision, a large risk appetite and interest in new things. Does TMT internationalization promote DT? This question is essential for DT. Given that, this article will aim to discuss and examine whether and how TMT internationalization affects corporate DT.

This article takes China's A-share listed manufacturing companies from 2011 to 2019 as a sample. The quantitative text analysis method is used to measure attention related to digitalization. This paper discusses: (1) The decision-making logic and cognitive process mechanism of “TMT internationalization–attention related to digitalization–corporate DT”. (2) The moderating effect of shared corporate mission of the TMT on the cognitive process of decision-making, that is, the social process of transforming individual cognition into team cognition, and the social process of transforming team cognition into corporate decision-making.

TMT internationalization promotes DT. As an external manifestation of team cognition, attention plays a positive role as an intermediary mechanism. Specifically, executives with overseas experience have higher urgency assessment and manageable assessment, thus affecting their attention to digitalization positively, thereby promoting DT. This article does not demonstrate the moderating effect of shared corporate mission on the cognitive process, but it promotes DT directly, and only plays a role in the precognitive stage.

This article is the first one to study the relationship between TMT internationalization and corporate DT, which has practical guiding significance for DT and the “going out” strategies of the TMT. Also, the combination of upper echelons theory and cognitive theory opens up the black box of the strategic process. Lastly, this research explores the formation process of team cognition, which is always neglected by previous studies of the TMT demographic characteristics.

Cognition, conflict and cohesion constitute an inseparable body of group dynamics in entrepreneurial teams. There have been few studies of how entrepreneurial team members interact with each other to enhance venture performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model that explains the trinity of cognition, conflict and cohesion in terms of social interaction between entrepreneurial team members.

Drawing upon the existing literature concerning entrepreneurial teams, the hypothesized model posits that shared cognition influences team cohesion through the mediating effects of intra-team conflicts. The model also postulates that team cohesion is positively associated with new venture performance and entrepreneurial satisfaction. Structural equation modeling is used to test the hypothesized model, using data that were collected from 203 entrepreneurial teams from technology-based companies in Taiwan.

The results show that shared cognition in entrepreneurial team members maintains team cohesion by restraining conflict and that team cohesion has a positive influence on entrepreneurial members’ satisfaction and new venture profitability.

The leader of a new venture team must endeavor to improve shared cognition between entrepreneurial members. To strengthen shared cognition, the leader can hold formal workshops to build consensus, informal meetings to share views, or use social media to enhance common understanding.

This paper verifies the connections between shared cognition, conflicts and cohesion in entrepreneurial teams in predicting new venture success and highlights the importance of cultivating a shared cognition in an entrepreneurial team to manage conflicts.

This commentary focuses on S. A. McComb's chapter on the process of mental model convergence and provides guidance for advancing this research stream. McComb's chapter highlights many of the theoretical and methodological challenges that have plagued the study of cognition in teams. This commentary addresses those challenges and offers suggestions for the next steps in this field. Specifically, it considers the complex and abstract nature of team cognition and offers an elaborated model for understanding cognitive similarity that includes cognitive similarity configurations.

Team cognition research continues to evolve as the need for understanding and improving complex problem solving itself grows. Complex problem solving requires members to engage in a number of complicated collaborative processes to generate solutions. This chapter illustrates how the Macrocognition in Teams model, developed to guide research on these processes, can be utilized to propose how intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) could be developed to train collaborative problem solving. Metacognitive prompting, based upon macrocognitive processes, was offered as an intervention to scaffold learning these complex processes. Our objective is to provide a theoretically grounded approach for linking intelligent tutoring research and development with team cognition. In this way, team members are more likely to learn how to identify and integrate relevant knowledge, as well as plan, monitor, and reflect on their problem-solving performance as it evolves. We argue that ITSs that utilize metacognitive prompting that promotes team planning during the preparation stage, team knowledge building during the execution stage, and team reflexivity and team knowledge sharing interventions during the reflection stage can improve collaborative problem solving.

The aim of this paper is to examine how personality composition in teams related to team taskwork understanding (TTU) and transactive memory systems (TMS) over time. Additionally, the study examined the relationship between TTU and TMS, and three team criteria variables: performance, satisfaction, and cohesion.

A longitudinal study was conducted with 27 service management teams involving 178 undergraduate students in a restaurant setting. The restaurant was open to the public so the team outcomes had real world consequences. Each team served between 90-140 customers.

Results showed that team mean-level conscientiousness was significantly positively related to TTU and TMS in the initial stage of team formation. On the other hand, team mean-level agreeableness had a significant positive relationship with TTU and TMS later on in the team's lifecycle. Furthermore, significant positive relationships were found between TMS and team performance, TMS and team satisfaction, and TTU and team cohesion.

The current work looked at how various team cognitions develop in teams over time as a result of personality composition in teams which has not been tested before. Unlike prior research, this study was conducted in a field setting instead of an experimental study in the laboratory. Finally, no research exists studying these relationships in a hospitality context. Therefore, the current work extends the generalizability of the team composition and team cognition theories.

This commentary suggests areas that could be further developed in Reiter-Palmon, Herman, and Yammarino's call for a multi-level analysis of the underlying cognitive structures of both teams and individuals. The chapter by Reiter-Palmon, Herman, and Yammarino effectively demonstrates the importance of cognition in the understanding of individual and team creativity. However, the importance of other issues – in particular, team process and composition – also needs to be more fully considered when moving from the individual level to the team level. This commentary addresses the conceptual challenge of attempting to take a purely cognitive approach for teams, and presents some further arguments for considering how team process and composition influence team cognition and ultimately team creative problem solving. It also discusses the value of using some type of team intervention to enhance team creative problem-solving processes. Finally, it argues for the importance of considering the dynamic nature of some teams and examining how changes in team membership can affect team cognition.

The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.

Using qualitative research and in-depth interviews, a sample of 32 project managers with experience in traditional and agile methods acting in Brazil and internationally participated in the research process. The analysis process, utilising coding techniques, involved stages: open, axial, coding and selective coding. These stages encompassed the evaluation of categories based on a hierarchy, in order to determine an appropriate level of abstraction that properly explains theoretical findings.

The results indicate that distributed team cognition is significant for collaborative problem-solving. The data from the interviews allowed the proposal of a model of cognition, and the identification of the elements that support it.

Understand how aspects of distributed team cognition can impact the behaviours of the project professional and contribute to problem-solving in the project environment.

The elements observed affects the collaborative problem-solving by presenting a model of distributed cognition, which is composed by directed communication, collective interaction, trust building and collaborative behaviour.