A Systems Approach to Diagnosing and Measuring Teamwork in Complex Sociotechnical Organizations

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to diagnosing and measuring teamwork in complex sociotechnical systems. First, the underlying theoretical constructs that have inspired the development and use of a multilevel model to study team phenomena from a general systems perspective are presented. Next, in an attempt to theoretically ground the construct, "flow state" will be presented as an isomorphic variable in a multi-level model, meaning it is represented similarly at the system, team, and individual level. Approaching processes embedded in organizations from this perspective allows diagnosis of the systemic influences that contribute most to the variance in performance, identification of pervasive latent systemic failures, and the development of a tailored taxonomy of behavioral teamwork dimensions, which can then be translated into metrics to measure teamwork within any observable complex process.

Group flow: A scoping review of definitions, theoretical approaches, measures and findings

“…A multi-level model of flow in sociotechnical systems was developed by Duff and colleagues [38]. This model extrapolates the original Flow Concept of Csikszentmihalyi’s work group [7, 9, 10] across different levels.…”

“…Four publications used [43] or suggested [38, 39, 42] quantitative outcomes other than self-report questionnaires to measure group flow from an external perspective. In more detail, Gloor et al [43] made use of sensors assessing body movement of every group member.…”

“…The use of SNA was also proposed by Gaggioli and colleagues [39]. Finally, Duff et al [38] planned to measure group flow via team functioning with a variable that assesses compensatory strategies. Compensatory strategies can be defined as a group’s responses to group flow disruptions.…”

“…Whereas some theoretical approaches relate to a specific context, others are unspecific and can be applied to any context. For instance, the multi-level model of flow in sociotechnical systems [38] was specifically designed to be applied in the work context; in contrast, Networked Flow Model [39, 41, 42] is context-unspecific.…”

Assessing Shared Strategic Understanding

“…Also, distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995) is closely related to the applied field of team cognition, as is the research field of sociotechnical systems (Emery & Trist, 1960;Stahl, 2010;Duff et al, 2014) and command and control (Andriole & Halpin, 1986;Stanton et al, 2008;Prytz et al, 2010). The domains considered as target domains for this thesis are where work has to be coordinated among multiple actors, in dynamic and complex situations with multiple and changing goals.…”