Social cybernetics of team performance variability

Details

• Personal Author:
  Bizarro A ; Calabrese C ; Dove-Steinkamp M ; Henning R
• Description:
  The complex nature of social behaviors poses significant challenges to researchers and practitioners alike interested in understanding and managing sources of team performance variability. Teamwork is generally defined as a group of individuals working together to accomplish a common goal or purpose. Paradoxically, while most human factors researchers are comfortable attributing goal-directed behavior to teams, there is a general reluctance to delve into the scientific basis of these controlled behaviors. The inconsistent way that controlled behaviors are conceptualized at the team level versus individual team-member level also reveals the need for a more coherent systems approach. A working premise of this chapter is that a more consistent application of behavioral systems principles in modeling team behaviors can address these shortcomings and go a long way toward improving our understanding of sources of team performance variability. Social cybernetics, an area of emphasis within behavioral cybernetics (T.J. Smith & Smith, 1987a), provides a comprehensive systems approach for identifying the key control processes and task design factors that contribute to team performance variability. As summarized below, empirical research studies have identified fundamental ways that individual team members engage in joint control activities during teamwork, and how these design factors impact team performance variability (this evidence shows that context specificity influences variability in team performance, recapitulating the theme of performance-design interaction (Chapter 1, Section 1.1.2) addressed in previous chapters). The social cybernetic model also provides a means to conceptualize the inherent trade-off between behavior that is controlled by individual team members or jointly controlled by the team. A key to understanding this trade-off is to understand the origins of behavioral control from a multilevel perspective. Systematic examination of these multilevel control relationships through the lens of social cybernetics can help guide human factors design efforts to limit team performance variability. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Behavior Men Nervous System Occupational Health Safety Women Workplace
• Keywords:
  Attitude Humans Models Psychophysiology Psychosocial Factors Sociological Factors Work Environment Workers
• ISBN:
  9781466579712
• Publisher:
  CRC Press
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  Connecticut ; OSHA Region 1
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  193-210
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20047586
• Citation:
  Variability in human performance. Smith TJ, Henning RA, Wade MG, Fisher T, eds. London: CRC Press, 2014 Aug; :193-210
• Editor(s):
  Smith TJ; Henning RA; Wade MG; Fisher T
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2014
• Performing Organization:
  University of Connecticut Storrs, Storrs-Mansfield
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Variability in human performance
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:55f9e8e7482aabc5ba2c12b841599df6e8c1adb171400062aaf22d92f8773e4aa425101bad6079b43d2ce2591b1fb8c24b6be00f935cab5380d699c55f3e503a
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/202601/cdc_202601_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 867.95 KB ]