Content area
Full text
Introduction
It is increasingly common that organizations deploy teams to deal with complex, nonroutine tasks such as designing new products (Carlile, 2004) and dealing with customer problems (Kirkman et al., 2004). By bringing together multiple individuals, a team holds the knowledge resources critical for accomplishing an assigned task (Carlile, 2004). Team members structure the assigned task, are dependent on one another in carrying out task-related assignments and are collectively responsible for task accomplishment (Martynov and Abdelzaher, 2016;van Vijfeijken et al., 2002).
Because teams occupy a central facet of organizations, scholars have invested considerable effort in studying team effectiveness antecedents. A key research area is shared mental models (SMMs). However, the term “shared” in SMMs is vague, as it can reflect similarity, complementary or divided (Mohammed et al., 2010). What is “shared” and how such “sharing” materializes remain perplexing issues. Our views are influenced by those of Weick and Roberts (1993) and Cannon-Bowers et al. (1993), who suggested that it is a convergence, but only where required, in team members’ expectations regarding one another’s behaviors so that the members can adjust their actions accordingly. Mohammed et al. (2010) further asserted that “Within a team, particular member roles may require convergence of knowledge, where others may be better served by complementary or distributed mental models” (p. 904). In their review of SMM research, Mohammed et al. (2010) noted that SMM research “[…] should be nuanced by a detailed understanding of the team role structure and the team task.” (p. 904). Surprisingly, little progress toward such an objective has occurred.
Current work has predominantly delved into similar mental models across all team members as synonymous with SMMs. However, the empirical work has evidenced conflicting findings, with some studies yielding positive relationships between similar SMMs and team effectiveness while others do not (Bergiel et al., 2015; Lim and Klein, 2006; Resick et al., 2010; Mohammed et al., 2010). Meta-analyses also indicate contradictory results regarding whether similar mental models concerning the task components play a more critical role than (partially or largely) dissimilar mental models in predicting team performance (DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2017). An explanation suggested for these inconsistencies relates to SMM accuracy (Lim and Klein, 2006; Resick et...