Essay: Exploring Shared Mental Models Variations in Timeline / Literature Review

 Exploring Shared Mental Models Variations in Timeline 
 LITERATURE REVIEW 
 METHOD 
 FINDINGS 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT & REFERENCES 

How shared mental models(SMM) work

Mental model is regard as a simplification of the world that enable people to quickly understand and act in new or unknown situations (Badke-Schaub, Neumann, Lauche, & Mohammed, 2007). As people work together as a team, the concept of shared mental models represents the similarity, overlap and complementarity that team members distributed within a team (Badke-Schaub et al., 2007). The model was built during the interaction between members, which enables them to subsume new information into existing patterns without excessive communication, and achieve complex tasks (Bierhals et al., 2007).

SMM is a general concept that contains multiple mental activities in team, Badke-Schaub (2007) generalized four aspects of mental models for studying team works: ‘task’, the understanding to the strategic and constraints of the project context; ‘process’, the responsibilities and roles of the members, and their working pattern during the project; ‘team member’, the qualities of each team members, including their capabilities, personalities, interests and other individual characteristic; and ‘competence’, refers to the motivation and cohesion to distribute within the team.

SMM tend to focus more on the cause and effect among team members’ interplay than individual actions (Badke-Schaub et al., 2007). Thus sharedness is seen as the state that implies the balance of overlapped and distributed knowledge between team members that influences the quality of SMM.

The value of SMM

Most of the research of SMM are underlying the assumption that it provides positive affect to team performance through sharedness, especially to teams which perform tasks that require higher interdependence among team members (Bierhals et al., 2007). Furthermore, the tasks are multi-activities like the design problems demand complex problem-solving, or the creative process requires diversity of thinking (Bierhals et al., 2007). In short, it is the uncertainty and dynamic teamwork process that requires sharedness between team members among multiple aspects to perform iterative interlinking and exchanging information.

Different aspects of SMM influence different aspects of performance. For instance, Badke- Schaub et al. (2007) identified that the process model and the team member model are the important submodels that contributes to effective group performance. On the other hand, the competence model has the function of driving force for members to build the share understandings. Therefore studying SMM through different aspects according to its sub-mental models provides concrete insights to form the comprehensive SMM.

However, Bierhals et al. (2007) also concerned the balance of sharedness. While low levels of sharedness implies a lack of coordination, high levels of sharedness might lead to excessive similarities among members and can cause negative effects on performance. To what extent the sharedness is proper under different aspects of mental models remain silent.

Who should share SMM

Regard to the sharedness between the members that are involved in the project, Badke- Schaub et al. (2007) raised the issue that it is not the sharedness of entire group, but the team members who collaborate directly and shared higher cognition had more relevant to drive the performance effectively. In line with the significant influence of close collaboration members, McGrath, Arrow & Berdahl (2000) suggested people to start treating small groups as adaptive, dynamic and complex system, and draws on exploring the dynamic process.

The missing of embed context

McGrath et al. (2000) referred groups as open and complex systems that interact with both the inner systems of members embedded within, and the external system of context that they are embedded. Gersick (1988) also mentioned that groups are often treated as closed system in previous research, ignoring the environmental and social context, in which it was indeed the crucial factor that influences group effectiveness. In short, the field studies on real-life groups embed in social context is missing.

The long-term perspective in timeline

The literature indicates that the field had been limited by the conceptual and methodological paradigms since most of them are laboratory experimentation with short time periods (McGrath et al., 2000), and this may be seen as implying the lack of exploration of SMM in a long-term period.


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