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Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
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6


Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams

The Army has long been structured around teams as the basic unit of work.1 Teams enable individuals to accomplish two critical aspects of military work: work “at scale” and work that is highly complex. The Army is a full-scale organization, which must accomplish varied missions ranging from special operations and provincial reconstruction to stability and support. First, teams enable individuals to scale up effort in order to accomplish enormous tasks by pooling their effort. Second, teams enable military work by facilitating the specialization of labor. Individuals can be selected for particular jobs, trained for those jobs, and develop deep expertise. By working in teams, individuals transcend the limitations of their narrow but deep knowledge and skill sets. However, as the complexity of military operations has increased, the basic unit of work accomplishment in the Army, and across the military services, is shifting from teams to teams-of-teams, often called multiteam systems (MTSs). Accordingly, the teams and MTSs that soldiers work in every day are influential aspects of their context (DeChurch and Zaccaro, 2010).

For the purposes of this report, the committee adopts the following definition of an MTS (Mathieu et al., 2001, p. 290):

Two or more teams that interface directly and interdependently in response to environmental contingencies toward the accomplishment of collective goals. MTS boundaries are defined by virtue of the fact that all teams

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1Within this chapter of the report only, the term “team” is applied generally to refer to groups of people working together to accomplish a goal. This includes, but is not limited to, Army small units.

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

within the system, while pursuing different proximal goals, share at least one common distal goal; and in doing so exhibit input, process and outcome interdependence with at least one other team in the system.

Mathieu and colleagues (2001) apply the MTS concept to understand the nature of interdependence among the teams that respond to the scene of an automobile accident. Teams drawn from different organizations—emergency medical technicians, firefighters, police, surgeons, and recovery units—all work toward specialized team goals (e.g., the firefighters extract the victim from the automobile), while at the same time working across teams to accomplish a shared MTS goal (e.g., all teams responding to the accident seek to save lives).

In military environments, a similar interdependence exists among small units with distinct equipment, training, and objectives that work with other small units to achieve a single mission. Specifically, research into MTSs may help the Army answer questions such as:

  • How do trust and cohesion (affective properties) develop within MTSs? What conditions foster the emergence of desirable affective properties and mitigate the emergence of undesirable ones?
  • How do shared mental models and transactive memory systems (cognitive properties that describe knowledge held in common or distributed among team members) develop within MTSs?
  • How do MTS members develop confidence in the collective and willingness to put forth effort for the good of the group (motivational properties)?
  • What conditions (i.e., compositional, linkage, and developmental attributes of MTSs) foster desirable properties and mitigate the emergence of undesirable ones?
  • What are the positive and negative consequences of affective, cognitive, and motivational properties of the MTS for individual readiness, team readiness, and MTS functioning?
  • What situational factors (e.g., deployed context) moderate the effects of MTS properties on outcomes (i.e., individual, team, and system)?
  • If undesirable properties develop, how can “early warning” detection systems be implemented for leadership to use to reshape these properties?
  • What interventions/countermeasures can be used to regulate the development of properties in teams, between teams, and in systems of teams?
Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

There are three defining features of MTSs (Zaccaro et al., 2012):

  1. They are minimally composed of at least two component teams.
  2. Individuals within MTSs work toward hierarchically arranged goals; goals at the lower level require coordination with the members of their component team, whereas higher level goals require greater coordination with other teams.
  3. Interactions between teams in the MTS are driven by various degrees of task interdependencies among component teams.

The MTS resides at a unit of analysis higher than the team, but smaller than the organization. MTSs are “teams of teams.” MTSs can be composed of teams from within a single organization, such as the Army, or can include teams drawn from multiple organizations. Goodwin and colleagues (2012) offer rich descriptions MTSs that involve Army units. These MTSs can consist of small units and teams within the Army, or they can involve Army teams with teams from other organizations. For example, the traditional military headquarters is an MTS consisting of a command team overseeing small units that focus on different goals. One staff section pursues personnel goals, another intelligence goals, another pursues operations and logistics goals, and so forth. Each of these staff sections works as a team to achieve its unique goals, while also working with the other staff sections to pursue the broader goals of the headquarters. The decisions of one staff section, for instance the personnel group, set constraints on and require resources from other groups, in this case operations and logistics.

Army teams can be embedded in “all Army” multiteam systems, such as the one just described, but they can also be embedded in cross-organizational MTSs. Goodwin and colleagues (2012) provide a vivid example of the challenges of these collaborations involving military and nonmilitary units drawn from organizations that can have very different, even conflicting goals, as well as different cultures and motivational states. Task Force Phoenix was an MTS with the goal to improve the security of the local people. The teams that worked interdependently toward this goal were drawn from the U.S. military, the U.S./Allied military (which includes soldiers from NATO partner nations), the host nation’s police forces, and the host nation’s military. Although these teams had to work closely to achieve the MTS’s security goal, the teams’ embeddedness in four different organizational/national contexts created additional pressures that tended to pull the teams apart. For example, as the authors describe, in Task Force Phoenix law enforcement officers and military soldiers represented organizational cultures with different assumptions about “bad guys.” Law enforcement officers hold a fundamental perspective that “bad guys are to be arrested

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

and brought to justice under the law.” In contrast, military soldiers hold the perspective that, “bad guys are to be defeated … so as to remove their ability to fight” (Goodwin et al., 2012, p. 70).

When MTS component teams are drawn from different embedding organizations, as in the example of Task Force Phoenix, there can be many potential sources of friction (including differences in technological reliance for coordination) and differences in structure (e.g., organization into hierarchies with strong versus weak chains of command). Of particular significance, even when teams are embedded within a single organization, differences between teams’ level of experience, functional specialization, etc., can exert no less powerful forces pulling the teams apart and harming the capacity for the MTS to function as a coherent system.

Teams can also be a part of multiple MTSs at any given time, working with different component teams in each. Hence, the traditional Army small units (e.g., squads and platoons) can be, but are not necessarily, MTSs. MTS collectives often connect military units to groups working in other organizations, to accomplish tasks that require coordination across agencies (e.g., joint forces) and nations (e.g., international task forces), as well as spanning the military-civilian divide (e.g., provincial reconstruction teams).

Teams have long been recognized as providing a valuable entity for understanding the most salient aspects of an individual’s immediate work context (Edmondson, 1999; Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). When work becomes the province of specialized teams, a second set of integration challenges arises as these teams work together as complex systems. From a military MTS perspective, the individual soldier is affected not only by the context of that soldier’s immediate small unit but also by other teams, both military and civilian, U.S. and foreign, with whom that soldier’s unit interacts (Goodwin et al., 2012).

This chapter unfolds in two parts. First, the committee details the essential elements of the MTS as an organizational form and summarizes current evidence as it relates to the committee’s charge to understand the context of military environments. Second, we describe a potential research strategy to advance fundamental understanding of the context of military behavior from the MTS perspective, which culminates in the committee’s recommendation for basic research on MTSs as one element of the proposed research agenda.

THE MULTITEAM SYSTEM AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL FORM

The MTS was identified as an organizational form 13 years ago (Mathieu et al., 2001). Findings are beginning to accumulate with important insights into the elements of social context that affect not only individual behavior but the behavior of small teams as well. In fact, just as

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

teams are the immediate context for individual behavior, MTSs are the most proximate context for team behavior. As an example, if a small unit in the Army (in-group) is working closely with another unit (out-group) that the in-group members perceive to be very different from their own unit (e.g., a host nation police force), this will strengthen the internal cohesion of the (in-group) Army unit (Hogg and Terry, 2000). This is an example of how interaction with other teams as a part of larger systems can constitute an important aspect of a unit’s social context.

One of the most valuable aspects of the MTS perspective is that it enables context to be understood as arising from entities that are not located within the same embedded organization. Because the scope of many military operations puts small units in direct contact with foreign and nonmilitary units, these entities serve as an important part of the context of military environments. MTSs are not defined by formal organizational hierarchies (i.e., as represented by a standard organizational chart). A unit’s context includes those interdependent entities with whom the focal team works. If one were to try to understand a unit’s context by only looking at formal structures, an important source of context would be missed. MTSs are defined by actual workflows—through identification of the individuals and teams that need to work together in order to accomplish a mission. The remainder of this section summarizes the literature on MTSs as they relate to individual and team context in military settings (DeChurch and Mathieu, 2009; Marks et al., 2005; Mathieu et al., 2001; Zaccaro et al., 2012).

MTS Composition, Linkage, and Development

The effectiveness of an MTS can be explained through a generic systems model with three sets of MTS attributes (i.e., how the MTS is composed and organized) that serve as inputs into MTS processes (i.e., characteristics of how the MTS functions) (Zaccaro et al., 2012). The three types of MTS attributes are compositional attributes, linkage attributes, and developmental attributes. When teams work as part of an MTS, the compositional, linkage, and developmental attributes of that MTS are valuable for diagnosing the salient aspects of the context of the team. For example, the compositional attribute of diversity can have varying effects on cohesion, a group property that characterizes how strongly members internalize the core values of the team and work toward shared goals. Within an MTS, the diversity of each of the teams, as well as the diversity of the set of teams in the system, plays a role in shaping how the cohesive properties of the teams evolve. Teams low in diversity tend to be more internally cohesive than those with high diversity. When teams work with very different teams, their internal cohesion increases but the cohesion of the larger system tends to decrease.

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

Compositional Attributes

Compositional attributes refer to “the overall demographic features of the MTS, as well as the relative characteristics of component teams” (Zaccaro et al., 2012, p. 13). They include qualities such as the size of the MTS, the number of its individual team members, where the teams come from, and their diversity on several dimensions. One important compositional attribute is the degree to which MTS component teams are drawn from one larger organization (sometimes called “embedded MTSs”) or from different organizations (cross-boundary MTSs).

In a cross-boundary MTS, the component teams that must work together are themselves embedded in different organizations (e.g., the teams described in the auto accident scenario by Mathieu et al., 2001). The challenges of between-team coordination among teams in the MTS may be complicated by differences in organizational culture, operating procedures, or other constraints that affect some teams but not others. Cross-boundary MTSs abound in deployed military operations where teams from the U.S. military must work closely with international and nongovernmental organizations (Goodwin et al., 2012). Given the challenges that arise in cross-boundary MTSs and the lack of empirical research on them, the committee believes that studying them should be a priority in future Army research on social and organizational factors.

Linkage Attributes

Linkage attributes refer to the “linking mechanisms that connect component teams” (Zaccaro et al., 2012, p. 18) and include such features as the degree of interdependence among component teams, the leadership and power arrangements among such teams, and communication structures within the MTS. Of the three sets of MTS attributes, linkage attributes have received the most research attention. In fact, the research on MTS linkage attributes has been largely fueled by military research agencies, perhaps because it aligns well within existing programs on team decision making, organizational effectiveness, and leadership within, for example, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI). Studies on linkage attributes have thus far focused on leadership (e.g., DeChurch and Marks, 2006; DeChurch et al., 2011), coordination (e.g., Davison et al., 2012; Marks et al., 2005), and planning (e.g., Lanaj et al., 2013).

Empirical studies of MTS leadership have found that leadership functions (e.g., planning, coordination) need to be shifted from focusing solely on processes within a component team to focusing on integrating component teams. Effective MTS leaders use functional leadership behaviors

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

such as planning and coordination, but focus them on the interactions of a team across its boundaries with other teams, rather than inside its boundary, thereby integrating the efforts of the small team into the larger system. They use planning efforts as a way to contextualize what the team is doing in terms of the efforts of other teams (DeChurch and Marks, 2006). These positive between-team leadership behaviors have been linked to what is formally known as between-team process (Marks et al., 2005). Based on its review of the research on MTS leadership, the committee finds that leadership behaviors with this shift in focus are an effective way to foster between-team processes.

Other research on MTS leadership suggests that these between-team processes need to be enacted by formal leader teams, not by the teams themselves (Davison et al., 2012). Boundary-spanning attempts by the teams themselves were detrimental to MTS performance for two reasons. First, decentralized planning led to coordination failures. Having more individuals in the MTS engaged in planning increased the chances that teams would act discordantly. The complexity of managing a system of teams requires that a subset of boundary spanners do the planning, while system components refrain from improvisation. This challenge of coordination failures is well understood by Army leaders who seek unity in command and centralized planning that allows for decentralized execution though mission command. A second reason why decentralized planning was harmful to MTS performance was that it increased risk-seeking behavior. Having more individuals in the MTS engaged in planning diffused responsibility (Whyte, 1993). This set of findings is particularly useful to understanding MTSs operating in deployed settings where U.S. military leadership must connect its units to those of other organizations. In essence, these settings make it difficult to establish a purely centralized command structure that would serve to integrate the different teams drawn from the U.S. military with coalition partners or a host nation’s military.

Based on the importance of leadership to military operations, and the initial findings that certain patterns of leadership are better than others for facilitating between-team processes, the committee believes that further research should be conducted that explicitly explores the effect of leadership arrangements on between-team processes. The preceding chapter on status hierarchies summarizes an important body of research suggesting that, when people work in groups, they show a need to differentiate status and to develop a shared understanding within the group of who has higher status and who has less. Hence, the status hierarchy perspective is a promising way to investigate leadership “between-teams.”

A second set of studies on MTS linkage attributes examines coordination processes in MTSs. These studies distinguish within-team coordination from between-team coordination. Within-team coordination is defined as

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

individuals’ timing and sequencing of interdependent actions through verbal or behavioral means (Marks et al., 2001). Between-team coordination is the timing, sequencing, and integration of team actions with those of other teams (Marks et al., 2005). A repeated observation in conceptual and empirical research on MTSs is that between-team coordination is more difficult to achieve than within-team coordination (Davison et al., 2012; DeChurch and Zaccaro, 2010). A second finding is that between-team coordination is more important to MTS performance than is within-team coordination (Davison et al., 2012; DeChurch and Marks, 2006; Marks et al., 2005). Based on its review of the research, the committee finds that between-team processes are more predictive of MTS performance than are within-team processes.

One consequence of these findings is that the military is seeking to develop ways to facilitate between-team processes.2 Often these between-team processes are intended to enable military teams to work effectively with nonmilitary and/or international entities. This creates conditions where the processes and properties of military teams are affected by interactions occurring outside the team. Furthermore, there is a very real possibility that there are both positive and negative effects of between-team interaction. This prospect is perhaps most salient when military MTSs require close coordination among U.S. military teams and teams from the civilian sector and/or foreign militaries. In these situations, the coordination required may in fact weaken the normal effectiveness of the military leadership structure and other mechanisms through which unity of command and commander’s intent have traditionally been maintained. Thus, the committee believes the Army would benefit from basic research to examine the consequences of MTS support systems on (a) individual performance, (b) team outcomes, and (c) leadership effectiveness.

A recent study on MTS planning provides initial evidence that some between-team processes are both beneficial and harmful to MTS performance (Lanaj et al., 2013). Between-team planning was found to benefit MTS performance by way of increased motivation. Decentralized planning among component teams increased individuals’ proactivity and aspiration levels, both of which benefit MTS performance. However, decentralized planning also increased the teams’ affinity for risk, which ultimately harmed MTS performance.

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2For example, see Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) W911NF-13-R-0001 (2013). Available: https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=102faad5082fa9d2881ec483fe166c2b&tab=core&_cview=1 [June 2014].

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

Developmental Attributes

The last set of MTS attributes pertains to the “developmental dynamics and patterns” (Zaccaro et al., 2012, p. 20) that characterize the formation and growth of the MTS. These attributes include such factors as whether the MTS is appointed or self-organizes from multiteam interactions, the expected duration of the MTS, and the fluidity of membership within MTS component teams and across the set of teams that comprise the MTS (i.e., the frequency of personnel changes within any particular team that is part of the MTS, and the frequency of instances in which a component team is reassigned to another mission and replaced with a different team).

MTS development has received little attention in the literature, likely due to the logistical challenges of doing controlled research on large, complex systems over time. However, the committee believes this is an important area in need of research attention. Research on MTS development is particularly important to inform military policies on deployment, rotation, and MTS staffing. For example, research is needed to uncover the effects on between-team processes and properties of membership churn within MTS component teams versus teams that remain intact. Given the practical importance of understanding development for military staffing practices, the committee suggests that the study of MTS development, particularly examination of team rotation and fluidity within MTSs, be a priority in future research. For this research to have a real impact, it will need to be conducted with a multiyear commitment to collect longitudinal data (see Chapter 7) capable of capturing details of MTSs as they evolve over time through iterations of the Army Force Generation’s 3-year cycle (Department of the Army, 2011).

MTS Processes

These three sets of MTS attributes—compositional, linkage, and developmental—were proposed by Zaccaro and colleagues (2012) to influence MTS outcomes through their effects on MTS interaction processes and properties. MTS success rests on effective processes and interactions occurring both within and among component teams (Marks et al., 2005). Marks and colleagues (2001) delineated several processes that can occur within teams as they accomplish tasks. These included transition, action, and interpersonal processes. Transition processes typically occur within planning phases of team performance episodes and include such activities as mission analysis, goal specification, strategy formulation, and action planning. Action processes typically occur during execution phases of team performance episodes and include progress monitoring, systems monitoring, team backup behavior, and coordination. Interpersonal processes can

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

occur within and outside team performance episodes and include activities such as conflict management, fostering of team motivation, and regulation of team member affect.

Several MTS researchers have extended this process framework to describe the interaction processes that connect component teams within MTSs (i.e., between-team processes). Between-team processes were briefly considered earlier in the discussion of linkage attributes. These studies (Davison et al., 2012; Lanaj et al., 2013) highlight the necessity of examining MTS effectiveness in terms of multilevel processes.

Team and Multiteam Properties

A second set of intervening mechanisms through which MTS attributes relate to individual, team, and system outcomes are MTS properties. Research on small teams supports the distinction between team processes and properties (Cronin et al., 2011; Marks et al., 2001). Team properties, examples of which are cohesion, trust, and efficacy, characterize how strong or weak the team is as a social force that regulates the thoughts and behaviors of its members. Formally defined, team properties (which have also been called emergent states in the literature on teams) refer to characteristics of the team “that are typically dynamic in nature and vary as a function of team context, inputs, processes, and outcomes” (Marks et al., 2001, p. 357). In a team with strong properties, members’ behavior will be shaped and constrained by the team’s norms and values to a much greater degree than in a team with weak properties. Research on team properties finds that properties are highly diagnostic in understanding and predicting the future behavior of team members. In fact, team properties are more stable than are interaction processes, and they are more predictive of team outcomes than are team processes (DeChurch et al., 2013). Team processes are directly observable through team interaction and provide a valuable way to change team properties. Over the course of team development, processes regularize into team properties (Gersick and Hackman, 1990), which in turn shape and constrain subsequent behavioral processes. Team properties evolve through team interactions as members interact with one another over time (Curseu, 2006; Kozlowski and Chao, 2012; Klein and Kozlowski, 2000). This duality of structure and process was elaborated by early systems theorists as “reciprocal forces such that interaction processes stabilize over time and emerge to form structures that then shape subsequent processes” (Kozlowski and Chao, 2012, p. 336). Marks and colleagues (2001; see also DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010) defined several categories of team properties, including affective, cognitive, and motivational properties. These three categories map onto the basic human functions of “thinking” and “feeling.” Cognitive properties are thought patterns in teams that

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

arise from individual’s beliefs and expectations. Affective and motivational properties are patterns that grow out of individuals’ emotions.

More specifically, the affective properties are properties of a collective that come about through a combination of individuals’ emotions. Two examples of affective properties are team trust (Costa, 2003; DeJong and Elfring, 2010) and team cohesion (Festinger, 1950; Mullen and Copper, 1994). Cognitive properties describe the manner in which knowledge that is important to team functioning is mentally organized, represented, and distributed within the team to allow team members to anticipate one another’s needs (e.g., who needs to know what, when) and coordinate their work (DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus, 2010). Some cognitive properties describe the knowledge that must be held in common or understood similarly by all team members; such knowledge is also referred to as “shared mental models” (Mathieu et al., 2000). Other cognitive properties describe knowledge that should be distributed among members to increase the attentional and memory capacity of the team; such knowledge is also referred to as “transactive memory systems” (Ellis, 2006; Lewis, 2003; Zhang et al., 2007). Shared mental models are cognitive schema understood similarly by all team members. Transactive memory systems reflect a division of labor where each member becomes the expert on a particular subset of knowledge, freeing other members to specialize in other knowledge sets. Teams with highly differentiated transactive memory systems can retain more information and can use this information to the extent that members have an accurate understanding of who knows what.

Motivational properties characterize members’ confidence in the collective and their willingness to put forth effort for the good of the group. Two widely studied motivational properties are collective efficacy and goal states (Gully et al., 2002).

In MTSs, team properties come about at multiple levels. Whereas team properties are patterns of individuals’ thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about the team, between-team properties are a team’s collective thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about the other teams in the MTS and MTS properties characterize a team’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about the MTS as a whole. Team properties are valuable for understanding how strong or weak the team is as a force that shapes the behavior of its members. In the same way, MTS properties are valuable for understanding how strong or weak an MTS is as a force that shapes the behavior of its component teams.

Recent studies have begun to examine between-team and MTS properties. Jimenez-Rodriguez (2012) measured between-team efficacy by asking team members to indicate how confident they were that their team and another team could achieve its goals. She also asked members to evaluate the perceived competence of the MTS as a whole in achieving its goals (i.e., MTS efficacy). Jimenez-Rodriguez (2012) assessed between-team trust by

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

examining each team’s perceptions of “willingness … to be vulnerable to the actions of [the other] party” (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712). She also included in her study measures of shared mental models and transactive memory systems, using the MTS as the referent. Thus, in her study she examined the affective and motivational states that can emerge between two component teams in an MTS, as well as the motivational and cognitive states that can emerge at the system level.

DiRosa (2013) provides additional insight into the nature of MTS cohesion. In a study of Army platoons, DiRosa found complex relationships between the development of small unit cohesion, e.g., how cohesive a squad feels as a small unit, and the development of between-team cohesion, i.e., how cohesive a set of squads feels about one another as a unit. An insight from her field data collection reveals that the extent to which squad and between-squad cohesion are related to each other depends on the level of squad cohesion. The relationship followed an inverted-S such that when squads are very low or very high on cohesion, there is also strong positive relation between squad and “between-squad” cohesion. Stated differently, feeling attached to the squad benefits attachment to the larger collective. However, at moderate levels of squad cohesion, there is no relationship between squad and “between-squad” cohesion. In moderately cohesive squads, the squad may or may not cohere to the larger system.

Taken together, this work indicates that just as combinations of within- and between-team processes have critical implications for overall MTS effectiveness, so do within-team, between-team, and MTS properties. As stated above, properties are more stable characteristics of MTSs than are processes. Processes, which are routinized behavioral patterns shaped by repeated interaction, are inherently more dynamic than properties (DeChurch et al., 2013). Between-team and MTS properties constitute meaningful dimensions of the social context of an MTS. These properties shape and constrain the behavior of individuals and teams. In this way they have predictive value for understanding subsequent behavior across a variety of situations. Team and MTS properties can be thought of as norms that develop within teams, between teams, and in MTSs (see Chapter 2).

MTS properties suggest one valuable way to leverage research on MTSs toward understanding social and organizational factors in the context of military environments. They provide an important conceptual grounding for understanding the nature and strength of these factors within the teams and also between different teams working as a system. In the committee’s assessment, research on teams indicates that understanding collective attitudes and beliefs is likely to enable the prediction of a wide range of subsequent behavior in teams. Therefore, future research on MTSs should explore the relationship between MTS properties and behavior within

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

MTSs. We now turn attention to an exemplar research program designed to enhance understanding of MTS properties in military environments.

AN EXEMPLAR RESEARCH PROGRAM ON ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF MULTITEAM PROPERTIES

Teams are the basic unit of work in the Army, often forming a complex “team of teams” (Mathieu et al., 2001; Zaccaro et al., 2012). Teams consist of two or more individuals who interact interdependently toward the accomplishment of shared goals (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). Individuals who work in such organizational forms face the added complexity of managing information and relationships within a large collective. These individuals are also affected by the cognitive, affective, and motivational properties of both their immediate teams and the MTS. Recent research on between-team processes has found evidence of countervailing forces whereby these processes can have both positive and negative consequences for system functioning (DeChurch and Zaccaro, 2013; Lanaj et al., 2013). Whereas MTS research is at a relatively early stage, given the team-based structure of the Army, exploratory research on MTSs seems promising.

The committee’s recommended research agenda addresses three questions relevant to MTS functioning in the context of military environments:

  1. What are the underlying generative mechanisms that explain how properties come about in MTSs (i.e., between component teams and at the system level)?
  2. What are the consequences of different degrees and patterns of properties in MTSs?
  3. What are some interventions through which properties can be shaped or reshaped to optimally regulate individual and team behavior and maximize MTS functioning?

To assist ARI to answer these questions, the committee outlines below five potential phases of research, leveraging multiple methodologies, that ARI may find useful in developing a research program to answer these questions.

Phase 1: Primary Data Collection

The first step of this potential research program is to gather a large sample of data on MTSs that include information about MTS compositional attributes (e.g., diversity of component teams, degree to which individuals and teams have prior relationships); multilevel properties; and individual, team, and MTS outcomes. The goal of this phase of the research would be

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

to provide important inputs for later developments such as an agent-based model (phase 2) and the virtual experiments described in phase 4. Data collections that would be useful are similar to those conducted in U.S. Air Force officer training programs that have been used in the research reported by Davison and colleagues (2012) and Lanaj and colleagues (2013). These data sets follow military personnel as they cycle through an MTS training exercise. Such data are well suited to the research program proposed here for the Army because they afford a substantial amount of researcher control while also affording some generalizability to the population of interest.

Ideally, data for this proposed program would be gathered as part of the longitudinal survey data collection described in Chapter 7. That chapter details a proposed cohort study for which samples of soldiers will be tracked over time. It would not only sample individual soldiers but would also include sampling of the squads and platoons to which they belong at each data collection time point. This sampling strategy would provide measures of team, between-team, and MTS properties, gathered longitudinally to enable sequential, time-based analyses to be conducted. Studying the development of MTS properties would allow the identification of thresholds: critical points where a pattern of interaction among team members crystallizes into an MTS property such as cohesion, trust, or a shared mental model. These studies would also allow the identification of critical phase transitions that mark important developmental cycles of the MTS as it grows from nascence to a mature system.

Phase 2: Agent-Based Model of MTS Generative Mechanisms

The second phase of this potential research program to study MTSs includes conceptual development where there is existing theory, combined with agent-based modeling. The conceptual work would use existing research to detail the generative mechanisms through which individuals’ actions and interactions ultimately give rise to MTS properties. To inform this phase, the committee suggests using prior research on team emergence (Kozlowski and Chao, 2012; Kozlowski et al., 2013; Klein and Kozlowski, 2000) to specify the generative mechanisms (Epstein, 1999) that give rise to emergent affective, cognitive, and motivational properties in teams, between teams, and at the MTS level. The primary data collected in phase 1 would then be used to fit the model. In an agent-based model, the generative mechanisms are the microprocesses through which an actor’s (i.e., an individual’s) thought, feeling, motive, or behavior comes about. Agent-based modeling has been advanced as particularly useful for understanding social context in the area of networks (National Research Council, 2008; Harrison et al., 2007; Monge and Contractor, 2003; Palazzolo et al., 2006)

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

and teams (Ilgen and Hulin, 2000), although existing applications to teams have been rare (see Kuljanin, 2011, for a notable exception).

The goal of this research phase is to generate a model that can then be used to run virtual experiments (see phase 4). Given the high cost of experimenting on intact MTSs, the committee encourages the use of virtual experiments prior to experimentation with human groups in order to ensure that important treatment conditions are identified efficiently and to hasten the discovery of important aspects of context that stem from MTS properties.

Phase 3: Linking MTS Properties to Outcomes

In the third phase of this exemplar research program, all available primary data would be used to identify the precise relationships between MTS properties and outcomes. Setting up a centralized open data repository for MTS research would greatly facilitate this research phase. The goal of phase 3 is to identify which levels, types, and patterns of properties optimize outcomes (i.e., maximize the benefits of the MTS state while minimizing its adverse effects) at multiple levels.

The analyses to support this goal can be informed by two ideas from complexity thinking (Anderson, 1999; Byrne, 2002). First is the notion that properties may have both positive and negative consequences. This is often the case for consequences of properties at different levels of analysis. For example, an MTS property that is beneficial for the team may be harmful for the system. Another example is an MTS property, such as cohesion, that buffers the team from poor morale but also increases the likelihood that members will engage in and condone problem behaviors (Narayanan et al., 2006; Pearsall and Ellis, 2011). The second theme informed by complexity theory is that relations in an MTS are likely to be nonlinear and interactive. For example, the effects of MTS cohesion on problem behaviors depend in part on the strength of MTS efficacy.

Phase 4: Identifying Levers for MTS Properties

In phase 4 of the exemplar MTS research program, the relationships identified in phase 3 could be used to design a series of virtual experiments run with computer-simulated MTSs. For example, the desired patterns of MTS properties identified in phase 3 could be used as criteria in the virtual experiments. In each of a series of model runs, the researchers adjust initial conditions of the MTS compositional attributes and then run the agent-based model under those conditions for thousands of MTSs, watching the development of MTS properties at different levels. The goal of virtual experiments would be to identify the conditions under which the optimal

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

configurations of MTS properties come about, so that efficient experimentation can proceed. The committee cautions that virtual experiments should not replace research on actual soldiers in real military environments, but virtual experiments serve as a mechanism to develop and test hypotheses and methodologies to develop targeted and valid research programs to apply in the field where time and access is more severely limited.

Phase 5: Causally Shaping MTS Properties

As the final phase of this exemplar MTS research program, the committee suggests ARI could use the outputs of phase 4 to design experimental manipulations of MTS design features (i.e., compositional attributes) to test in an “MTS laboratory.” In this carefully monitored but real-world setting, relevantly similar MTSs would be randomly assigned to operate under different conditions so that effects on MTS properties can be measured in real human groups, ultimately with real soldiers in actual military environments (to include training environments). These controlled experiments are necessary to establish causality of the interventions suggested in the virtual experiments and to ensure that the causal effects indeed generalize (Cook and Campbell, 1976) from the simulated MTSs to human MTSs.

Conclusion on the Exemplar MTS Research Program

The context of military environments is largely shaped by the design of work in teams and systems of teams (Goodwin et al., 2012). The identification of properties in MTSs is one area where MTS research can improve understanding of the specific aspects of military context that shape soldiers actions and interactions. The most valuable research on MTSs will incorporate complexity thinking (Anderson, 1999; Byrne, 2002) and triangulate computational methods with more traditional social science methods. An MTS research program will need to leverage an interdisciplinary team of traditional social scientists (e.g., psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists) working alongside computationally intensive scientists (e.g., industrial engineers, computational social scientists; see Lazer et al., 2009). This multimethod approach to the study of MTS properties can provide valuable insight into how MTS properties arise, the consequences of those properties, and effective interventions to regulate collective properties at multiple levels.

FUTURE RESEARCH ON MULTITEAM SYSTEMS

Conclusion 6

The committee concludes that the teams and multiteam systems within

Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
×

which individuals work constitute an important source of context for the behavior of individuals and small units in military environments.

Recommendation 6

The U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and other U.S. military funding agencies should support basic research that identifies:

  1. how actions and interactions among individuals give rise to properties such as cohesion in teams, between teams, and in systems of teams;
  2. the positive and negative consequences of these properties on individuals, teams, and multiteam systems; and
  3. effective interventions such as leadership that can be used to regulate these properties.

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Suggested Citation:"6 Multiteam Systems as the Context for Individuals and Teams." National Research Council. 2014. The Context of Military Environments: An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18825.
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The United States Army faces a variety of challenges to maintain a ready and capable force into the future. Missions are increasingly diverse, ranging from combat and counterinsurgency to negotiation, reconstruction, and stability operations, and require a variety of personnel and skill sets to execute. Missions often demand rapid decision-making and coordination with others in novel ways, so that personnel are not simply following a specific set of tactical orders but rather need to understand broader strategic goals and choose among courses of action. Like any workforce, the Army is diverse in terms of demographic characteristics such as gender and race, with increasing pressure to ensure equal opportunities across all demographic parties. With these challenges comes the urgent need to better understand how contextual factors influence soldier and small unit behavior and mission performance.

Recognizing the need to develop a portfolio of research to better understand the influence of social and organizational factors on the behavior of individuals and small units, the U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI) requested the National Research Council's Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences to outline a productive and innovative collection of future basic science research projects to improve Amy mission performance for immediate implementation and lasting over the next 10-20 years. This report presents recommendations for a program of basic scientific research on the roles of social and organizational contextual factors, such as organizational institutions, culture, and norms, as determinants and moderators of the performance of individual soldiers and small units.

The Context of Military Environments: Basic Research Opportunities on Social and Organizational Factors synthesizes and assesses basic research opportunities in the behavioral and social sciences related to social and organizational factors that comprise the context of individual and small unit behavior in military environments. This report focuses on tactical operations of small units and their leaders, to include the full spectrum of unique military environments including: major combat operations, stability/support operations, peacekeeping, and military observer missions, as well as headquarters support units. This report identifies key contextual factors that shape individual and small unit behavior and assesses the state of the science regarding these factors. The Context of Military Environments recommends an agenda for ARI's future research in order to maximize the effectiveness of U.S. Army personnel policies and practices of selection, recruitment, and assignment as well as career development in training and leadership. The report also specifies the basic research funding level needed to implement the recommended agenda for future ARI research.

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