Author

Kristin Weger

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Sandra Carpenter

Committee Member

Aurora Torres

Committee Member

Jodi Price

Subject(s)

Virtual work teams, Teams in the workplace--Management, Small groups, Management

Abstract

Virtual teams often do not have the capability to develop well-functioning team cognitive processes in the initial stages of team development, leading to initial low performance in teams. The present experiment explored whether a general training procedure, a guided reflexivity intervention, could facilitate team cognitive development to improve team performance, and whether such an intervention could influence team communication. Participants (N = 160) assigned to teams of four received either a guided reflexivity intervention or no intervention, in a two scenario experiment. Virtual teams in the guided reflexivity condition were expected to develop a better transactive memory system, display higher levels of situation awareness, show higher amounts of team communication related to the task, and show improved team performance compared to initial performance and to the no intervention condition. The results provided mixed support for the hypotheses, indicating that guided reflexivity interventions may have a more intricate relationship with virtual team performance than proposed.

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