Linda J. Sorensen

It's a small world after all: contrasting hierarchical and edge networks in a simulated intelligence analysis task

This article presents the rationale behind an important enhancement to a socio-technical model of organisations and teams derived from military research. It combines this with empirical results which take advantage of these enhancements. In Part 1, a new theoretical legacy for the model is developed based on Ergonomics theories and insights. This allows team communications data to be plotted into the model and for it to demonstrate discriminate validity between alternative team structures. Part 2 presents multinational data from the Experimental Laboratory for Investigating Collaboration, Information-sharing, and Trust (ELICIT) community. It was surprising to see that teams in both traditional hierarchical command and control and networked ‘peer-to-peer’ organisations operate in broadly the same area of the model, a region occupied by networks of communication exhibiting ‘small world’ properties. Small world networks may be of considerable importance for the Ergonomics analysis of team organisation and performance. Practitioner Summary: This article is themed around macro and systems Ergonomics, and examines the effects of command and control structures. Despite some differences in behaviour and measures of agility, when given the freedom to do so, participants organised themselves into a small world network. This network type has important and interesting implications for the Ergonomics design of teams and organisations.

Back to SA school: contrasting three approaches to situation awareness in the cockpit

Situational awareness (SA) has received considerable attention in recent years and significant theoretical advances have been made. The advances to date can be categorised in three main schools of thought: psychological, engineering and systems ergonomics schools. We discuss the theoretical contributions of the three schools to the understanding of SA and apply these to the analysis of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series, as described by Hutchins (Hutchins, E., 1995a. How a cockpit remembers its speeds. Cognitive Science, 19, 265–288), descent and approach. We discuss how the different views advocated by the three schools give rise to different approaches to support SA. We argue that while the psychological and engineering approaches each give valuable insight into the phenomenon neither gives a complete explanation of SA. It is only the systems ergonomics perspective, in considering the individual, artefacts in the environment and interaction between these which offer a full explanation of the phenomenon.

Exploring compatible and incompatible transactions in teams

This paper reports on an exploratory study which set out to explore the role of compatible and incompatible transactions, assimilation, accommodation and contention scheduling in teams by applying schema theory to team communications. Schema theory and in particular the notions of contention scheduling, schema-driven errors and the perceptual cycle model, supports the ideas presented in the distributed situation awareness approach by explaining the way in which previous experience and knowledge amassed by each team member shape their interactions with the world. Understanding the role of schemas and the perceptual cycle model is necessary if the phenomenon of situation awareness is to be exploited positively in the organisation of teams, work and design of socio-technical systems. The findings indicate that team members influence each other’s schemata and that where opposing ideas, or schemata, with regard to what the team ought to do, a process of contention scheduling was applied to establish agreement on a common goal. Team members’ schemata were adapted by the mechanisms of assimilation and accommodation. Schemata were altered as a result of interaction between team members, e.g. their transactions, where each team member tested their ideas on the wider team, thus further developing their understanding of the external environment. These findings indicate that the perceptual cycle model can be scaled up to explain team’s dynamic exploration of, interaction with and adaptation to their environment. Schemata should therefore be explored along with the transactional SA and compatible SA in explaining the emergence of distributed SA in teams.

Investigating Performance of Command Team Structures in the NATO Problem-Approach Space

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the NATO Problem-Approach Space could be mapped to optimal performance of different team structures. The results show that the five team communication structures (chain, Y, circle, wheel, and all-connected) did not generally perform as predicted based on findings in the literature. The team structures all performed most optimally in the same Problem Space conditions: static rate of change, strong information position, and familiarity with the task. Moreover, contrary to predictions, the all-connected team structure did not perform particularly well at all. Instead, the Y team structure produced the highest levels of performance and was, therefore, judged to be the most successful team structure overall. The Y team structure can be seen as a simplified form of typical military command structures including staff officers and subordinate units. Therefore, the findings of the study serve as a reinforcement of the effectiveness of the classic command and control structure.

Investigating information-processing performance of different command team structures in the NATO Problem Space

The structure of command teams is a significant factor on their communications and ability to process, and act upon, information. The NATO Problem Space was used in this study to represent three of the main dimensions in the battle-space environment: familiarity, rate of change, and strength of information position. Results show that the five common team structures (chain, Y, circle, wheel and all-connected) did not generally perform as predicted in team literature. Findings suggest that under dynamic and highly variable conditions, high levels of synchronisation and trust should be present. On the other hand, synchronisation and trust are less important in hierarchical, highly centralised structures, because team members are more willing to accept the authority of a single leader and this tight control ensures that these teams can perform well as long as the Problem Space is familiar, information is explicit and the environment does not change. Practitioner Summary: Some types of team structures are better suited to particular constraints of the battle-space than others. This research has shown that the much touted all-connected structure is often the worst performing structure and that the traditional hierarchy of command and control has much merit in the digital information age.

Critical incidents during dynamic positioning: operators’ situation awareness and decision-making in maritime operations

The maritime industry is increasingly becoming dependent on dynamic positioning (DP) systems for automated vessel station keeping. This study aimed to reveal characteristics of DP operators’ situation awareness (SA) and decision-making during critical incidents. Information from a total of 24 critical incidents was collected from 13 experienced DP using the critical decision method. The results indicate that in 10 incidents, the DP operators were unable to identify the base events (e.g. did not form level 1 SA) but were able to identify the problem (e.g. understand the situation; e.g. form level 2 SA). These findings indicate that the establishment of high-level SA may happen even without low-level SA. This study contributes to an improved understanding of the development of SA and the recovery of critical incidents during complex maritime operations.

Inter-rater reliability and content validity of network analysis as a method for measuring distributed situation awareness

Abstract Robust measures support the development of theory and advancement of literature and insights into the reliability and validity of methods form a crucial part of methods selection for practitioners and researchers. In order to support the selection of data collection technique to measure distributed situation awareness (DSA), the reliability and validity associated with them must be explored. This paper presents an empirical study in which the validity of two data collection techniques which are used to collect DSA data was considered. The data collection techniques are, in turn, analysed using a network analysis method and the paper, further, considered the reliability of the network analysis method. It was shown that the network analysis method provides a reliable means of assessing DSA. While low levels of hit rates were observed for both communication logs and the CDM, higher hit rates were observed for the communication logs indicating that this data collection technique is associated with slightly higher levels of validity. These findings support the human factors community in the assessment and representation of DSA in teams.