Cognitive mapping the topic of teamwork

Cognitive mapping the topic of teamwork

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of teamwork in the subject of Business Management is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on teamwork topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of teamwork. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on teamwork, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and teamwork.

Key words: Teamwork, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in Business Management, teamwork is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  teamwork. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Teamwork. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on teamwork.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on teamwork topic

From the reading of some academic articles on teamwork, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from teamwork literature and referencing

Main points from the teamwork literature	Referencing
Point 1: "The past two decades have witnessed a steady increase in research investigating differences in teamwork across cultures. This research has identified variance across cultural contexts in team processes, such as social loafing and conflict..., team leadership..., goal setting..., teams' belief about performance..., and employees' receptivity to working in teams".	Gibson, C.B. and M.E. Zellmer-Bruhn. 2001. "Metaphors and meaning: An intercultural analysis of the concept of teamwork" Administrative Science Quarterly 46: 274-303.
Point 2: "Even if the specific content of teamwork conceptualizations varies across cultures, at a general level, most definitions are likely to include what a team does (activity scope), who  is on the team (roles) and why (nature of membership), and why the team exists (objectives)".	Gibson, C.B. and M.E. Zellmer-Bruhn. 2001. "Metaphors and meaning: An intercultural analysis of the concept of teamwork" Administrative Science Quarterly 46: 274-303.
Point 3: "Introducing teamwork, and team-based activities into an organization, is  a complex process which involves interactive processes that are often difficult to control... The overlap of team and individual activities, the different backgrounds, expectations and interpersonal styles of people and work pressures or restrictions make it difficult to apply traditional group dynamics models, such as Tuckman's (1965) "forming, storming, norming and performing" or McGrath's (1984) 'group task circumflex," to help manage teams in organizations".	Lembke, S. and M.G. Wilson. 1998. "Putting the "Team" into Teamwork: Alternative Theoretical Contributions for Contemporary Management Practice" Human Relations 51(7): 927-944.
Point 4: "Teams  are described as "small groups of interdependent individuals who share responsibilities for outcomes for their organization.....  "Teams can be looked upon as a means of focusing employees' attention beyond narrow duties to the broader role of meeting external needs, such as the needs of the customer"..".	Lembke, S. and M.G. Wilson. 1998. "Putting the "Team" into Teamwork: Alternative Theoretical Contributions for Contemporary Management Practice" Human Relations 51(7): 927-944.
Point 5: "The teamworking and knowledge management fields are increasingly converging... Nonaka  and Takeuchi (1995) emphasize the importance of teamwork in the conversion of personal tacit knowledge into organizational knowledge".	Sapsed, J., J. Bessant, D. Partington, D. Tranfield and M. Young. 2002. "Knowledge management: a review of converging themes" International Journal of Management Reviews 4(1): 71-85.
Point 6: "There has been a resurgence of interest in team work as a system of work, reinforced through a vast literature promoting its potential benefits for organizations and employees (Mueller, 1994; Procter & Mueller, 2000). This reflects the way in which team work has become embedded and naturalized within our culture as something inherently good".	Finn, R. 2008. "The language of teamwork: Reproducing professional divisions in the operating theatre" Human Relations 61(1), Sage: 103-130.
Point 7: "Rather than existing as an empirical reality, teamwork is socially constructed and a discursive resource through which particular interest-based versions of reality are constituted....  Within the operating theatre context, teamwork is a discursive means through which professional members negotiate the contradiction between integration and specialization, furthering different versions of unity. ".	Finn, R. 2008. "The language of teamwork: Reproducing professional divisions in the operating theatre" Human Relations 61(1), Sage: 103-130.
Point 8: "The term teamwork can serve particular rhetorical and persuasive functions, through which the desired cooperative spirit and need to be a ‘teamplayer’ are emphasized in the interests of management (Findlay et al., 2000; Ohno, 1988), often accompanying the introduction of some form of team work".	Finn, R. 2008. "The language of teamwork: Reproducing professional divisions in the operating theatre" Human Relations 61(1), Sage: 103-130.
Point  9: "To survive the 1990s, senior managers need to develop and maintain a culture of team working. This will prove to be the single most dynamic force which will equip organizations to adapt to the new realities of the business world. Careful planning must take place, if managers are to maximize the opportunities which such a culture generates".	Bradley, M. 1994. "Effective teamworking" Executive Development 7(1): 8-11.
Point 10: "Many organizations are drifting into team-building training. Those which do not have their own training departments feel swamped by the wide variety of different providers of this type of development".	Bradley, M. 1994. "Effective teamworking" Executive Development 7(1): 8-11.
Point 11: "While there is no shortage of frameworks for describing team leadership (Northouse, 2010; Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001), these do not fully acknowledge that many acts of team leadership reflect a discretionary choice (Jacobs & Jaques, 1987; Osborn, Hunt, & Jauch, 1980). Instead, many views of team leadership assume that if action is needed, a team member will choose to answer that call (Bass, 2008)".	Amos, B. and R.J. Klimoski. 2014. "Courage: Making Teamwork Work Well" Group & Organization Management 39(1), Sage: 110-128.
Point 12: "While contemporary teamwork models (e.g., shared leadership) often lack a formal leadership role or structure, they still indicate the necessity of acts of leadership to meet team needs. As a result of the absence of a formal team leader, responsibility for managing team processes and team performance lies with the team members".	Amos, B. and R.J. Klimoski. 2014. "Courage: Making Teamwork Work Well" Group & Organization Management 39(1), Sage: 110-128.
Point 13: "Teamwork effort is related to a number of firm and workers’ outcomes such as firm productivity, innovation or job satisfaction. Thus, it becomes important to understand the factors conducive to teamwork".	Flores-Fillol, R., S. Iranzo and F. Mane. 2017. "Teamworking and delegation of decisions within the firm" International Journal of Industrial Organization 52, Elsevier: 1-29.
Point 14: "The literature on teamwork can be traced back to the theoretical works of Alchian and Demsetz (1972) and Holmstrom (1982) , which focused on free-riding and competition in teams. Since then, several papers have focused on the relationship between teamwork and firm productivity".	Flores-Fillol, R., S. Iranzo and F. Mane. 2017. "Teamworking and delegation of decisions within the firm" International Journal of Industrial Organization 52, Elsevier: 1-29.
Point 15: "By and large, cooperation is found to be positively correlated with the use of group-based pay incentives like profit- sharing, employee stock ownership, and firm-based performance bonuses; and negatively correlated with individual performance pay systems".	Flores-Fillol, R., S. Iranzo and F. Mane. 2017. "Teamworking and delegation of decisions within the firm" International Journal of Industrial Organization 52, Elsevier: 1-29.
Point 16: "There is growing evidence that the existence of shared mental models among the members of a work team has a positive effect on team processes and effectiveness (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994; Levine & Moreland, 1991; Mathieu et al., 2000; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Shared mental models are socially constructed cognitive structures that represent shared knowledge or beliefs about an environment and its expected behavior. They influence team member behavior and improve coordination by enabling members to anticipate one another’s actions and needs (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Weick & Roberts, 1993). This is particularly important when work events are unpredictable or when frequent communication is difficult".	Druskat, V.U. and A.T. Pescosolido. 2002. "The Content of Effective Teamwork Mental Models in Self-Managing Teams: Ownership, Learning and Heedful Interrelating" Human Relations 55(3), Sage: 283-341.
Point 17: "Little is known about the specific content of effective teamwork mental models (Blickensderfer et al., 1998; Kraiger & Wenzel, 1997; Mathieu et al., 2000). We, therefore, chose to identify such models through the use of a ‘theoretical modeling’ method, which ‘involves using available theory and data to formulate assumptions about the form, structure, and perhaps parameters of mental models for particular tasks’...".	Druskat, V.U. and A.T. Pescosolido. 2002. "The Content of Effective Teamwork Mental Models in Self-Managing Teams: Ownership, Learning and Heedful Interrelating" Human Relations 55(3), Sage: 283-341.
Point 18: "studies on factors affecting the performance of teams and work groups are important because they help trainers and developers to understand what dimensions they should focus on and manage when the aim is to make teams and work groups effective or even successful".	Ceschi, A., K. Dorofeeva and R. Sartori. 2014. "Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation" European Journal of Training and Development 38(3), Emerald: 211-230.
Point 19: "Team is conceived as a group of agents adopting the appropriate joint and individual mental attitudes (Tidhar, 1993). Instead, work group is defined as “multiple individuals acting as a bounded whole in order to get something done” (Johnson et al., 1986). In general, members of teams tend to develop greater interdependence and a stronger sense of collectivity than members of work groups (Lumsden et al., 2009)".	Ceschi, A., K. Dorofeeva and R. Sartori. 2014. "Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation" European Journal of Training and Development 38(3), Emerald: 211-230.
Point 20: "Over the years, scholars have generated many definitions of teamwork (Hackman, 1987; Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Robbins and Finley, 2000). However, there is still not a generally accepted definition. Ha¨rtel et al. (1998) have defined teamwork as an essential characteristic of teams which, over time, have developed a history of shared attitudes and behavioural patterns or norms through experiences or events".	Ceschi, A., K. Dorofeeva and R. Sartori. 2014. "Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation" European Journal of Training and Development 38(3), Emerald: 211-230.
Point 21: "Studies about teams and work groups have shown that their performance is related to such variables as communication (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992), leadership (Scott and Bruce, 1994), group size (Shaw, 1981), group learning (Argote et al., 2001; Hertz-Lazarowitz and Miller, 1995) and teamwork".	Ceschi, A., K. Dorofeeva and R. Sartori. 2014. "Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation" European Journal of Training and Development 38(3), Emerald: 211-230.
Point 22: "It has been argued that teamwork offers greater adaptability, productivity and creativity than any one individual can offer (Salas et al. 2000, 2005) while promoting job satisfaction and staff retention (Griffin et al. 2001, Heywood & Jirjahn 2004). The concept of teamwork is not a new one (Buchanan 2000); it has achieved such interest over recent years that it is referred to by some as the ‘panacea’ for all organizational ills".	Xyrichis, A. and E. Ream. 2008. "Teamwork: A Conceptual Analysis" Journal of Nursing February, Blackwell Publishing: 232-241.
Point 23: "Although it is suggested that effective teams may have positive effects on patient outcomes, studies have reported diverse findings (Kerski et al. 1987, Shortell et al. 1994) and this has led some people to question its value or benefit (Leatt et al. 1997, Zwarenstein & Reeves 2000). According to Wheelan et al. (2003), one of the main reasons for these inconsistent findings is the lack of conceptual clarity with regard to what this concept represents".	Xyrichis, A. and E. Ream. 2008. "Teamwork: A Conceptual Analysis" Journal of Nursing February, Blackwell Publishing: 232-241.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in teamwork	Point 1: "The past two decades have witnessed a steady increase in research investigating differences in teamwork across cultures. This research has identified variance across cultural contexts in team processes, such as social loafing and conflict..., team leadership..., goal setting..., teams' belief about performance..., and employees' receptivity to working in teams". Point 6: "There has been a resurgence of interest in team work as a system of work, reinforced through a vast literature promoting its potential benefits for organizations and employees (Mueller, 1994; Procter & Mueller, 2000). This reflects the way in which team work has become embedded and naturalized within our culture as something inherently good". Point 14: "The literature on teamwork can be traced back to the theoretical works of Alchian and Demsetz (1972) and Holmstrom (1982) , which focused on free-riding and competition in teams. Since then, several papers have focused on the relationship between teamwork and firm productivity". Point 22: "It has been argued that teamwork offers greater adaptability, productivity and creativity than any one individual can offer (Salas et al. 2000, 2005) while promoting job satisfaction and staff retention (Griffin et al. 2001, Heywood & Jirjahn 2004). The concept of teamwork is not a new one (Buchanan 2000); it has achieved such interest over recent years that it is referred to by some as the ‘panacea’ for all organizational ills".
Variable 2: Improve intellectual understanding of  teamwork	Point 2: "Even if the specific content of teamwork conceptualizations varies across cultures, at a general level, most definitions are likely to include what a team does (activity scope), who  is on the team (roles) and why (nature of membership), and why the team exists (objectives)". Point 4: "Teams  are described as "small groups of interdependent individuals who share responsibilities for outcomes for their organization.....  "Teams can be looked upon as a means of focusing employees' attention beyond narrow duties to the broader role of meeting external needs, such as the needs of the customer"..". Point 7: "Rather than existing as an empirical reality, teamwork is socially constructed and a discursive resource through which particular interest-based versions of reality are constituted....  Within the operating theatre context, teamwork is a discursive means through which professional members negotiate the contradiction between integration and specialization, furthering different versions of unity". Point 12: "While contemporary teamwork models (e.g., shared leadership) often lack a formal leadership role or structure, they still indicate the necessity of acts of leadership to meet team needs. As a result of the absence of a formal team leader, responsibility for managing team processes and team performance lies with the team members". Point 15: "By and large, cooperation is found to be positively correlated with the use of group-based pay incentives like profit- sharing, employee stock ownership, and firm-based performance bonuses; and negatively correlated with individual performance pay systems". Point 16: "There is growing evidence that the existence of shared mental models among the members of a work team has a positive effect on team processes and effectiveness (Klimoski & Mohammed, 1994; Levine & Moreland, 1991; Mathieu et al., 2000; Weick & Roberts, 1993). Shared mental models are socially constructed cognitive structures that represent shared knowledge or beliefs about an environment and its expected behavior. They influence team member behavior and improve coordination by enabling members to anticipate one another’s actions and needs (Cannon-Bowers et al., 1993; Weick & Roberts, 1993). This is particularly important when work events are unpredictable or when frequent communication is difficult". Point 17: "Little is known about the specific content of effective teamwork mental models (Blickensderfer et al., 1998; Kraiger & Wenzel, 1997; Mathieu et al., 2000). We, therefore, chose to identify such models through the use of a ‘theoretical modeling’ method, which ‘involves using available theory and data to formulate assumptions about the form, structure, and perhaps parameters of mental models for particular tasks’...". Point 19: "Team is conceived as a group of agents adopting the appropriate joint and individual mental attitudes (Tidhar, 1993). Instead, work group is defined as “multiple individuals acting as a bounded whole in order to get something done” (Johnson et al., 1986). In general, members of teams tend to develop greater interdependence and a stronger sense of collectivity than members of work groups (Lumsden et al., 2009)". Point 20: "Over the years, scholars have generated many definitions of teamwork (Hackman, 1987; Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Robbins and Finley, 2000). However, there is still not a generally accepted definition. Ha¨rtel et al. (1998) have defined teamwork as an essential characteristic of teams which, over time, have developed a history of shared attitudes and behavioural patterns or norms through experiences or events".
Variable 3: Effective teamwork practices	Point 3: "Introducing teamwork, and team-based activities into an organization, is  a complex process which involves interactive processes that are often difficult to control... The overlap of team and individual activities, the different backgrounds, expectations and interpersonal styles of people and work pressures or restrictions make it difficult to apply traditional group dynamics models, such as Tuckman's (1965) "forming, storming, norming and performing" or McGrath's (1984) 'group task circumflex," to help manage teams in organizations". Point 5: "The teamworking and knowledge management fields are increasingly converging... Nonaka  and Takeuchi (1995) emphasize the importance of teamwork in the conversion of personal tacit knowledge into organizational knowledge". Point  9: "To survive the 1990s, senior managers need to develop and maintain a culture of team working. This will prove to be the single most dynamic force which will equip organizations to adapt to the new realities of the business world. Careful planning must take place, if managers are to maximize the opportunities which such a culture generates". Point 10: "Many organizations are drifting into team-building training. Those which do not have their own training departments feel swamped by the wide variety of different providers of this type of development". Point 13: "Teamwork effort is related to a number of firm and workers’ outcomes such as firm productivity, innovation or job satisfaction. Thus, it becomes important to understand the factors conducive to teamwork".
Variable 4: Learn from teamwork practices	Point 8: "The term teamwork can serve particular rhetorical and persuasive functions, through which the desired cooperative spirit and need to be a ‘teamplayer’ are emphasized in the interests of management (Findlay et al., 2000; Ohno, 1988), often accompanying the introduction of some form of team work". Point 11: "While there is no shortage of frameworks for describing team leadership (Northouse, 2010; Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2001), these do not fully acknowledge that many acts of team leadership reflect a discretionary choice (Jacobs & Jaques, 1987; Osborn, Hunt, & Jauch, 1980). Instead, many views of team leadership assume that if action is needed, a team member will choose to answer that call (Bass, 2008)". Point 18: "studies on factors affecting the performance of teams and work groups are important because they help trainers and developers to understand what dimensions they should focus on and manage when the aim is to make teams and work groups effective or even successful". Point 21: "Studies about teams and work groups have shown that their performance is related to such variables as communication (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992), leadership (Scott and Bruce, 1994), group size (Shaw, 1981), group learning (Argote et al., 2001; Hertz-Lazarowitz and Miller, 1995) and teamwork". Point 23: "Although it is suggested that effective teams may have positive effects on patient outcomes, studies have reported diverse findings (Kerski et al. 1987, Shortell et al. 1994) and this has led some people to question its value or benefit (Leatt et al. 1997, Zwarenstein & Reeves 2000). According to Wheelan et al. (2003), one of the main reasons for these inconsistent findings is the lack of conceptual clarity with regard to what this concept represents".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on teamwork. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on teamwork and its interpretation

By relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on teamwork, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, four of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of teamwork. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative.  For further information on teamwork, readers are referred to the Literature on teams Facebook page.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in teamwork. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study teamwork in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as teamwork in Business Management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Amos, B. and R.J. Klimoski. 2014. "Courage: Making Teamwork Work Well" Group & Organization Management 39(1), Sage: 110-128.

2.      Bradley, M. 1994. "Effective teamworking" Executive Development 7(1): 8-11.

3.      Ceschi, A., K. Dorofeeva and R. Sartori. 2014. "Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation" European Journal of Training and Development 38(3), Emerald: 211-230.

4.      Druskat, V.U. and A.T. Pescosolido. 2002. "The Content of Effective Teamwork Mental Models in Self-Managing Teams: Ownership, Learning and Heedful Interrelating" Human Relations 55(3), Sage: 283-341.

5.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

6.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

7.      Finn, R. 2008. "The language of teamwork: Reproducing professional divisions in the operating theatre" Human Relations 61(1), Sage: 103-130.

8.      Flores-Fillol, R., S. Iranzo and F. Mane. 2017. "Teamworking and delegation of decisions within the firm" International Journal of Industrial Organization 52, Elsevier: 1-29.

9.      Gibson, C.B. and M.E. Zellmer-Bruhn. 2001. "Metaphors and meaning: An intercultural analysis of the concept of teamwork" Administrative Science Quarterly 46: 274-303.

10. Lembke, S. and M.G. Wilson. 1998. "Putting the "Team" into Teamwork: Alternative Theoretical Contributions for Contemporary Management Practice" Human Relations 51(7): 927-944.

11. Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

12. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

13. Literature on teams Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.teams/).

14. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

15. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].

16. Sapsed, J., J. Bessant, D. Partington, D. Tranfield and M. Young. 2002. "Knowledge management: a review of converging themes" International Journal of Management Reviews 4(1): 71-85.

17. Xyrichis, A. and E. Ream. 2008. "Teamwork: A Conceptual Analysis" Journal of Nursing February, Blackwell Publishing: 232-241.