Measurement of team knowledge in the field: Methodological advantages and limitations

Team knowledge is seen as an important element in the understanding of coordination processes in teams. Congruent with the taxonomy of coordination mechanisms (cf. Chaps. 2 and 7), the construct of team knowledge refers to shared team-level knowledge structures facilitating implicit processes such as tacit behaviours as well as coordination success. This chapter answers three major questions: (1) What are the challenges of measuring team knowledge in organizational settings compared to more controlled laboratory settings? (2) What concepts of team knowledge exist in the psychological literature, and how are they related to coordination processes? (3) What methods can be applied to measure team knowledge in the field? Although there are several approaches to identifying and measuring team knowledge in a laboratory setting, applications in an organizational context are rare. Thus, this chapter discusses three types of team knowledge: team mental models, team situation models, and transactive memory systems. The advantages and limitations of techniques for capturing team knowledge are discussed and current directions are introduced