Modeling Team Performance: The Basic Ingredients And Research Needs

Organizational simulations have been used and applied for some time; however, the modeling of team performance is still in its infancy. Although increasingly important, modeling team performance is more difficult than modeling individual performance because of the complexities and dynamics inherent in team performance. As such, this chapter provides a heuristic to aide practitioners and researchers in determining the \u27must have ingredients\u27 as well as those components which may be \u27nice to have\u27, but are not necessarily essential in modeling of team performance. We provide an extensive literature review of many of the factors that affect team performance, including individual characteristics, team characteristics, task characteristics, work structure, team competencies and environmental influences. In addition, we provide a brief overview of some of the mathematical and statistical methods that can be used to model team performance. Next, we discuss the impact that team performance modeling has on three areas, human system integration, scenario-based training and decision support systems. We conclude the chapter by identifying research areas that are critical to the progress of team performance modeling. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Inc