A preliminary literature review of mental models and the quantum organisation clearly indicated a gap, particularly in the South African context. The gap was evident on two levels: literature fails to agree on existing definitions and there is little guidance on research methodology in the context of complexity and leadership. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the form and function of leaders’ mental models in a complex environment. A postmodernist qualitative methodology as theoretical framework and constructivism as research paradigm were employed. It was important not to be restricted and limited by a specific method. Therefore a constructivist grounded theory was used to navigate in a pragmatic manner towards answers which could best describe and interpret findings in response to the initial set of research questions. Purposive sampling was used and the population consisted of individual South African leaders and academics that do research on and write extensively about the constructs investigated. Data were obtained through intensive semi-structured interviewing. Semi-structured interviewing implies that only a few research questions were selected to guide the interview, whereas the rest of the interview was a co-constructed conversation, which yielded narratives with rich data that were systematically analysed through computer-assisted coding. An initial conceptual framework was thus created and used to substantiate the findings by means of a second literature review. It is concluded that the quantum organisation, being a leader in a complex environment, the dynamics of the mental models and the complex environment itself collectively represent a constellation of complex adaptive sub-systems, affecting one another in an interdependent manner and co-evolving accordingly. The conceptual framework describes the mindful sense-making process of a leader in a complex environment, consisting of a) an active acceptance of the current reality, b) catalytic questioning, c) letting go of, d) knowing that not knowing the solution, e) trusting what they do know, f) observing the actuality of unfolding patterns and g) realisation. Criteria for rigour, authenticity, trustworthiness and credibility were applied and demonstrated. The findings provide insight into the form and function of a leader’s mental models in the complex South African context. The practical contribution of this study specifically applies to the practice of leadership development and coaching. In addition, this study contributes methodologically to the field of mental model research by demonstrating the appropriateness of a constructivist paradigm for describing and interpreting the complexities of mental models of leaders in a complex context. Recommendations and opportunities for future research were also made. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

Purpose: Shared mental models (SMMs) represent commonly held understandings of task and team related knowledge within a team. Thought to facilitate implicit and adaptive coordination without the need for explicit communication, the construct has been thoroughly studied in non-health care settings. There has been increasing interest in the topic in the healthcare setting, but recent reviews have found that the construct is poorly defined and has significant heterogeneity in how it is measured (Floren et al., 2018). We conducted a scoping review examining the construct of SMMs in medical teams within the acute care setting. Method: Following the Arksey and O’Malley (2005) framework, five data bases were searched: Medline, CINAHL, PsychInfo, Web of Science, and Embase. Eligible studies examined SMMs in the context of medical teamwork in the acute care setting. Definitions, methods, and general study characteristics were examined. Results: Of the 1397 articles retrieved, 25 met eligibility criteria. The studies encompassed a variety of areas of clinical practice. There was no common definition for SMMs across the studies examined. The majority of studies (20/25) used quantitative methods with surveys, questionnaires, and observation being the most common. Conclusions: The construct of the SMM is poorly defined in the setting of acute care medical teams. Although many standard types of SMM measurement exist, few of the studies used these common methods. The lack of direct measurement of SMMs, especially in the case of observation, questions the validity of these studies. We propose a definition for SMMs in this context and a path forward for studying SMM in the acute care setting. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Health care is a team sport and as health care systems become more complex, teamwork becomes increasingly important. However, a team of experts does not make an expert team and highly effective teams possess a particular set of characteristics that allow them to perform high quality care. One characteristic that is receiving an increasing amount of attention is the Shared Mental Model. The purpose of this study was to examine what is already known about these shared mental models in the context of acute care medical teams. This study will act as a launching point for future research exploring how teams think and how it impacts the quality of care they can provide.

Technological innovations in data transfer and communication have given rise to the virtual team where geographically separate individuals interact via one or more technologies to combine efforts on a collective activity. In military, business, and spaceflight settings, virtual teams are increasingly used in training and operational activities; however there are important differences between these virtual collaborations and more traditional face-to-face (FTF) interactions. One concern is the absence of FTF contact may alter team communication and cooperation and subsequently affect overall team performance. The present research examined this issue with a specific focus on how communication modality influences team learning and performance gains. Evidence from a recent study on virtual team performance (Singer, Grant, Commarford, Kring, and Zavod, 2001) indicated local teams, with both members in same physical location in Orlando, Florida which allowed for FTF contact before and after a series of virtual environment (VE) missions, performed significantly better than distributed teams, with team members in separate physical locations in Orlando and Toronto, Canada and no FTF contact. For the first mission, local and distributed teams exhibited no significant difference in performance as measured by the number of rooms properly cleared in the building search exercises. In contrast, for the second mission, occurring after each team had completed the opportunity to discuss mission performance and make plans for future missions, local teams performed significantly better than distributed teams; a pattern that continued for the remaining six missions. Given that the primary difference between local and distributed teams was how they communicated outside of the VE during after action reviews (AARs), and that the localiii distributed difference was first detected on the second mission, after teams had completed one, 10-min discussion of mission performance, a tenable conclusion is that certain team characteristics and skills necessary for performance were communication-dependent and negatively affected by the absence of FTF communication. Although Singer et al. (2001) collected multiple dependent variables related to performance and communication activities, these measures were not designed to detect communication-dependent team factors and therefore incapable of supporting such an explanation. Therefore, the present research replicated Singer et al. (2001) and incorporated additional measures in order to determine if specific communication-dependent factors could explain the inferior performance of distributed teams. Three factors critical to team communication, particularly during the AAR process, are the similarity of team members. shared mental models (SMMs), team cohesion (task and interpersonal), and team trust (cognitive and emotional). Because evidence suggests FTF communication has a positive effect on processes related to each of these factors, the current study tested whether distributed teams exhibit less similar mental models and degraded cohesion and trust in comparison to local teams, which can affect performance. Furthermore, to test the prediction that distributed teams possess degraded communication and would benefit from improved communication skills, brief team communication training (TCT) was administered to half of the teams in each location condition. Thirty two, 2-person teams comprised of undergraduate students were equally distributed into four experimental conditions (n = 8) based on the independent variables of location (local vs. distributed) and training (TCT vs. no-TCT). Teams completed five missions using the same VE system and mission tasks as in Singer et al. (2001), however in the present study distributed team members were in separate rooms in the same building, not separate geographic locations. In iv addition to performance data, participants completed a series of questionnaires to assess SMMs, cohesion, and trust. It was hypothesized that local teams would again exhibit better performance than distributed teams and that the local team advantage could partly be explained by a greater similarity in mental models and higher levels of cohesion and trust. Moreover, TCT teams in both locations were expected to exhibit improved performance over their non-trained counterparts. Analyses of the three team factors revealed the largest location and communication training differences for levels of cognitive trust, with local teams reporting higher levels than distributed teams early after the second VE mission, and TCT teams reporting higher levels than no-TCT teams after the second and fifth VE missions. In contrast, the main effects of location and communication training were only significant for one SMM measure agreement between team members on the strengths of the team's leader during the AAR sessions. Local teams and TCT teams reported higher levels of agreement after the first VE mission than their distributed v and no-TCT counterparts. Furthermore, on the first administration of the questionnaire, TCT teams reported higher levels of agreement than non-TCT teams on the main goals of the VE missions. Overall, teams in all conditions exhibited moderate to substantial levels of agreement for procedural and personnel responsibility factors, but poor levels of agreement for mental models related to interpersonal interactions. Finally, no significant differences were detected for teams in each experimental condition on levels of task or interpersonal cohesion which suggests cohesion may not mature enough over the course of several hours to be observable. In summary, the first goal of the present study was to replicate Singer et al..s (2001) findings which showed two-person teams conducting VE missions performed better after the first mission if allowed face-to-face (FTF) contact during discussions of the team's performance. Local and distributed teams in the current study did show a similar pattern of performance, completing a greater total of rooms properly, although when evaluating mission-by-mission performance, this difference was only significant for missions 3 and 4. Even though distributed team members experienced the same experimental conditions as in Singer et al. (no pre-mission contact, no FTF contact during missions or AARs) and were told their partner was at .distant location, familiarity with a teammate's dialect and other environmental cues may have differentially affected perceptions of physical and psychological distance, or social presence, which ultimately altered the distributed team relationship from before. The second goal was to determine if brief TCT could reduce or eliminate the distributed team disadvantage witnessed in Singer et al. (2001). Results did not support this prediction and revealed no significant differences between TCT and no-TCT teams with regard to number of rooms searched over the five missions. Although purposefully limited to 1 hr, the brevity of the TCT procedure (1 hr), and its broad focus, may have considerably reduced any potential benefits of learning how to communicate more effectively with a teammate. In addition, the additional training beyond the already challenging requirements of learning the VE mission tasks may have increased the cognitive load of participants during the mission phase, leading to a detriment in performance due to divided attention. Despite several notable differences from Singer et al. (2001), the present study supports that distributed teams operating in a common virtual setting experience performance deficits when compared to their physically co-located counterparts. Although this difference was not attributed to agreement on SMMs or levels of cohesion, local teams did posses higher levels of cognitive trust early on in the experimental session which may partly explain their superior performance. However additional research that manipulates cognitive trust as an independent variable is needed before implying a cause-and-effect relationship. Ultimately, this study's most significant contribution is identifying a new set of questions to understand virtual team performance. In addition to a deeper examination of cognitive trust, future research should address how features of the distributed team experience affect perceptions of the physical and psychological distance, or social presence, between team members. It is also critical to understand how broadening the communication channel for distributed teams, such as the inclusion of video images or access to biographical information about one's distant teammate, facilitates performance in a variety of virtual team contexts.

No description available.

This research investigated the determinants and outcomes of shared mental models of skill use in autonomous work teams. A model of the determinants and outcomes (team task behaviors) of shared mental models of skill use was tested. Three components of shared mental models of skill use were investigated: shared knowledge pertaining to skill use in task performance (i.e., knowledge about the task, equipment, team, and team interaction), shared expectations for skill use in task performance in both routine and non-routine situations, and shared attitudes relevant to skill use in task performance (i.e., collective orientation and collective efficacy). The model included the interdependence, uncertainty, and complexity of the technology; the degree to which the team is cross-trained and its membership stable; and the level of prior experience team members have had with teamwork as the determinants of overlap in a team's mental model of skill use. The beneficial outcomes of a high degree of overlap in the team's mental model of skill use were four team task behaviors: flexibility, quality, verbal communication, and time required in task planning. The flexibility construct was defined as the degree to which a team allocated and used the multiple competencies/skills of each of its members in pursuit of team goals. A model of the development of flexibility was developed as was a theory of the role of shared mental models in flexible skill use. / Ph. D.

This work investigates entry barriers and approaches for facilitating end-user web application development with the particular focus on shaping web programming technology and tools according to end-users' expectations and natural mental models. My underlying assumption and motivation is that given the right tools and techniques even nonprogrammers may become successful web application developers. The main target audience for this research are "casual" webmasters without programming experience - a group likely to be interested in building web applications. As an important subset of web applications I focus on supporting the development of basic data collection, storage and retrieval applications such as online registrations forms, staff databases, or report tools. First I analyze the factors contributing to the complexity of web application development through surveys and interviews of experienced programmers; then I explore the "natural mental models" of potential end-user web developers, and finally discuss my particular design solutions for lowering entry barriers, as embodied by a proof-of-concept development tool, called Click. Furthermore, I introduce and evaluate the concept of "Design-at-Runtime" - a new technique for facilitating and accelerating the development-test cycle when building web-based applications. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to aggregate the findings of three distinct areas of research into one model of team effectiveness. Specifically, it was hypothesized that, in accordance with prior research findings, aspects of personality related to social intelligence would predict informal leadership emergence. Furthermore, it was predicted that multiple leaders within a team would positively influence that team's subsequent level of performance, through the mediating influence of team mental model similarity and team mental model accuracy. Participants included 40 computer science and engineering teams, who completed their surveys at time one, whereas performance criterion measures were collected at time two. Contrary to prediction, results indicated that social intelligence was not a significant predictor of leadership emergence, and leadership dispersion did not directly impact team performance. However, leadership dispersion positively impacted team mental model accuracy, and team mental model accuracy and similarity positively affected subsequent team performance, as hypothesized. Therefore, the current study provides partial support for a model of team performance that takes into account multiple leadership within teams and its positive influence on the dissemination and development of important, task-related knowledge structures among team members. / Master of Science

The practice of reflection on experience has been called a best practice for learning in organizations. Researchers have extensively studied the impacts of reflection on experience on improving productivity in areas of health and education. The results of these studies have shown that reflection on experience by individuals is indeed effective in enhancing practitioners' performance in the field. There has not, however, been much research on the process of reflection on experience by employees of organizations. This dissertation focused on enhancing the understanding of the process, structure, and underlying mechanisms of reflection on experience by employees in the high tech organizational environments. This dissertation is a multi-phase study. First, the systematic process of employee reflective practices in organizations was investigated by reviewing the literature, and a theoretical six-factor structure was proposed. Second, a literature-based assessment instrument was designed and administered, leading to the collection of data from 354 employees of different U.S.-based technology organizations. Third, an exploratory factor analysis extracted the empirical factor structure of reflective practices and contrasted it to the proposed theoretical construct. The collected data entailed demographic data, employee satisfaction, and teamwork perceptions as independent variables, where the reflective practices were the dependent variables. Regression analysis of the data highlighted associations between reflective practices and employee satisfaction, teamwork, as well as some of the collected demographic data. Finally, in the fourth phase, a system dynamics approach was applied to develop the first literature-based causal loop diagram of systematic reflective practices in organizations that shed light on reasons behind the failure of organizations to reflect. This study produced the first empirical factor structure of reflective practices, and an assessment instrument to explore the reflective practices of high-tech organizations. In addition, this study examined associations between reflective practices and employee and organizational characteristics. Finally, it provides a causal loop diagram that maps the mechanisms that reinforce or impede the practice of reflection on experience in organizations. This diagram can be used as a roadmap and a guide to improve and increase practitioners' reflective practices. / Doctor of Philosophy / The practice of mental reconstruction of experience is called "reflection on experience," which has been called a best practice for learning in organizations. Researchers have extensively studied the impacts of reflection on experience on improving productivity in areas of health and education. The results of these studies have shown that reflection on experience by individuals is indeed effective in enhancing practitioners' performance in the field. There has not, however, been much research on the process of reflection on experience by employees of organizations. This dissertation will focus on enhancing the understanding of the process, structure, and underlying mechanisms of reflection on experience by employees in high tech organizational environments in a multi-phase study. First, the systematic process of employee reflective practices in organizations is investigated, and a theoretical six-factor structure is proposed. Next, the design and administration of a literature-based survey led to the collection of data from 354 employees of different U.S.-based technology organizations. Through analysis of the data, an empirical factor structure of reflective practices was extracted and was compared to the proposed theoretical construct. The analysis showed that reflective practices are associated with employee teamwork and employee satisfaction, where if the employee perceptions of teamwork or employee satisfaction increases, the employee's practice of reflection will increase as well. On the other hand, the analysis showed that the organizational unit's size and the employee's level of education is negatively associated with reflection. The larger the organization or, the higher the level of education of the employees, the less the overall level of reflection of the employees will be. Finally, a first causal loop diagram that maps the mechanisms that reinforce or impede the practice of reflection on experience in organizations was developed to be used as a roadmap and a guide to enhance organizations' learning and performance outcomes by systematically improving and increasing practitioners' reflective practices.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Dean A. Zollman / In this study we explored students' transfer of learning in the X-ray medical imaging context, including the X-ray-based computer-assisted tomography (or CAT). For this purpose we have conducted a series of clinical and teaching interviews. The investigation was a part of a bigger research effort to design teaching-learning materials for pre-medical students who are completing their algebra-based physics course. Our students brought to the discussion pieces of knowledge transferred from very different sources such as their own X-ray experiences, previous learning and the mass media. This transfer seems to result in more or less firm mental models, although often not internally consistent or coherent. Based on our research on pre-med students' models of X-rays we designed a hands-on lab using semi-transparent Lego bricks to model CAT scans. Without "surgery" (i.e. without intrusion into the Lego "body") students determined the shape of an object, which was built out of opaque and translucent Lego bricks and hidden from view. A source of light and a detector were provided upon request. Using a learning cycle format, we introduced CAT scans after students successfully have completed this task. By comparing students' ideas before and after teaching interview with the groups of 2 or 3 participants, we have investigated transfer of learning from basic physics and everyday experience to a complex medical technology and how their peer interactions trigger and facilitate this process. During the last phase of our research we also introduced a CAT-scan simulation problem into our teaching interview routine and compared students' perception of this simulation and their perception of the hands-on activity.