Organizing for Mars: A Task Management Perspective on Work within Spaceflight Multiteam Systems

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to examine how task, social, and situational factors shape work patterns, information networks, and performance in spaceflight multiteam systems (MTSs).

BACKGROUND

Human factors research has explored the task and individual characteristics that affect decisions regarding when and in what order people complete tasks. We extend this work to understand how the social and situational factors that arise when working in MTSs affect individual work patterns.

METHODS

We conducted a complex multi-site space analog simulation with NASA over the course of 3 years. The MTS task required participants from four teams (Geology, Robotics, Engineering, and Human Factors) to collaborate to design a well on Mars. We manipulated the one-way communication delay between the crew and mission support: no time lag, 60-second lag, and 180-second lag.

RESULTS

The study revealed that team and situational factors exert strong effects: members whose teams have less similar mental models, those whose teams prioritize their team goal over the MTS goal, and those working in social isolation and/or under communication delay engage longer on tasks. Time-on-task positively predicts MTS information networks, which in turn positively predict MTS performance when communication occurs with a delay, but not when it occurs in real-time.

CONCLUSION

Our findings contribute to research on task management in the context of working in teams and multiteam systems. Team and situational factors, along with task factors, shape task management behavior.

APPLICATION

Social and situational factors are important predictors of task management in team contexts such as spaceflight MTSs.

Conditioning team cognition: A meta-analysis

Abundant research supports a cognitive foundation to teamwork. Team cognition describes the mental states that enable team members to anticipate and to coordinate. Having been examined in hundreds of studies conducted in board rooms, cockpits, nuclear power plants, and locker rooms, to name a few, we turn to the question of moderators: Under which conditions is team cognition more and less strongly related to team performance? Random effects meta-analytic moderator analysis of 107 independent studies ( N = 7,778) reveals meaningful variation in effect sizes conditioned on team composition and boundary factors. The overall effect of team cognition on performance is ρ = .35, though examining this effect by these moderators finds the effect can meaningfully vary between ρ = .22 and ρ = .42. This meta-analysis advances team effectiveness theory by moving past the question of “what is important?” to explore the question of “when and why is it important?” Results indicate team cognition is most strongly related to performance for teams with social category heterogeneity ( ρ = .42), high external interdependence ( ρ = .41), as well as low authority differentiation ( ρ = .35), temporal dispersion ( ρ = .36), and geographic dispersion ( ρ = .35). Functional homogeneity and temporal stability (compositional factors) were not meaningful moderators of this relationship. The key takeaway of these findings is that team cognition matters most for team performance when—either by virtue of composition, leadership, structure, or technology—there are few substitute enabling conditions to otherwise promote performance.