Gender Composition of High Stress Tactical Decision Making Teams: Impact on Team Process and Outcome

This study is based on a university-developed synthetic task, the Team Interactive Decision Exercise for Teams Incorporating Distributed Expertise (TIDE2). It was predicted that teams of varying gender configuration would differ in communication and coordination patterns, and that these differences...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Elliott, Linda R, Hollenbeck, John R, Tower, Spencer L
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
ACCURACY
ARMY RESEARCH
AWARENESS
COMMAND CONTROL COMMUNICATIONS
DECISION MAKING
DEFENSE MECHANISMS(PSYCHOLOGY)
FEMALES
GENDER DIFFERENCES
INFORMATION EXCHANGE
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS
JUDGEMENT(PSYCHOLOGY)
LEADERSHIP
MALES
MESSAGE PROCESSING
MILITARY EXERCISES
MILITARY TACTICS
MORALE
OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
PATTERN RECOGNITION
PERFORMANCE(HUMAN)
Personnel Management and Labor Relations
Psychology
REACTION(PSYCHOLOGY)
REGRESSION ANALYSIS
ROLES(BEHAVIOR)
SENSITIVITY
STRESS(PSYCHOLOGY)
TACTICAL COMMUNICATIONS
TEAMS(PERSONNEL)
VERBAL BEHAVIOR
WORD RECOGNITION
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Description
Summary:This study is based on a university-developed synthetic task, the Team Interactive Decision Exercise for Teams Incorporating Distributed Expertise (TIDE2). It was predicted that teams of varying gender configuration would differ in communication and coordination patterns, and that these differences would account for significant variation in team process and outcome measures. Gender configuration of teams was manipulated using six unique gender configurations. Predictions relating gender configuration to team effectiveness were made within the theoretical framework of the Multi-level theory (MLT) of team performance (Hollenbeck et al., 1995), where team members have distributed expertise and hierarchical structure. Results demonstrated significant differences in performance among the gender groups, with all male teams performing most accurately, and teams with a male leader and two female subordinates performing least accurately. This variance in team performance was found to be due to differences in efficiency/effectiveness of information exchange, such that team members of low performing teams did not acquire requisite information for decision making. In addition, it was demonstrated that measures of gender configuration which have been commonly used provided misleading results, which may explain the conflicting results reported in the past. The MLT theoretical propositions were tested and supported.