Research On Influential Factors Of The Evolution Of Shared Mental Models In Group Decision Making

With teams had been applied increasingly in modern organizations, researchers and managers were more and more concerning with the researches of group decision making and team effectiveness. Team performance depended on how team members worked together. Form cognitive perspectives, researchers used shared mental models to explain the differences between teams. Shared mental models were knowledge structures held by members of a team that enable them to form accurate explanations and expectations for the task, and in turn, to coordinate their actions and adapt their behavior to demands of the task and other team members. Researches had demonstrated support for the link between shared mental models and team performance. High performance team was always related to better shared mental models. So shared mental models was a new research perspectives of group decision-making.Based on Multilevel Theory of Team Decision Making, this research attempted to analysis the decision-making process and performance of hierachical team with distributed expertises. Through laboratory experiment, this research explored the development of shared mental models and the influence of information distribution, feedback, and leadership on shared mental models' accuracy and similarityThe results indicated that in team decision-making process, the accuracy and similarity of team task model and the comparability of team member model were increased. They were related to certain indexes of performance. In the early phase of group decision-making, the accuracy and similarity of team task model were related to the scores of decision-making. The similarity was always related to members' satisfaction. In the later phase of group decision-making, only the accuracy of team task model related to scores.Information distribution, feedback and leadership affected different phases' shared mental models. Information distribution affected the accuracy of team task model in the early phase. Feedback affected the accuracy and similarity of team task model in the middle phase. The more detail feedback was, the more improvement shared mental models have. Furthermore, information distribution moderated the influence of feedback to team member model. Leadership affected the similarity of team member model in the middle phase. Earlier feedback improved the accuracy of team task model, and later leadership improved the accuracy of team task model.