The Role of Communication and Coordination in Team Decision Making in a Command & Control Task (De rol van communicatie en cooerdinatie bij teambesluitvorming in een command & control taak)

In this study, the role of communication and coordination in team decision making in a command and control task has been investigated. First, a framework has been developed in which all team-related entities are described. Next, we have developed an artificial world in which various events take place. This world is represented by a city consisting of various buildings in which citizens live. The events are series of fires. A fire-fighting organization has been set up to deal with this situation. This organization has to allocate a restricted amount of resources to fulfill its goal: to rescue as many lives as possible. Focus of research is on how to organize and support a team that observes the world and allocates the resources. These tasks have been analysed and a normative task structure has been described as a basis for performance measurements. Two experiments have been carried out. First, the hypothesis was tested that an experimental task (fire fighting) could not be carried out alone. Second, it was investigated whether teams that are restricted in their communication and coordination possibilities could perform as well as teams that can communicate and coordinate without restrictions. A third research topic was the role of distributing knowledge among the task performers. The following three main conclusions can be drawn from the experimental results. First, the fire-fighting task truly is a team task because for optimal task performance, crucial task elements should be carried out in parallel. Second, communication restricted to data exchange only leads to team performance decrease. Third, distributing knowledge over team members leads to an increase of parallel task execution and to better team performance. Text in English. Summary in Dutch and English.