Team Structure and Team Building Improve Human–Machine Teaming With Autonomous Agents

This study examined the effectiveness of a 12-week team-building (TB) intervention on improving group cohesion and attendance in an ongoing exercise class for the elderly. Among a sample of 12 elderly exercisers, exercise class attendance was monitored before and during the TB intervention, and perceptions of selected measures of cohesion (i.e., group integration) were assessed at baseline and 12 weeks. Results indicated that class attendance increased by 22.2% during the TB intervention. As well, positive trends were evident in perceptions of cohesion. Together, these findings point to the importance of group factors in encouraging exercise behavior among the elderly.

“Do what you say?” The combined effects of framed social intent and autonomous agent behavior on the trust process

The purpose of this study was to develop and apply a team building program for a curling team through needs assessment. The participants in this study were 69 high-school, college, professional, and national curling athletes for the needs assessment, 4 sport psychologists and 2 curling experts for verifying the validity of the program, and 5 curling athletes of professional curling teams for the application of the team building program. The needs assessment data were analyzed by inductive content analysis. The team building program was developed based on the results of needs assessment, goal setting of the team building program, and a selection of activities for the team building program. The team building program was applied to five curling players for 7 sessions. Team cohesion, team efficacy, and effective communication were measured two times (i.e., pre and post) to examine the effects of team building intervention. The results of needs assessment indicated interpersonal relationship, communication, and performance were necessary factors for team building. Consequently, goals of the team building program were to improve communication and interpersonal relationships. Team building activities were selected through team building literature review and expert meetings. Secondly, the team building intervention had a positive influence on team cohesion, team efficacy, and communication. These results indicated that team building would positively contribute to team factors and team performance.

Team building and perceived effort in an exercise setting: Gender effects

BackgroundClinical interventions often need to be adapted from their original design when they are applied to new settings. There is a growing literature describing frameworks and approaches to deploying and documenting adaptations of evidence-based practices in healthcare. Still, intervention modifications are often limited in detail and justification, which may prevent rigorous evaluation of interventions and intervention adaptation effectiveness in new contexts. We describe our approach in a case study, combining two complementary intervention adaptation frameworks to modify CONNECT for Quality, a provider-facing team building and communication intervention designed to facilitate implementation of a new clinical program.MethodsThis process of intervention adaptation involved the use of the Planned Adaptation Framework and the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications, for systematically identifying key drivers, core and non-core components of interventions for documenting planned and unplanned changes to intervention design.ResultsThe CONNECT intervention’s original context and setting is first described and then compared with its new application. This lays the groundwork for the intentional modifications to intervention design, which are developed before intervention delivery to participating providers. The unpredictable nature of implementation in real-world practice required unplanned adaptations, which were also considered and documented. Attendance and participation rates were examined and qualitative assessment of reported participant experience supported the feasibility and acceptability of adaptations of the original CONNECT intervention in a new clinical context.ConclusionThis approach may serve as a useful guide for intervention implementation efforts applied in diverse clinical contexts and subsequent evaluations of intervention effectiveness.Trial registrationThe study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03300336) on September 28, 2017.

EDITORIAL article Front. Neurorobot., 13 September 2013 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2013.00013

For effective human-agent teaming, robots and other artificial intelligence (AI) agents must infer their human partner's abilities and behavioral response patterns and adapt accordingly. Most prior works make the unrealistic assumption that one or more teammates can act near-optimally. In real-world collaboration, humans and autonomous agents can be suboptimal, especially when each only has partial domain knowledge. In this work, we develop computational modeling and optimization techniques for enhancing the performance of human-agent teams, where both the human and the robotic agent have asymmetric capabilities and act suboptimally due to incomplete environmental knowledge. We adopt an online Bayesian approach that enables a robot to infer people's willingness to comply with its assistance in a sequential decision-making game. Our user studies show that user preferences and team performance vary with robot intervention styles, and our approach for mixed-initiative collaboration enhances objective team performance (p<.001) and subjective measures, such as user's trust (p<.001) and perceived likeability of the robot (p<.001).

An autonomous team is an emerging tool for new product development (NPD). With its high degree of autonomy, independence, leadership, dedication, and collocation, the team has more freedom and stronger capabilities to be innovative and entrepreneurial. Several anecdotal cases suggest that autonomous teams are best when applied to highly uncertain, complex, and innovative projects. However, there is no empirical study to test such a notion. Moreover, autonomous teams are not a panacea, and implementing them can be costly and disruptive to their parent organization. When should this powerful, yet costly tool, be pulled out of the new product professional's toolbox? This paper attempts to answer this question.The objective of this study is to explore under which circumstances an autonomous team is the best choice for NPD. Based on contingency and information‐processing theories, autonomous teams are hypothesized to be more effective to address projects with: (1) high technology novelty and (2) radical innovation. To test these hypotheses, the relative effectiveness of four types of team structures: autonomous, functional, lightweight, and heavyweight are compared. The effectiveness measures include development cost, development speed, and overall product success. Vision clarity, resource availability, and team experience are the controlled variables.The empirical results based on the data from 555 NPD projects generally support the research hypotheses. Relative to other team structures, autonomous teams are more effective in addressing projects with high technology novelty or radical innovation. The results also suggest that heavyweight teams perform better than other teams in developing incremental innovation. These results provide some evidence to support contingency and information‐processing theories at the project level. Given the importance of the development of novel technology and radical innovation in establishing new businesses and other strategic initiatives, the findings of this study may not only have some important implications for NPD practices but may also shed some light on other important topics such as disruptive innovation, strategic innovation, new venture, corporate entrepreneurship, and ambidextrous organization.

Home assistant chat-bots, self-driving cars, drones or automated negotiation systems are some of the several examples of autonomous (artificial) agents that have pervaded our society. These agents enable the automation of multiple tasks, saving time and (human) effort. However, their presence in social settings raises the need for a better understanding of their effect on social interactions and how they may be used to enhance cooperation towards the public good, instead of hindering it. To this end, we present an experimental study of human delegation to autonomous agents and hybrid human-agent interactions centered on a non-linear public goods dilemma with uncertain returns in which participants face a collective risk. Our aim is to understand experimentally whether the presence of autonomous agents has a positive or negative impact on social behaviour, equality and cooperation in such a dilemma. Our results show that cooperation and group success increases when participants delegate their actions to an artificial agent that plays on their behalf. Yet, this positive effect is less pronounced when humans interact in hybrid human-agent groups, where we mostly observe that humans in successful hybrid groups make higher contributions earlier in the game. Also, we show that participants wrongly believe that artificial agents will contribute less to the collective effort. In general, our results suggest that delegation to autonomous agents has the potential to work as commitment devices, which prevent both the temptation to deviate to an alternate (less collectively good) course of action, as well as limiting responses based on betrayal aversion.

Teams are complex and dynamic entities that face constant changes to their team structures and must simultaneously work to meet and adapt to the varying situational demands of their environment (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). Agencies, industries, and government institutions are currently placing greater attention to the influence on team dynamics and teamwork as they are important to key organizational outcomes. Due to increased emphasis being placed upon the understanding the maturation of team dynamics, the incorporation of efficient methodological tools to understand how teams are being measured over time becomes critical. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of relevant academic articles detailing the science behind methodological tools and general approaches to study team dynamics over time. We provide an overview of the methodological tools used to understand team dynamics with accordance to specific temporal elements. Drawing from Kozlowski et al. (1999) process model of team development, we highlight relevant emergent team constructs within each stage. As well, for each stage, we discuss the what and how to measure team dynamics. Our analyses bring to light relevant, novel and complex approaches being used by researchers to examine specific constructs within different team developmental phases (e.g., agent-based simulations, computational modeling) and the importance of transitioning from a single source methodology approach. Implications and future research are also discussed.

A perennial challenge in creating and using complex autonomous agents is following their choices of actions as the world changes dynamically and understanding why they act as they do. This paper reports on our work to support human developers and observers to better follow and understand the actions of autonomous agents. We introduce the concept of layered disclosure by which autonomous agents have included in their architecture the foundations necessary to allow them to disclose upon request the specific reasons for their actions. Layered disclosure hence goes beyond standard plain code debugging tools. In its essence it also gives the agent designer the ability to define an appropriate information hierarchy, which can include agent-specific constructs such as internal state that persists over time. The user may request this information at any of the specified levels of detail, and either retroactively or while the agent is acting. We present layered disclosure as we created and implemented it in the simulated robotic soccer domain.We contribute the detailed design to support the application of layered disclosure to other agent domains. Layered disclosure played an important role in our successful development of the undefeated RoboCup champion CMUnited-99 multiagent team.

We investigated the effect of TeamSTEPPS (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) training on teamwork perceptions and patient safety outcomes in an inpatient obstetrics setting. Physicians and nurses from the regional perinatal center were offered TeamSTEPPS instruction and administered a voluntary survey to assess subjective perceptions of team dynamics and patient safety prior to and 6 months following TeamSTEPPS training. Responses were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Chi-square test. Objective measures of patient safety outcomes were the incidence and blood loss of postpartum hemorrhage after vaginal delivery (PPH-VD) or cesarean section (PPH-CS) and incidence of shoulder dystocia (SD). Outcomes were analyzed using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Surveys were collected from 20 physicians and 15 nurses prior to training and from 9 physicians and 20 nurses 6 months following training. Survey data showed an overall positive perception of teamwork and patient safety behaviors across all respondents. However, we found no significant changes in perception of team dynamics or behaviors to promote patient safety between pre- and posttraining time points. Physicians and nurses differed in perception of team dynamics (p = 0.001) and patient safety behaviors (p < 0.001), with nurses reporting more negative perception of safety behaviors posttraining. Physician attendees experienced a nonsignificant lower rate of PPH-VD and PPH-CS with unchanged blood loss, and an increased rate of SD compared with nonattendees in the 6 months following TeamSTEPPS training (p = 0.058, 0.20, and 0.21, respectively). Our experience with perinatal TeamSTEPPS training as a singular intervention was not demonstrative of improvement in teamwork and patient safety perceptions or incidences of obstetric emergencies suggesting that integration into a more comprehensive patient safety program and ongoing training of a larger proportion of providers per department may be necessary to realize tangible benefits of TeamSTEPPS. Our survey results also highlight important differences between physician and nursing staff perceptions. · There is value in a comprehensive patient safety program, such as TEAMSTEPPS, with ongoing training.. · Patient safety perceptions may differ between physician and nursing staff in the same unit.. · Health care staff must agree about the situation to improve patient safety..

Introduction The main barriers to perioperative surgical teamwork are confusion in responsibilities, and prevailing misconceptions between teams. Our Burn and Surgical intensive care unit (SICU) teams noted these obstacles and sought to improve co-management of burn patients. Methods Burn and SICU providers were surveyed to identify preferred management roles. Subsequently, two providers from each team created guidelines delineating management responsibilities. A five-point Likert scale survey was distributed pre- and six months post- guideline distribution to assess impact of intervention. Results A total of 87.5% (14/16) of Burn (n=6) and SICU providers (n=8) participated in an initial survey on team role and dynamics, while 68.7% (11/16) participated in a post-survey. All providers (100%) agreed the SICU team should manage the ventilator, pressure support, and sedation, and the Burn team should manage wound care and mobility. There were discrepancies in fluid resuscitation management and general orders. All Burn providers desired to lead fluid resuscitation for the patient’s entire stay in contrast to 50% and 87.5% of SICU providers desiring management at &amp;lt; 48 hours and &amp;gt;48 hours, respectively. Although our sample size was not large enough to detect many statistically significant differences, the following trends were observed following guideline (Figure 1) implementation. Providers noted improved clarity in team roles (3.1, SD 1.0 vs 3.7, SD 1.2; p=0.10), more effective co-management of patients (3.6, SD 0.7 vs 4.0, SD 0.5; p=0.08), and improved inter-team communication (2.7, SD 0.9 vs 3.5, SD 0.9; p=0.06). After the intervention, more providers believed they were respected by the other team (3.2, SD 0.9 vs 3.6, SD 0.7; p=0.2), and there were less disagreements in management (1.9, SD 0.7 vs 2.9, SD 1.0; p=0.02). Additionally, 90.9% (10/11) providers agreed or strongly agreed these guidelines were helpful in delineating team roles, and 63.6% (7/11) of providers felt guidelines improved the Burn and SICU team relationship. Conclusions Implementation of Burn/SICU team management guidelines may enhance team dynamic and provide team role clarification. Applicability of Research to Practice Care coordination between surgical teams is integral to successfully manage critically ill patients. This is the first example of how guideline implementation could improve inter-team dynamics within the burn literature. Funding for the Study N/A

We report a within-teams experiment testing the effects of fit between team structure and regulatory task demands on task performance and satisfaction through average team member positive affect and helping behaviors. We used a completely crossed repeated-observations design in which 21 teams enacted 2 tasks with different regulatory focus characteristics (prevention and promotion) in 2 organizational structures (functional and divisional), resulting in 84 observations. Results suggested that salient regulatory demands inherent in the task interacted with structure to determine objective and subjective team-level outcomes, such that functional structures were best suited to (i.e., had best fit with) tasks with a prevention regulatory focus and divisional structures were best suited to tasks with a promotion regulatory focus. This contingency finding integrates regulatory focus and structural contingency theories, and extends them to the team level with implications for models of performance, satisfaction, and team dynamics.

Research to date has shown that teacher teamwork results in higher motivation among students and higher quality knowledge, and also facilitates the sharing of professional experiences and stimulates teachers' creativity and their openness to change. Team forming and development depend on multiple factors, particularly on the individual and group traits of team members. This paper examines teachers' attitudes as an individual factor significant for their inclination for team teaching, and the aim of the study presented in the paper was to study teachers' attitudes to teamwork. The sample consisted of 240 teachers from fifteen elementary schools in Belgrade. Factor analysis has singled out three factors around which teachers' attitudes are grouped: a) teaching; b) team and individual development; and c) professional challenge. The study has shown that overall, teachers have a positive attitude to teamwork because it is conducive to a stimulating environment for work and learning, and also provides an opportunity for teachers' personal and professional development. Significant differences in the perception of teamwork have been noted among lower-grade teachers depending on their years of service and the extent to which they have been engaged in team teaching.