A Systems Approach to Diagnosing and Measuring Teamwork in Complex Sociotechnical Organizations

This paper presents a novel approach to diagnosing and measuring teamwork in complex sociotechnical systems. First, the underlying theoretical constructs that have inspired the development and use of a multi-level model to study team phenomena from a general systems perspective are presented. Next, in an attempt to theoretically ground the construct, “flow state” will be presented as an isomorphic variable in a multi-level model, meaning it is represented similarly at the system, team, and individual level. Approaching processes embedded in organizations from this perspective allows diagnosis of the systemic influences that contribute most to the variance in performance, identification of pervasive latent systemic failures, and the development of a tailored taxonomy of behavioral teamwork dimensions, which can then be translated into metrics to measure teamwork within any observable complex process.