Abstract
This chapter applies an agent-based modeling approach to explore some aspects of team coordination by mutual adjustments. The teams considered here are cross functional teams, either co-located or distributed where individuals with specialized knowledge and skills work simultaneously together to accomplish an interdependent team task. Coordination by mutual adjustment is the joint activity whereby each team member aims to align his actions so that they fit those actions contributed by the other team members. Simon’s construct, docility is used as a theoretical lever to cast light on how the composition of teams with respect to individual level differences play out during team members’ interaction and the resulting consequences of these differences for team coordination. An agent-based simulation model with agents that worked together on an interdependent team task was created and coded in Java-based NetLogo language. The results from a series of experiments with the model suggest that homogenous teams with team members with moderate rates of docility outperform teams where individuals have either high levels or low levels of docility. The results further suggest that intra-team heterogeneity with respect to team members’ docility in most cases makes coordination by mutual adjustment harder to achieve. Discussions of the findings, the contribution to theory, the managerial implications, the limitations, and suggestions for future research finalize the chapter.
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Thomsen, S.E. (2016). Exploring Aspects of Coordination by Mutual Adjustment in Fluid Teams: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach. In: Secchi, D., Neumann, M. (eds) Agent-Based Simulation of Organizational Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18153-0_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18153-0_8
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