ABSTRACT
Most individuals have a specific role to play on their teams. Some roles are formally assigned such as manager or supervisor, positions on a football team, or tasks on an assembly line. Others emerge through interaction such as “interpersonal conflict expert,” “social planner,” or “technology problem solver.” Roles serve as a way of delegating responsibility for different aspects of the team’s tasks. Although teams may have similar role structures, team cognition about members’ roles can vary greatly across teams because each individual comes with different knowledge, motivation, experiences, skill sets, and ability levels. One explanation for the ubiquitous finding that team performance often improves over time is that experienced teams are able to make better use of each individual’s expertise (Liang, Moreland, & Argote, 1995).
