ABSTRACT
The complex nature of social behaviors poses significant challenges to researchers and practitioners alike interested in understanding and managing sources of team performance variability. Teamwork is generally defined as a group of individuals working together to accomplish a common goal or purpose. Paradoxically, while most human factors researchers are comfortable attributing goal-directed behavior to teams, there is a general reluctance to delve into the scientific basis of these controlled behaviors. The inconsistent way that controlled behaviors are conceptualized at the team level versus individual team-member level also reveals the need for a more coherent systems approach. A working premise of this chapter is that a more consistent application of behavioral systems principles in modeling team behaviors can address these shortcomings and go a long way toward improving our understanding of sources of team performance variability.
