ASSIGNMENT

Assignment



Assignment

Introduction

Teamwork is an important but often over-looked component of human behavior representation (HBR). Many of the activities in modern military combat operations involve teamwork. Teams exist both within well-defined units, as well as cutting across echelons. For example, a command staff at battalion and brigade levels consists of multiple officers working together to help the commander make decisions, and interactions and coordination between officers in the same staff section (e.g. G2/S2-Intelligence) at different levels can also be characterized as teamwork. At the lowest level, an infantry platoon, reconaissance squad, or even tank crew works as a team to achieve a variety of tactical objectives. At the highest level, combined-arms operations and joint operations rely on integrating various assets and capabilities for maximum effectiveness. Teamwork is also needed to avoid unfortunate outcomes such as friendly fire accidents. Multiple documented instances of fratricide have been attributed to break-downs in sharing of information and coordination of authority across different units working independently, even though all the information necessary to avoid the tragedy was available (Snook, 2002). In this paper, we provide an overview of current research on teamwork, with a focus on aspects relevant to human behavior representation in simulations (especially in the domain of military combat). We also discuss the use of intelligent agents for modeling teamwork in these simulations, and we identify challenges for future research.

What are Teams? What is Teamwork?

Teams are more than just a collection of individuals pursuing their own goals. A commonly accepted definition of teamwork is a collection of (two or more) individuals working together inter-dependently to achieve a common goal (Salas et al., 1992). The structure of a team may range from rigid, with clearly defined roles and a hierarchical chain-of-command, to flexible, where individuals all have similar capabilities, tasks are allocated flexibly to the best available team member, and decisions are made jointly by consensus. While some teams are formed and exist only transiently, other teams are more persistent, training together and operating over an extended duration to solve a series problems or perform many tasks.

The notion of shared goals is essential to teamwork because it is what ties the team together and induces them to take a vested interest in each other's success, beyond acting in mere self-interest. Members of a team do not just act to achieve their own goals, possibly at the expense of others, but rather they look for synergies that can benefit others and contribute to the most efficient overall accomplishment of the team goal. In addition to this positive cooperativity, members of a team also have incentive to actively try to avoid interfering with each other. Furthermore, commitment to shared goals leads to other important team behaviors, such as backing each other up in cases of failure. For example, if one team member assigned to do a task finds that he is unable to complete it, other members of the team are willing to take over since they ultimately share the ...