Team Response to Workload Transition: The Role of Team Structure

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate how teams respond to workload transition due to a sudden and unexpected event in a complex and dynamic command and control (C2) environment. The C 3 Fire microworld (Granlund, 1998), a forest fire-fighting simulation, is used to compare divisional (territory-specific) and functional (role-specific) teams. Workload transition is induced by the sudden appearance of a second fire. Results show that functional teams' performance decreases while their communication frequency increases following the workload transition. However, they are faster to detect the second fire. This pattern of results suggests that in the context of C2 environments, the impact of a workload escalation varies as a function of team structure (functional vs. divisional) and the type of task (fire detection vs. fire fighting).