Crew resource management training's effect on railroad crews' perceptions of task interdependence and teamwork

摘要

The accuracy and similarity of team members' perceptions regarding theinterdependencies of their task as well as the criticality of teamwork behaviors isessential to team performance. Unfortunately, these perceptions are not always accurateor similar, which has led to calls for research evaluating the effectiveness ofinterventions aimed at improving these perceptions. The present study evaluated theaccuracy and similarity of crew members' perceptions of task interdependence andteamwork in the U.S. railroad industry. Specifically, this study assessed (1) the effect ofCrew Resource Management (CRM) training on the accuracy and similarity oflocomotive and maintenance of way (MOW) crew members' perceptions and (2), theextent to which the accuracy and similarity of those perceptions are retained 2-yearsafter training.The overall results of the present study suggests that CRM training is effective inincreasing the accuracy and similarity of crew members' perceptions of team-relatedness(amount of task interdependence) and perceptions regarding the importance of teamwork. However, the effectiveness is often dependent on the metric used (i.e.,accuracy vs. similarity), and the specific characteristics of the crew members (i.e.,locomotive vs. MOW, higher vs. lower interpositional experience). Furthermore, theresults suggest that training did not increase the accuracy or similarity of crew members' perceptions of team workflow pattern (form of task interdependence). Lastly, a smallsample size and low power precluded the running of quantitative statistical analysisassessing the long-term retention of the accuracy and similarity of participants' perceptions of task interdependence or teamwork. However, for the sake ofcompleteness, the means, standard deviations, and effect sizes are presented in theAppendix.