Leadership and emergent collective cognition

In recent years, team cognition has become an increasingly central focus of team effectiveness research as both theory and empirical evidence underscore the important roles of team mental models and transactive memory systems for effective team performance. However, since Schneider’s (1975) seminal paper on organizational climate, researchers have been examining the emergence and implications of team or organizational members’ shared perceptions of work environmental factors. A central tenet of this line of theory and inquiry is that the perceptions and knowledge held by individuals emerge to become a property of a team (or even organization) as members interact with one another. These shared perceptions and shared knowledge serve to regulate members’ behaviors and enable individual members to function as a unified entity.