Putting out the Fires: The Role of Team Knowledge, Coordination, and Procedural Rigidity in Adapting and Performing During Disruptive Events

This research develops a theory of team adaptation to disruptive events (the extent to which an event transforms usual activities). Our theory is based on a comprehensive investigation of firefighting teams, documenting how disruptive team task changes (i.e., disruptive events) create a lack of correspondence between what team members expect to happen (preexisting task mental models or TMMs) and what is happening in the situation (emergent team situation mental models or TSMs) and the reactions that assist in their adaptation to these changes. We find that teams navigated the lack of correspondence by shifting from implicit to explicit coordination processes to effectively adapt. In Study 1, we gathered data from 350 firefighters in Chile composing 46 teams performing emergency missions. We find that the more disruptive the events experienced, the less the TMM-TSM corresponded; this relationship was influenced by procedural rigidity as highly rigid procedures impair sensitivity to situational modifications. When teams had low TMM-TSM correspondence, explicit coordination enabled them to save more property and lives. Study 2, employing a laboratory experiment, confirmed that, when low correspondence between TMMs and TSMs resulted in explicit coordination, simulated firefighting teams were better able to accomplish their missions. Across both field and experimental settings, our results extend theory and offer practical guidance to managers regarding how to support teams coping with disruptive events to avoid the dysfunctional consequences of overly rigid protocols.