Why do ‘great minds’ think alike?: antecedents of team member schema agreement

Abstract The primary contribution of the present study, as implied by the title of this paper, was to delineate and to test antecedents of team member schema agreement and their indirect effects on team effectiveness. The study was conducted in a naturalistic setting involving 315 individuals who comprised 41 teams. Team member teamwork schema agreement was assessed using multidimensional scaling to analyse paired comparison ratings. Demography, team experience, team member recruitment, and team size were significantly related to team member schema agreement, which in turn was significantly related to team effectiveness. Several antecedents were related to team effectiveness indirectly through team member teamwork schema agreement. The results have implications for research on cognition in teams. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.