The Effect of Shared Mental Models on Consensus

Modern organizations are increasingly relying on teams to solve problems and make decisions. In order to effectively utilize teams, it is important to understand the conditions in which the team can function most efficiently. One of the conditions required to make team work successful is to ensure that there is consensus among the team members about the decisions made. Organizations consider consensus-based decision-making to be important because it has the potential to increase commitment and enable the successful execution of strategies. There are various factors that can have a bearing on consensus decision-making. This study focuses on one such factor that may influence team consensus - shared mental models. Specifically, this study explored if shared mental models had a positive relationship with the consensus decision making in groups. Results show that teams with higher shared mental models reached higher levels of consensus. In addition, it was discovered that perceptions of fairness in the decision-making process was the greatest contributor to difference between groups´ shared mental model scores.