NSF funds new award: Cognitive and Social Processes for Teams

A new project funded from the National Science Foundation(#1951300) Science of Organizations at the University of Nebraska at Omaha aims to serve the national interest by improving team-based collaboration via cognitive and social processes. Dr. Roni Reiter-Palmon, Professor and Director, Industrial/Organizational Graduate Program, Professor of Psychology, will study organizational performance as a function of the team. Dr. Reiter-Palmon is joined by Dr. Joseph Allen (Utah) on the project, “Creativity in Teams: Identifying the Role of Meetings in Fostering Effective Cognitive and Social Processes in Teams”.

Creativity and innovation have been suggested as important for organizational performance and the use of teams in organizations is on the rise. This research team aims to evaluate the interrelationships between social and cognitive processes in team meetings for generating a creative idea or product. The project will assess the team cognitive process sequences that effectively result in more creative ideas, the effect of team dynamics on these cognitive processes, and how cognitive and social processes interact to produce creative outcomes.

Ultimately, they will investigate whether an intervention to facilitate team creativity will improve creativity and the effect it has on both cognitive and social processes.