Testing Hollnagel's contextual control model: assessing team behaviour in a human supervisory control task

Abstract

This paper sets out to test the hypothetical COCOM model developed by Hollnagel (1993). Essentially, Hollnagel develops the argument that team behaviour should be analysed at a macro, rather than micro, level. He proposes four principal models of team activity: strategic, tactical, opportunistic, and scrambled.
This modes of team behaviour vary in terms of the degree of forward planning (highest in the strategic mode) and reactivity to the environment (highest in the scrambled mode). He further hypothesises a linear progression through the modes from strategic to tactical to opportunistic to scrambled, depending upon context, and viceversa. To test the COCOM model, we placed teams of people in a simulated energy distribution system. Our results confirm Hollnagel’s hypothesised model in two main ways.
First, we show that the team behaviour could be categorised reliably into the four control mode and this provided a useful way of distinguishing between experimental conditions. Second, the progression between control modes conformed to the linear progression as predicted. This research provided the first independent test of the COCOM model and lends empirical support to the hypotheses.

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ORCID for Melanie J. Ashleigh: orcid.org/0000-0002-0583-0922

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