The Meaning of Collaboration: A Study Using a Conceptual Mapping Technique

Abstract

In this study we investigate lay people's conceptualization of collaboration. We used a card-sorting variant of a conceptual mapping technique to explore the way in which individuals and groups understand collaboration. First an interview and a free association technique were used to identify the main concepts used to define collaboration by a sample of 80 students. Afterwards, a sample of 56 students (with an average age of 20.94, fifty women) participated first in an individual and then in a group (of 3 and 4 members) cognitive mapping session in exchange for extra-credits for a Social Psychology course. After the completion of every cognitive mapping task, a post hoc questionnaire was used to evaluate: satisfaction with outcome and with the process, task difficulty, task intelligibility, conflict, individual participation to the group outcome, communication, collaboration, planning, organizing, process efficiency, as well as perceived difference between the group and individual outcomes was filled in after the group map was completed. Our results show that the complexity of individual cognitive maps is significantly higher than the complexity of group cognitive maps. Teamwork quality moderates the relation between the individual map complexity and group map complexity.

Keywords: Collaboration, cognitive mapping, group dynamics