Teams in engineering design tackle problems that exceed the abilities of individuals. Human behaviors and interaction driven by personality traits influence team effectiveness but are relatively understudied in engineering design. This paper seeks to understand how the Locus of Control (LOC) personality trait influences designer behaviors and team performance. A designer experiment studies 12 participant pairs controlled for LOC pairing factors (internal-internal, external-external, and internal-external). Each design team completes six simplified cooperative engineering design tasks to minimize completion time, yielding 72 total data points. Regression analysis shows LOC pairing affects team efficiency in agreement with literature that diverse LOC traits reduce design efficiency while similarity increases team effectiveness. Results contribute to a causal hypothesis that LOC pairing affects designer behavior related to action effectiveness which, subsequently, affects team performance outcomes. This study contributes to ongoing work to detect design team inefficiencies and propose new methods and tools to improve cooperative design processes.


Effects of Locus of Control Personality Trait on Team Performance in Cooperative Engineering Design Tasks

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

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