Towards understanding the impact of crisis environments on the distributed cognition of multidisciplinary crisis control center teams

This investigation developed and empirically tested a conceptual framework capturing the systemic impact of crisis environments on distributed cognition phenomena occurring in organizational control centers. A systems approach was used [1] to develop a means of profiling a crisis environment from the perspective of a control center and, separately, [2] to develop a structured view of the interacting conceptual constructs researchers have developed to understand distributed learning. A resulting conceptual framework combined these two efforts. An applied research case study methodology was used to [1] iteratively refine the framework and [2] to demonstrate the value of the framework for understanding the impact of crisis environments on distributed cognition phenomena. The case involved a US Air force base's survival recovery center preparing for a formal external operational readiness inspection, a scripted wartime simulation, using internal exercises to practice for the final event. The developed framework served as a basis for evaluating performance and for developing tailored scripted scenarios for successive exercises to maximize training value.