Abstract: As team is important in today’s organizations and collective sports, it is the focus of multiple academic disciplines. Shared Mental Models (SMM)are team members’ shared, organized understanding and mental representation of knowledge or beliefs about key elements of the team’s relevant environment. Recently, the competitive strength of China football, basketball, volleyball (three balls for short) has been declining dramatically. All of them became the subject of immense criticism in the media and a national embarrassment. As a result, reviving three balls is a must-do thing for China to become a strong sport nation. Based on network and evolution perspective, this study will investigate China three balls professional teams in an attempt to improve the training and competition level of three balls through analyzing the evolution process and mechanism of team shared mental models (SMMs). Firstly, the researchers will explore the similarities and differences among three balls’ shared mental models by in-depth experts interview and the scoring video analysis of benchmarking teams, which will provide materials and parameters for further studies. Secondly, a multiple case study and longitudinal design will be adopted to study the evolution processes to cross validate and replicate the principles and mechanism of SMMs. Thirdly, the effects of team members’ social network type, structure, and evolution on SMMs and the team effectiveness across three balls will be empirically examined. Last but not least, software package Repast will be taken to monitor the formation and evolution process of SMMs in order to provide references for prediction and real-time intervention.

Key words: team, shared mental models, network, evolution, collective ball sports