Team adaptation to an unforeseen system failure: Limits of the potential aids of shared knowledge and standardized communication

Team learning in interdisciplinary research teams: antecedents and consequences

Purpose

Team learning is critical to interdisciplinary research teams (IDR teams) to use heterogeneous knowledge effectively. Nevertheless, team learning is rarely addressed in the IDR team literature. Also, few studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of team learning in IDR teams, leading to a lack of guidance for management practices. This study aims to investigate how team learning can be developed and how team learning influences team outcomes in IDR teams.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire survey on 304 members of 37 IDR teams in a research university in China is conducted. Data are analyzed using a partial least square structural equation modeling.

Findings

The results support most hypotheses in general. For the antecedent variables, task interdependence, trust and constructive conflict positively affect team learning. For the outcome variables, team learning improves shared mental models, coordination quality and team performance significantly. Additionally, task uncertainty positively moderates the team learning-coordination quality relation and team learning-team performance relation. However, this paper does not find support for the moderating role of task uncertainty on the team learning-shared mental models relation.

Originality/value

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study investigating the antecedents and consequences of team learning in IDR teams. A multidimensional measurement of team learning for the IDR team context is developed. This study investigates how team behavioral factors influence team learning and the effect of team learning on shared mental models, coordination quality and team performance. This study also explores the contingency role of task uncertainty in the effects of team learning.

Workplace team resilience: A systematic review and conceptual development

Workplace team resilience has been proposed as a potential asset for work teams to maintain performance in the face of adverse events. Nonetheless, the research on team resilience has been conceptually and methodologically inconsistent. Taking a multilevel perspective, we present an integrative review of the workplace team resilience literature to identify the conceptual nature of team resilience and its unique value over and above personal resilience as well as other team concepts. We advance resilience research by providing a new multilevel model of team resilience that offers conceptual clarification regarding the relationship between individual-level and team-level resilience. The results of our review may form the basis for the development of a common operationalization of team resilience, which facilitates new empirical research examining ways that teams can improve their adversity management in the workplace.

Advancing Teams Research: What, When, and How to Measure Team Dynamics Over Time

Teams are complex and dynamic entities that face constant changes to their team structures and must simultaneously work to meet and adapt to the varying situational demands of their environment (Kozlowski and Ilgen, 2006). Agencies, industries, and government institutions are currently placing greater attention to the influence on team dynamics and teamwork as they are important to key organizational outcomes. Due to increased emphasis being placed upon the understanding the maturation of team dynamics, the incorporation of efficient methodological tools to understand how teams are being measured over time becomes critical. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present a review of relevant academic articles detailing the science behind methodological tools and general approaches to study team dynamics over time. We provide an overview of the methodological tools used to understand team dynamics with accordance to specific temporal elements. Drawing from Kozlowski et al. (1999) process model of team development, we highlight relevant emergent team constructs within each stage. As well, for each stage, we discuss the what and how to measure team dynamics. Our analyses bring to light relevant, novel and complex approaches being used by researchers to examine specific constructs within different team developmental phases (e.g., agent-based simulations, computational modeling) and the importance of transitioning from a single source methodology approach. Implications and future research are also discussed.

On the Motivational Basis of Cue Identification in Teams

Although identifying cues indicating a problem represents a crucial aspect of team adaptation, little is known about the conditions under which team members do this correctly. To address this issue, the current study focused on the motivational basis of cue identification by investigating interactive effects of members’ regulatory focus, their contribution redundancy, and the team performance context. Participants working in 105 three-person teams were asked to identify problem cues in a signal detection task. Utilizing a 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) x 2 (performance context: status quo vs. loss) x 2 (contribution redundancy: low vs. high) mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) design with contribution redundancy as a within-participants factor, we obtained the predicted three-way interaction: In the status quo condition, prevention-focused, but not promotion-focused, team members were less accurate in identifying problem cues when their contributions were redundant. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the motivational basis of team adaptation.

Teams as Complex Adaptive Systems: Reviewing 17 Years of Research

At the turn of the century, Arrow, McGrath, and Berdahl portrayed teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS). And yet, despite broad agreement that this approach facilitates a better understanding of teams, it has only now been timidly incorporated into team research. To help fully incorporate the logic of teams as CAS in the science of teams, we review extant research on teams approached from a nonlinear dynamical system theory. Using a systematic review approach, we selected 92 articles published over the last 17 years to integrate what we know about teams as CAS. Our review reveals the evidence supporting teams as CAS, and the set of analytical techniques to analyze team data from this perspective. This review contributes to teams’ theory and practice by offering ways to identify both research methods and managing techniques that scholars and practitioners may apply to study and manage teams as CAS.