Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams – serie

This volume of the annual series on work teams focuses on leadership. A number of experts in academia and in business agree that leadership is the key to effective work teams. However, they do not necessarily agree on what is meant by 'leadership', how leadership should be enacted, or what constitutes a 'team'. The world of work is changing, and with it, the nature of leadership or our understanding of it is changing. There has been some evolution of leadership concepts and practices toward a more empowering approach focusing on the employees as human resources, but the older command and control approach is only slowly being replaced in research literature and business practices. The authors of the papers in this volume are at the cutting edge with their thinking, writing, and validation work on new approaches to understanding leadership. Subjects addressed in these papers include: team citizenship behavior; self-leadership, self-managed teams and shared leadership; transformational leadership; organizational culture as expressed in the behavior of team members; and, decision making in top management teams. The final chapter emphasizes the training of leaders and teams. These papers each contribute valuable insights and perspectives to both the researcher planning further study of team leadership and the practitioner who must produce performance enhancing change with work teams.

The chapters in this volume are drawn from the Center for Study of Work Teams most recent conference, one which brings practitioners and researchers together to share knowledge and experience. The chapters cover a diversity of issues and variables that contribute to successful teaming. They also cover a variety of types of teams and remind us that different factors apply to different team requirements. Collectively these chapters expand our knowledge base in the field. This volume is an example of how the Center has contributed to the accumulation and management of knowledge about teaming over an extended period of time. Anyone who is involved with teaming, either at the micro or macro level, will benefit from the contents of this volume and from the overall body of work it represents.

Work teams have been in use for many years, yet research-based knowledge of the keys to high performance still has questions to answer. The development or maturity of a team is assumed to be closely related to the level of performance, but few studies have examined the maturation process thoroughly. Models of that process have emerged over the past half century, but their value seems limited. The chapters in this volume provide ideas, examples, and frameworks for improving our understanding of team development and the models we follow in fostering that development. As ideas like these become incorporated in research and practice, our ability to effectively move a team toward advanced levels of maturity will improve, and with that will come more frequent successes where teams outperform expectations.

Effective knowledge work depends on bringing people together to form a team with the right mix of expertise for the project or problem on hand. Increasingly, that mix can only be created by finding people who are geographically dispersed across sites of the company or across several companies. These virtual teams typically work by linking through electronic tools, such as the telephone, fax, email, NetMeeting, Lotus Notes, and other web-based communication systems. Recent research suggests that these teams have all of the challenges of face-to-face teams in addition to others, such as the limitations of technology, cultural differences, and multiple supervisors. The papers included in this volume identify some of the problems and some of the solutions to these kinds of problems, but most importantly, in a dynamic field such as virtual teams, the papers provide a framework for thinking about such problems and a collection of ideas that can form a foundation for advancing both research and practice in the field. Much of the literature on virtual teams focuses on the technology. The technology is an enabler, but it does not seem to have advanced far enough to make electronic communications as effective as face-to-face meetings. Like other teams, virtual teams consist of human beings and they have interpersonal and identity needs that must be met to optimize their ability to work and to collaborate. So, issues such as member solidarity, cooperation and unity of actions and values become special concerns. Such issues are addressed in this volume with the hope that this work will provide a foundation for moving ahead in this field toward more effective virtual teams.

Concluding the "Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams" series with a focus on team-based organizing, this title reveals how the context for teams is critical to their success. Environmental factors may determine team goal accomplishment more than factors internal to the team. In particular, alignment of support systems with work teams influences how well they can function and how the team members feel about reaching challenging goals. The initial chapter sets the stage for a context focus by describing the critical success factors that impact team environments and how to address those factors. The second chapter focuses on effective change practices for transforming organizations into effective collaborative systems. The third chapter examines the fit of support systems with teams, including management systems and culture. Chapter four ties these system pieces together in a model that translates the value of team process improvements into financial terms for strategic decision making. Other chapters focus on team level task analysis and organizational citizenship behaviour, including the complex flow of leadership in emergency room teams. As a whole, this volume presents a perspective on team practice and theory that should benefit a wide range of readers.

Complex collaboration refers to situations where working together effectively across boundaries is critical for complex projects and problems. Complex collaboration refers to knowledge-intensive business processes that require highly interactive communication, coordination, negotiation, research and/or development. This work often involves projects of large scope and long duration. Such projects may cross disciplinary, organizational, national, and/or cultural boundaries. The challenges of managing such situations include ambitious schedules, conflict of cultures and practices, massive amounts of information, multiple languages, and ambiguity of roles and responsibilities. Complex collaboration represents a capability that is essential to effective execution in such situations as new product development, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and supply chain management, as well as large government projects. A number of issues emerge in examining complex collaboration, including: unit of analysis, critical relationships, resource development, virtual teaming, key skills, and improvement processes. The chapters in this volume address these issues and share examples, including: the Joint Strike Fighter program at Lockheed-Martin, Solectrons integrated supply chain, and IMDs partnership with MIT. Models of collaborative capability and capacity provide the facets of a framework for understanding these complex alliances and partnerships.

Intangible forms of capital are being recognized in both research and practice as essential resources for fueling company growth. Forms of intangible capital include: intellectual, organizational, human, relationship, social, political, innovation, and collaborative. This volume consists of papers that focus on collaborative capital - broadly defined as the organizational assets that enable people to work together well. It is manifested in such outcomes as increased innovation and creativity, commitment and involvement, flexibility and adaptability, leveraging of knowledge, and enhanced learning. 'Collaborative capital' represents a core competency or strategic resource essential for building competitive advantage by enabling the creation of networks of conversations and relationships. However, it is seldom developed in a deliberate and systematic way, but rather as an incidental outcome of formal and informal organizational change. It may be deliberately increased by change in organizational systems, practices, design, learning, and culture. The term collaborative capital has seldom been used in research literature dealing with how people work together. Consequently, the meaning, measurement, and impact of collaborative capital in practice have not been explored to any significant extent. The papers in this volume launch that process with teaming contexts ranging from alliances and partnerships, to cross-national teams and cross-disciplinary teams.

Innovation has become one of the primary core competencies of effective organizations. It leads to changes in products, services, organizational design, processes, strategies, and the systems that support them. It occurs when someone has an idea, shares it with others, and all find ways to turn the idea into action. The sharing is a critical step. Creative ideas blossom in a collaborative environment. Implementation depends on collaboration. The chapters in this volume explore a variety of methods and settings that show how collaboration can be utilized to enable and enhance innovation. The innovation may be incremental or breakthrough and evident at any level of organization: team, community of practice, project or program, company, joint venture, alliance, partnership, or supply chain. In this volume, we refer to high quality interaction in the social network as collaboration. We believe creating the context for effective collaboration is a core competency of the organization. Working together well involves deepening trust among members and sharing ideas, perspectives, energy, and knowledge to address organizational challenges and opportunities. As innovation becomes the key to competitive advantage at company, supply chain, and regional levels, a shift from silos to collaboration becomes essential collaborating across boundaries becomes critical. World class levels of performance are impossible without mastery of collaborative methods, processes, and designs. Few companies have mastered the discipline of collaboration well enough to achieve the highest levels of performance. Inter-agency collaboration in government is equally challenging. The chapters in this volume explore collaborative approaches to innovation and the mechanisms and tools that contribute to the quality of collaborative effort. It discusses the importance of collaborative environments to improve innovation; and addresses how to create a collaborative environment within an organization.