Team adaptation triggers: A categorization scheme

Abstract

In the present study of the journal of Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation, the purpose was to identify the types of events that activate team adaptive behavior during goal achievement and to provide a roadmap for future research into how team adaptation responses may differ depending on the demands faced. Two hundred and eight engineering students involved in an eight-week team project, participated in our study. They reported, at three time points, 271 events that triggered their team to change their way of functioning. We applied qualitative content analysis to identify the underlying categories of the collected triggers and identified three main categories of internal (interpersonal dynamics, task-related activities, reaching a milestone), and three main categories of external team adaption triggers (change in resources, interventions, alterations in framework), with various subcategories. Our findings demonstrated that team adaptation triggers can stem from the team’s environment and from the team itself. Furthermore, our results suggested that positively connoted events (e.g. achievement of subgoals) as well as negatively connoted events (e.g. loss of a member) are perceived as relevant team adaptation triggers. Our study opens a new avenue for team adaptation theory and research by providing the first categorization scheme of team adaptation triggers. Future studies can from now provide insight into the relationship between trigger features and team adaptation processes, exploring team adaptation success in various contexts.