Type Of Teamwork Research Articles

Picture Perfect: A Task Interdependence and Communication Experiential Activity for Teams

Effective communication in interdependent group tasks plays a pivotal role in organizational effectiveness, especially in today’s dynamic and global workplace. As the modern workplace evolves toward more remote work environments and dynamic work teams, the ability to adapt communication strategies across various job designs and work settings becomes increasingly crucial. In this article, we present an experiential learning activity designed for management education that delves into the impact of task design on communication. Drawing from theories of team interdependence, this immersive experience enables students to identify the essential facets of communication and their relationship with various types of task interdependence. It equips them with valuable skills and communication strategies that are vital for various types of teamwork across different types of settings. Suitable for a wide range of educational settings, this experiential activity serves as a valuable resource for management educators.

Teamwork in social work: What are we actually talking about?

ABSTRACT Teamwork is not a new topic in social work. In a bid to further advance the field, this paper has three aims: to identify the factors most relevant to the definition of teamwork in social work, to define a team in social work and propose a definition of teamwork in social work, and to provide a typology that accounts for important aspects of teamwork in social work. The focused review (relying on certain aspects of a scoping study and systematic review) of 84 papers revealed four main factors of relevance to the definition of teamwork and team in social work: size, composition, aim (purpose) and the role (participation) of users. Definitions are given of team and teamwork in social work that are in harmony with contemporary concepts of social work like a working relationship (co-creation). A typology entailing three of four identified important factors is proposed while four types of teamwork in social work are illustrated with examples from a small European country.

Healthcare professionals\u2019 perceptions about interprofessional teamwork: a national survey within Swedish child healthcare services

BackgroundGlobally, interprofessional teamwork is described as a key method to promote health and prevent illness in children, namely, to achieve the goals of Child Healthcare Services (CHS). However, how teamwork should be designed within CHS to achieve the goals is unclear. This study aimed to investigate healthcare professionals’ perceptions about 1) taking part in interprofessional teamwork, 2) team characteristics, and 3) whether the perceptions were related to professional affiliation or workplace.MethodsA national cross-sectional survey was conducted using a web-based study-specific questionnaire sent to all accessible nurses, physicians, and psychologists in Swedish CHS (n = 3552). The response rate was 31.5%. To identify possible associations, logistic regressions were conducted.ResultsAlmost all respondents, 1096/1119 (97.9%), reported taking part in some type of interprofessional teamwork within the Swedish CHS. Among those, the most common was team-based visits (82.2%). It was perceived that performing team-based visits resulted in fulfilled goals, expertise exceeding individual team members’ competences, provision of high-quality care, and meeting children’s and families’ needs, to a greater extent, than if not performing team-based visits. Correspondingly, working as a team in parental groups was perceived as resulting in fulfilled goals, meeting the needs of children and their families, and continuity within the team to a greater extent than if not working together in a team. Professional affiliation was associated with different perceptions and types of teamwork. Family Centers were positively associated with all types of teamwork as well as continuity within the team.ConclusionsHealthcare professionals’ perceptions about team characteristics were associated with professional affiliation, workplace, and type of teamwork (defined as team activities) within the CHS. Professionals within Swedish CHS, taking part in team-based visits and in interprofessional teamwork in parental groups, perceived that the team fulfilled its goals and met the needs of children and families to a greater extent than professionals not taking part in these types of teamwork. Professionals at Family Centers were more likely to work in teams in different ways.Knowledge about interprofessional teamwork for individuals and groups in Swedish CHS might also be valuable in other healthcare settings, dealing with complex needs.

Does the existence of "talented outliers" help improve team performance? Modeling heterogeneous personalities in teamwork

Personality heterogeneity is an important topic in team management. In many working groups, there exists certain type of people that are talented but under-disciplined, who could occasionally make extraordinary contributions for the team, but often have less satisfactory overall performance. It is interesting to investigate whether the existence of such people in the team does help improve the overall team performance, and if it does so, what are the conditions for their existence to be positive, and through which channel their benefits for the team are manifested. This study proposes an analytical model with a simple structure that sets up an environment to study these questions. It is shown that: (1) feedback learning could be the mechanism through which outliers' benefits to the team are established, and thus could be a prerequisite for outliers' positive existence; (2) different types of teamwork settings have different outlier-positivity conditions: a uniform round-wise punishment for teamwork failures could be the key idea to encourage outliers' existence; for two specific types of teamwork, teamwork that highlights assistance in interactions are more outliers-friendly than teamwork that consists internal competitions. These results well match empirical observations and may have further implications for managerial practice.

RECT: A Cloud-Based Learning Tool for Graduate Software Engineering Practice Courses With Remote Tutor Support

Nowadays, remote collaborative learning tools for computer science education mostly emphasize providing learning resources and realizing virtual collaborative learning environment for students. Many people in this field tend to have their mind fixed on the process improvement of such a collaboration as a whole, while few notice that individuals may have different roles and impacts on this type of teamwork. There usually is a “supervisor” on the team, who offers support to all members in the collaborative learning environment. However, such support may not always be as accessible as students demand it to be. Therefore, this paper describes a cloud-based tool to support software engineering practice courses in collaboration with remote tutors. This system utilizes a cloud storage platform to provide sharing of multimedia study materials and a better management of project developing cycles. A remote collaborative component called the Virtual Debug Laboratory is designed to improve and share students’ debugging experience in the same team. The most innovative feature of this system is that it amplifies the role of tutoring in remote collaborative learning environments so that tutors can, in real time, assist students in debugging during actual project developing and demonstrate step by step to the students the process of debugging. The results of the analyzed data regarding the use of this system indicate that the system can potentially enhance students’ abilities in project developing and debugging in software engineering practice courses. It is our hope that these preliminary data can provide a future reference for the software education community.

Examining teamwork and leadership in the fields of public administration, leadership, and management

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of papers in ten top scholarly journals to determine their overall examination of leadership in teams and to identify which models of teamwork and leadership have been most explored by researchers.Design/methodology/approach– This paper reaches its findings through content analysis of 80 journal papers published in top academic journals from 1999 through 2012. Coding based on categories of teams, leadership and leadership styles conformed to forced choice and latent coding; two independent reviewers managed the subjectivity of the coding.Findings– Sixty per cent of the papers studied explored a group of workers whose teamwork was expected to be permanent, which receives a strong direction from a designated leader; almost that many (58.75 per cent) explored a group working with formal leadership by the worker’s supervisor; almost 50 per cent of papers explored leadership that combined two or more leadership styles simultaneously. This heavy concentration of the literature in a few areas suggests that research on other types of teamwork and leadership is minimal.Research limitations/implications– This particular research utilized the latent coding method of content analysis and forced choice in the selections. Even though content analysis has many strengths, the latent coding method of content analysis and forced choice selections require the researcher to examine the overall content to determine whether certain variables were present or absent. After the examination of the overall content, a subjective interpretation of the data is needed from the researcher. Other researchers that look at the same data may interpret the data differently.Practical implications– This research provides researchers, academics and practitioners with a comprehensive analysis on teamwork and leadership. The extensive investigation presents a pivotal starting point for further developments in this emerging area. The content analysis found a proliferation of diverse organizations utilizing teamwork, and this subject should be researched more vigorously. As organizations continue to embrace, pursue and promote teamwork, understanding the current state of the field will assist in having better understanding on how to develop effective teams.Originality/value– This paper contributes to the field by creating taxonomy to categorize the types of leaders and teams and presenting an explanation on the distinction between traditional and horizontal style of leadership. In identifying major trends in the existent literature, this examination provides valuable information for researchers.

How Team Members Control Free Riding in Knowledge Work Contexts: A Multidimensional Scaling Study

Organizations are increasingly relying on knowledge-based teamwork. This type of teamwork is often threatened by free riding tendencies, since individual contributions to the team outcome are diffi...

Collaboration in This Environment of Mobile Technology and Change: One Clinician's Perspective

The proliferation of mobile technology (commercially available systems, such as the iPads, iPad Minis, Androids, and Windows tablets) has decreased barriers and put communication systems into the hands of many of our persons who use augmentative and alternative communication (PWUAAC). Because there are so many benefits with the advent of mobile technology, so too are there challenges that can come up as a result of this technology (McNaughton & Light, 2013). Moreover, the speed of innovation and the commercial availability of these devices can put teachers, therapists, and families at odds. In the past, devices were harder to obtain, but we had a strong process and assessment protocol to support device acquisition and implementation (Gosnell, Costello, & Shane, 2011). A key component of our role in this new and changing environment is to restructure the discussion and process in order to recapture the type of teamwork and collaboration we previously experienced. This article will discuss issues, strategic ideas, as well as success stories from one clinician's perspective, related to AAC implementation utilizing mobile technology, across home, school, and community settings.

Moral Judgments of Modern Children and Teenagers in Russia

Social interaction, rules and regulations for shared activities, moral development of children and its manifestations have long been the focus of attention among Russian and foreign researchers and educators, yet there still remain many open issues. The goal of this paper is to outline possible means, which would help evaluate the level of children's collaborative skills and, consequently, enable educators to target communication skills training more precisely. Moral judgments shared by children are regarded as manifestation of values and standards regulating their collaboration (joint efforts).A Research MethodThis research is based on prototypical study by Jean Piaget and his colleagues (Piaget, 2006), which 1) reveals changes in child's attitude to rule regulating his activity in the process of mastering specific (cooperative) type of teamwork (play); 2) exposes changes in initial norms as children introduce new rules in the process of joint activity (collective play); and 3) describes specific characteristics of these processes for different age groups. Employing the basic method of J. Piaget (suggesting children concrete situations for discussion), we established more intricate procedure for processing their answers: all judgments expressed by the children were recorded on the tape. Hence, we could include into our analysis all versions of answering offered by the children, not only Piaget's definite (non-ambiguous) judgments. We also introduced more rigid criteria for classification of the input data. Data analysis took into consideration the following: 1) whether the direct answer corresponded to certain type of norms; and 2) whether the appendant argumentation corresponded to the direct answer. Taking all these into account, we constructed the following categorical grid for the analysis of moral judgments:1. The so-called first type of norms ( See Appendix 1).2. The non-first type of norms, which includes: 2.1. A type of norms; 2.2. A third type of norms; 2.3. Particular answers named for the purposes of our study of the other 'non-first' type, which includes direct corresponding answers without argumentation as well as corresponding answers with argumentation which content is not related to norms of collective organization. 2.4. Dubious, ambivalent answers: a) dubious answers (and/or); b) comments which change in the process of reflection; c) blended answers, where the answer and its argumentation relate to different categories; d) answers of special type: a constructive denial + formal but not actual consent;To proceed further we must clarify the terms used in description. In Piaget's prototypical study only non-ambiguous answers were subjected to statistical analysis, and respondents' answers were categorized through descriptive oppositions, which enabled J. Piaget to distinguish two stages in moral development: heteronomous morality and This categorizing paradigm clearly demonstrates not only Piaget's principles as researcher but also his own cultural background. Switzerland is country where society is traditionally seen as consolidation of subjects, and this could well be the reason why Piaget called the second stage of moral development the autonomous morality. In Russian culture (where systemic networks and structures tend to seek unification through submission), this term may not be appropriate. This consideration has brought us to introduce modified implication of Piaget's normative categories, naming heteronomous morality as the first normative set of standards, and morality as type of norms, with certain specifications for attribution of the latter.Firstly, the study revealed particular category of answers, which we named third type. It covers judgments made by children and teenagers, which began with phrasing: Contrary to the rules, I think... I believe... …

Effectiveness of Team-building and Teamwork in Virtual Worlds

Given the increasing importance of globalization and collaboration, this research investigates the possibility of training globally dispersed teams using the virtual world Second Life. Three meeting conditions, the 3D virtual world Second Life, a combination of face-to-face and Second Life and face-to-face were evaluated. Thirty randomly assigned 3 person teams performed an ice-breaker session and then a team-building activity in each meeting condition. Four dependent variables were measured: task completion time; quality of task performance; subjective satisfaction with the process based on group cohesiveness, perception of the process and satisfaction with the outcome; and subjective satisfaction with the communication modality. Following data collection, univariate analyses were used to analyze each dependent variable to determine the differences, if any, among the meeting conditions. The results did not show significant differences for performance and subjective satisfaction with the process across the meeting conditions; however they did show significant results for subjective satisfaction with the communication modality. The Second Life and face-to-face conditions were rated more highly than the combination condition. This study indicates that the participants found the virtual world productive, enjoyed the experience of using this environment and believed that they could communicate and collaborate in it effectively. Even though participants indicated little previous experience with Second Life, this study found that it has potential as an alternate team meeting space. Cost analyses suggest that in the long run the expense of using a virtual meeting space will be lower than the cost of using face-to-face meetings for globally dispersed teams. Future research could include looking at larger group sizes, other types of team work, different team-building activities, or the effect of features of the virtual meeting space on team performance and user experience.

Team processes, their antecedents and consequences: Implications for different types of teamwork

Although input–process–output models of teamwork are quite popular, relatively few studies have tested empirically the mediation of team design and team context variables on team effectiveness by team process variables. This review briefly describes mediation effects of team process variables. Moreover, moderating effects of different team tasks and types of teamwork are summarized. Based on this framework, we introduce and compare the four articles included in this special issue which provide examples of process-oriented studies in different types of teamwork. In doing so, these studies not only illustrate the variety of potential team process variables (e.g., communication between team members, team reflexivity and self-regulation, self-leadership of team members) but also different methodological strategies to explore them.

“We decide, you carry it out”: A social network analysis of multidisciplinary long-term care teams

The purpose of this study was to describe the structure of multidisciplinary long-term care teams by identifying the pattern of relationships that develop amongst staff as they go about their work. Using a social network analysis approach, team members were classified as occupying the same structural position based on their patterns of relationships with other team members. The analysis was based on the results of a self-administered survey of 93 health care workers on three teams in the same multilevel geriatric care facility in Metropolitan Toronto. A common structure of the teams was identified consisting of two sub-teams: a multiprofessional sub-team and a nursing sub-team, each of which has a different structure indicating differential involvement in different types of teamwork. The multiprofessional sub-team has an “organic” structure and is mainly involved in teamwork that involves decision-making and problem-solving, whereas the nursing sub-team has a “mechanistic” structure and is mainly involved in task oriented work. The findings of this analysis indicate that while teamwork may be increasing the participation in decision-making by health professionals other than medicine, rather than flattening the hierarchical structure throughout the health care division of labour, its effects are limited to a group of higher status professionals. The clearly defined hierarchy remains for the lower status subdisciplines, and “I decide, you carry it out” has simply become “We decide, you carry it out”.