Despite the abundant research regarding individual-level feedback, few studies examine team feedback, particularly the relationship between team feedback reactions and organizational performance. Through a field study and a lab study, this paper examines two reactions to team feedback, specifically blaming and strategizing, and their relationship to team performance. Study 1 showed that both blaming and strategizing occur in about 1/3 of team feedback meetings in an international sample of teams. Blaming was found to negatively correlate with productivity improvement (r = -.59), whereas strategizing was found to positively correlate with productivity improvement (r = .33). Study 2 was a lab study conducted to addresses several of the limitations from Study 1. The results from Study 2 were mixed. Although the manipulation failed to differentiate the experimental conditions in Study 2, post hoc correlational analyses showed a positive relationship between strategizing and viability, and a negative relationship between excuse making and viability. Correlational analyses also revealed a negative relationship between blaming or excuse making and team cohesion. These results suggest further research is warranted in this area.

This dissertation incorporates the ontological perspective of sociomateriality into the literature on teamwork process to posit that member behavior and technology use are inherently enmeshed (termed process sociomateriality). Three programmatic studies were conducted In order to establish the construct and examine the effects of process sociomateriality on team functioning. First, a qualitative critical incident study (Study 1) found that process sociomateriality is comprised of three higher-order dimensions, reflecting that technology use in team settings may facilitate, expand, or impair process behaviors. A psychometric measure of process sociomateriality was then developed and administered to the general population in Study 2. Findings from Study 2 revealed that the measure exhibits acceptable psychometric properties and displays sufficient convergent and discriminant validity with relevant teamwork constructs. Study 3 tested the manner in which the process sociomateriality factors impact important team outcomes. Findings revealed that process facilitation and expansion improve team performance and team viability indirectly by shaping affective and motivational states. Further, results also demonstrated that the process sociomateriality factors account for variance in team viability and emergent states beyond prior conceptualizations of the process/technology relationship.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether students on permanent teams taking repeated Team-Based Tests (TBTs) can develop over time more accurate performance reputations in the eyes of their team-mates. The ability to estimate the expertise of one's self and one's team mates is important in team-based testing because it informs which position one may try to assume in team discussions as teams pursue consensus on test questions. Simply put, if I can increase my ability to assess my team-mates' general mastery of the content, then over time I will be able to make more effective decisions about whom I should try to learn from and whom I should try to teach. To make this judgment about relative levels of mastery, students must appraise both their own levels of mastery as well as those of their team mates. Team-Based Tests are part of an instructional strategy called Team-Based Learning (TBL) and this developmental effect is a pillar upon which TBL practitioners build their argument about the instructional value of the method. However, only indirect evidence has previously existed to support this claim: this study attempted to more directly document the reputation formation effect by comparing individual and team mate performance estimates to actual levels of performance over time. Participants in this study included 49 students in an undergraduate educational psychology class. Students in permanent teams taking repeated team-based tests developed increasingly accurate reputations within their teams, achieving statistical significance on the fourth team-based test. However, test difficulty played an important and potentially confounding role: the fifth and final team-based test was the most difficult of the semester, and on it reputation accuracy fell back to original levels. Individual metacognitive monitoring accuracy across tests did not improve over time and introverts' reputations were more accurate than extraverts' reputation on every test. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. / text

I developed a framework to support the maintenance of teams of heterogeneous robots operating in complex and dynamic environments such as disaster zones. Given an established team, my work also facilitates the discovery of work to be done during the team's mission and its subsequent assignment to members of the team in a distributed fashion. I evaluated my framework through the development of an example implementation where robots perform exploration in order to locate victims in a simulated disaster environment.

Given the increasing predominance of work teams within organisations, this study aimed to investigate the role that perceptions of person-team fit has in the recruitment process, in addition to other forms of person-environment fit. An experimental design was followed which manipulated the amount of team information made available to participants. It was hypothesised that participants who received more information would exhibit higher perceptions of person-team fit. Results supported this prediction with levels of person-team fit being successfully manipulated. Results also showed significant correlations between person-team fit and organisational attraction which is important in the early stages of recruitment. This study was conducted remotely over the internet with clickstream data associated with this medium being collected. It was hypothesised that viewing order and times may be related to dependent variables. No support for this prediction was found, however it did identify a group of participants that appeared not to engage in the task, which has implications for future research carried out online.

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Bakgrund: Många företag arbetar idag i virtuella team eftersom det ger en möjlighet att samla kompetens utspridd på flera platser utan att behöva spendera tid och pengar på resor. Virtuella team ger också möjligt att arbeta med en uppgift över hela dygnet. Genom att en arbetsuppgift flyttas mellan tidszoner under dygnets timmar. Även om virtuella team har sina fördelar så finns det problem. Dessa inkluderar sämre teamsammanhållning, arbetsglädje, tillit, samarbetsbeteende, social kontroll och engagemang i att nå teamets mål. Detta kan påverka teamets prestation negativt och det finns därför anledning att titta närmare på vad som påverkar prestationen i virtuella team. Syfte: Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka vad som påverkar prestationen i virtuella team. Metod: Kvantitativa data samlades in från individer som arbetar i virtuella team genom en webbbaserad enkät. Frågorna i enkäten hade byggts upp utifrån fem hypoteser som skulle testas. Hypoteserna byggde på fråge-ställningar kring relationsbyggande, teknisk support, möjligheten att träffas ”face to face”, kontinuitet och antalet medlemmar i teamet. Data från enkäten testades med en regressionsanalys. Resultat och slutsats: Detta arbete tyder på att relationsbyggande och kontinuitet kan ha en positiv påverkan på prestationen. Möjligheten att träffas ”face to face” verkar enligt analysen ha en negativ påverkan på prestationen medans teknisk support och antalet medlemmar i teamet inte har betydelse.

I developed a framework to support the maintenance of teams of heterogeneous robots operating in complex and dynamic environments such as disaster zones. Given an established team, my work also facilitates the discovery of work to be done during the team's mission and its subsequent assignment to members of the team in a distributed fashion. I evaluated my framework through the development of an example implementation where robots perform exploration in order to locate victims in a simulated disaster environment.

Som rektor i kommunal verksamhet förväntas man vara ledare, chef, utvecklare och arbetsgivare samtidigt som man är anställd. Rektorers roll är ofta förknippad med begrepp som komplexitet och otydlighet vilket gör att det inte är enkelt att kunna axla denna typ av roll. Dessutom har tidigare forskning visat att det är vanligt att arbetet skiljer sig mellan organisationens formella dokument, så som arbetsbeskrivningar och organisationsschema, och det faktiskt utförda arbetet. Med bakgrund av detta har uppsatsens frågeställning varit ”hur rektorer förstår och förhåller sig till sina arbetsbeskrivningar i relation till den egna rollförståelsen”. För att kunna besvara forskningsfrågan valdes en kvalitativ metod med intervjuer som tillvägagångssätt. Fyra rektorer inom förvaltningen skola och förskola i Örebro kommun intervjuades. Resultatet från intervjuerna visade att rektorerna har olika uppfattningar om arbetsbeskrivningarna och hur de använder dem i sitt dagliga arbete. En förklaring till deras skilda uppfattningar kan vara att rektorerna har varierad praktisk erfarenhet. Intervjupersonerna har även gått olika rektorsutbildningar som kan vara en ytterligare förklaring till deras olika åsikter. Intervjupersonerna hade en bra och tydlig förståelse av deras uppdrag som rektor. Gemensamt var att alla rektorer var lärare i bakgrunden, vilket delvis kan förklara deras förståelse av uppdraget. Rektorsutbildningen ansågs även vara en förklaring till deras insikt i uppdraget, då de får med sig mycket kunskap och förståelse via utbildningen. En annan intressant aspekt utifrån intervjuerna var att alla intervjupersoner beskrev rektorsuppdraget som en roll och att de är noga med att befinna sig i rollen på arbetsplatsen.