The impact of training on virtual team effectiveness was assessed in five areas: communication, planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, resolving conflict, and responding to customer requirements. A 12-page survey was developed exploring all aspects of virtual teams. 180 surveys were distributed, 52 were returned representing 43 companies. Training led to higher effectiveness in planning tasks and setting goals, solving problems and making decisions, and conflict resolution, but not in communication and responding to customer requirements. Training may not solve all the problems that virtual teams will encounter; however, training will make the challenges easier to handle.

The purpose of this project was to examine team compensation systems and to evaluate the impact of their critical elements--level (what to motivate), compensation mixture (what rewards motivate), and employee perceptions (how to motivate)--on team effectiveness. Twenty-three organizations, 108 teams, and 769 team members participated in this study. Project results found that teams that utilized team level rewards, especially when associated with a complete compensation mixture, had significantly higher team effectiveness scores compared to teams that utilized only individual level rewards. With respect to employee perceptions, results found that: (a) perceptions of system understanding, measure controllability, pay-for-performance, and payout frequency, particularly, were significant components of employee compensation system satisfaction; and (b) employee compensation system satisfaction and perceptions of compensation system effectiveness were significantly related.

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between organizational support and Effectiveness, Empowerment, and team characteristics. Support was operationalized by nine systems: Executive Management, Direct Supervision, Group Design, Performance Definition, Performance Review, Training, Rewards, Information, and Integration. Support was rated in two ways: how important is support for performing work (Importance scales), and how does support describe work environments (Presence scales).

The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between culture and climate as well as the significance of an organisation’s climate on cross-functional behaviour, activities and actions (who, what and when) which forms an integral part of strategy implementation and increasing performance. A key component of an organisational development is team work; which facilitates organisational learning, establish common goals and provide support to achieve these goals. Within the Organisation under investigation there has not been any research into the subject of the significance of the climate on cross-functional behaviour and activities, which is impacted by ‘coopetition’ - the simultaneous role of cooperation and competition within organisations. The research by means of qualitative research should provide some insight into the significance of and if climate impact cross-functional behaviour and activities in organisations. The research methodology included a customised survey which was developed to elicit answers to determine the climate and cross-functional behaviour and activities within the Organisation. Interviews were conducted with Operating Unit Executive Directors of the Organisation. The results indicate that the perceived current climate of the Organisation is not positive and that there is still silo-behaviour within the Organisation which is as a result of the culture of the Organisation, a culture which existed prior to Beyond 60 process. The research confirmed the overlapping relationship between culture and climate and that climate indeed impact cross-functional behaviour and activities at the Organisational and Operating Unit level. / Graduate School for Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

Corporations have become increasingly global over the past number of years. The rapid development and usage of communication technology has allowed global corporations to more readily form virtual teams to take advantage of the skills of its global workforce. Having skilled workers on teams helps to make them more productive. Productive teams tend to reach their objectives and ultimately drive the success of corporations. Team learning has long been linked with a team’s ability to reach its objectives. The team leader is seen as a key to enabling learning for the team. This qualitative study of 13 virtual teams sought to find ways that the leaders of these virtual teams cultivated team learning in the IT department of a leading global financial services firm. The study was especially focused on applications development project teams that were geographically and temporally dispersed and had an off-shore component as team members. Using the Dechant, Marsick, and Kasl (1993) model of team learning as a foundation, the researcher conducted critical incident interviews with the leaders of the virtual teams followed by administering the Dechant and Marsick (1993) Team Learning Survey to the team members. The study yielded insights that could be valuable to organizations that employ virtual team leaders as well as human resource development professionals who create training programs to enhance the skills of this group. Among the most prevalent skills identified included group facilitation, meeting management, process documentation, artifact creation, practicing learning agility, and soliciting input. The virtual team leader exhibited learning leadership by building relationships within the team and with other constituents; utilizing appropriate technology to enable learning; and conducting productive reflection sessions with the team to evaluate the team’s actions. Where team leaders needed to improve their efforts was around the monitoring and measuring of their learning efforts in order to gauge their full effectiveness.

The goal of this study is to describe and analyse the knowledge management and sharing in a project team. The brief results of the study showed that the investigated project team at Ericsson manages knowledge gained from their project within knowledge management systems. However, the practices used by the project team in order to manage knowledge have risks of inefficiency. The major shortcomings in project knowledge management were noticed in knowledge presentation, validation and distribution process. The main source for sharing knowledge within the project team is through project meetings before, during and after the completion of project apart from Scrum meetings, communities of practice, and pair programming. Additionally, the project specific factors showed their potential to really influence the knowledge sharing within the project team.

Abstract Teams, like companies, are going global. As Davision and Ward (1999) note, global teams are necessary for creating a company¡¦s ¡§sustainable global capability¡¨. The increasing complexities of scientific, sociological, and commercial issues demand that people from different cultural backgrounds and different nations collaborate in order to resolve global problems creatively and take advantage of global opportunities. Yet, global teams often face more challenges than collocated teams due to the nature of diversity. Thus, our research is aimed to study how the global team leaders lead to deal with the difference of cultural background, barrier of language, potential conflict etc., and still make a great teamwork. To reach the objective, the research adopts a case study method and takes the interviews with 8 global teams in Taiwan, and three members for each team, including a team leader and members from different countries. After data gathering and analysis, we generate 11 propositions.

Organizations use work teams to solve complex problems in innovative ways. As such, an abundance of diverse ideas, suggestions, and information should help organizations generate quality products and remain competitive. Yet, there is research which shows that women do not participate as much as men in face-to-face team interactions. Women often get fewer speaking turns than men, they speak for shorter lengths of time, and they are interrupted more often than men. As a result, women?s ideas may often be overlooked in work settings. This is problematic, because women make up 46 percent of the United States workforce, and not being active participants in meetings could results in underutilization of roughly half of the firm?s human capital. This study investigated whether the order of face-to-face and virtual communication used by virtual teams could be used as one means of increasing inclusion and participation of women in male-dominated teams. Results from 82 teams confirmed that women felt more included in the team when they communicated virtually first and then face-to-face as opposed to face-to-face first and then virtually. Findings supported a four-stage model where the medium of communication influences feelings of inclusion which influences participation (both self-reported and objective). Participation, in turn, influences perceptions of interpersonal justice, satisfaction with the team, and ratings received from team members. An objective measure of participation and team performance ratings from five independent raters also show that the more equally team members participate and the higher the team?s total communication volume, in both total speaking turns and words spoken, the higher the team?s ratings and the more creative the team?s output was judged to be.

There are two important trends in organizations today: 1) the increasing use of teams and 2) the increasing diversity in the workforce. The literature is in tune with these organizational trends, evidenced by a dramatic increase in research on team performance and the effects of diversity. However, there are still contradictory findings of the effects of team diversity on team processes and outcomes. To shed light on these inconsistencies, the cognitive construct of team mental model is introduced as a mediator of the relationship between team cognitive diversity and team performance. Team mental model is an emergent cognitive state that represents team members' organized understanding of their task environment (e.g., Klimoski&Mohammed, 1994) and has been shown to improve team performance (e.g., Edwards, Day, Arthur,&Bell, 2006; Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas,&Cannon-Bowers, 2000). Specifically, with a sample of 94 student teams I investigated how team cognitive diversity affects team mental model similarity and accuracy, and through them, team performance. In addition, I examined team information processing mechanisms as moderators of the relationships between team cognitive diversity and team mental model similarity and accuracy. The results suggest that cognition at the team level plays an important role in the effective functioning of decision making teams. Specifically, the combination of team mental model similarity and accuracy predicts levels of team performance and information integration is an important moderator linking cognitive style diversity to task mental models, team processes, and team performance. The research model developed and tested seeks to advance understanding of the "black box" linking team diversity to team outcomes (Lawrence, 1997) and to provide guidance to managers leading cognitively diverse teams.

Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2002.