M.Phil. / This dissertation provides a study of Virtual Teams and possible ways of predicting their effectiveness. The motivation for carrying out this study was to discover if there was a way of quantifying why Virtual Teams used in a particular company was proving to be very effective. A brief literature study of the topic of Virtual Teams and Virtual Team communication is given, as well as an overview of different Communication Models. A case study is made of the particular company (called DevCo Software Development as a pseudonym for the sake of confidentiality). The case study presents the results of two online surveys. One survey sent to all the employees within the Labs Department and another sent to only the Virtual Team members of a specific Virtual Team within the Labs Department. The case study concludes with an analysis of the company culture and the effect it appears to have on the way the employees use technology and the effect of this on Virtual Team success.

Regardless of numerous accomplishments and appreciable rewards of the collaboration in cross-functional teams, the impacts of cross-functional teams has deteriorated in the eyes of business, its ability to deliver having been questioned - businesses often fail to reap the promised benefits. While previous research has concentrated on collaboration in cross-functional teams of new product development, it neglected the outcomes of collaboration in crossfunctional teams and the leader behaviours that impacts and maintains the collaboration in cross-functional teams. This research aimed to understand the perspectives of leaders and subordinates on how leader behaviours could improve the impacts of collaboration in cross-functional teams. First by exploring the outcomes of collaboration in cross-functional teams, confirming importance to business, and then exploring current failures; secondly, by identifying the key leader behaviours that impacts collaboration in cross-functional teams. Preceding initiatives have been ineffective in reviving the value of collaboration in cross-functional teams, due to focal point being new product development collaboration of cross-functional teams and failed to focus on leader behaviours in cross-functional teams. This research, therefore, probed the necessities for collaboration entered into and maintained, looking particularly at leader behaviours which is effective in encouraging collaboration and involvement of stakeholders in cross-functional teams. From the research outcomes, the Leader behaviours Impact Model was designed to set out how collaboration can be established and maintained, optimising the impacts of the leader behaviours while also diminishing its many failures of collaboration in crossfunctional team. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / pagibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This study identified and defined leader behaviors with two levels of leadership in a self-managed team organization. Job analysis methodology was used. A comparison of task importance values was made within groups and between hierarchical levels in the organization. Identified leader behaviors were compared with effective, traditional leader performance. Qualitative data collected throughout the investigation clarified an integrative model for effective organizations developed from the literature. The model included leader characteristics and team member behaviors when using self-managed teams.

M.Tech. (Operations Management) / For any organisation to be effective and efficient in achieving its goals, its employees must maintain a shared vision of what they are striving to achieve, as well as clear aims and objectives of the organisation. Employees may be grouped into teams with which play important roles in an organisation. Companies have discovered that the introduction of teams to the production process, leads to innovative and goal oriented performance, with new products generated at a faster pace. Teams become a force of change when interaction within the group is dynamic. Similarly, effective teams may influence productivity and improve quality. In this context, a study was conducted at the Ferrosilicon Plant of Dense Media Separation (DMS) Pty Ltd located in Meyerton, South Africa, where a sink float process for the separation of mineral particles, involving suspension of dense powders in water is used. The study focuses on team structures, which are currently experiencing job dissatisfaction. It attempted to establish the problem areas that may be at the core of team ineffectiveness and offered suggestions for resolution. At the root of the study is an attempt by management to resolve job dissatisfaction by facilitating team development, establishing explicit team norms and expectations, fostering a collaborative team climate, exercising leadership skills in pursuit of team goals and encouraging open and candid communication within the production section. The study argues that if decisive action is not taken to address these issues, it would be difficult for any organisation to function and would in turn inhibit management’s control of the organisation, ultimately leading to a loss of productivity.

The purpose of this study is to review the literature related to team teaching developments in Canada and the United States, and to examine current team teaching practices in British Columbia elementary schools in order to: (i) ascertain the extent, definition, objectives, various methods, problems and difficulties of team teaching at the elementary school level; (ii) attempt to draw warranted generalizations from these findings about the practices of team teaching; and (iii) assess the potential value of team teaching with reference to commonly accepted principles of elementary education. The thesis rests on both secondary and primary sources limited to the years 1960-1971. The literature reviewed included books, journals, magazines and newspapers. The basic information on British Columbia elementary schools was taken from a survey conducted by the author. Initial response from district superintendents indicated that 45 districts had some schools that were using the team teaching approach, the total number of schools being 110. Permission to conduct the study was given by all districts. Survey instruments were distributed in April, 1971, to principals and teaching teams in all 110 schools. Returns were received from 85 principals and 301 teachers in 85 schools, 77.73 percent of the sample. The principals and teachers represented 142 teaching teams and returned between them 228 (85 + 143) questionnaires. Annual reports, timetables, evaluations and floor plans from 8 other team teaching elementary schools were also obtained. All the teaching teams in one Lower Mainland school district were visited and interviewed. The study is divided into four chapters. The first attempts to clarify the definitions and characteristics of team teaching. The most commonly accepted definitions were found to be: a cooperative structure in which several teachers plan and carry out the instructional programme with no specific ranks designated to staff members; two or more teachers exchanging classes on an informal voluntary basis; and, a formalized structure of teaching peers with leadership designated on a rotating basis. The generally considered important characteristics included: cooperative planning, instruction, and evaluation; flexible scheduling; flexible arrangements providing for large group, small group, and individualized study; maximum use of teachers' strengths, skills, and interests; professional and para-professional staff; some curriculum alterations; extensive use of audiovisual and other instructional media; and, students assigned to a team, not to a particular teacher. The second chapter outlines the different organizational patterns, teacher roles, groupings and facilities associated with team teaching. Informal organizations identified include: a simple voluntary collaboration without structure or assumption of permanence; division of responsibility to simplify workload preparation; interchange of pupils for specific grouping purposes; combination of classes for specific experiences; and, an experienced teacher working with an apprentice or younger teacher on a temporary basis. Formal organization identified include: a formalized team structure with leadership designated on a continuing or rotating basis and peer status emphasized; teachers assisted by teacher aides on a continuing basis; a formalized team structure on a hierarchical basis, with the leader assuming a permanent role; and, a formalized hierarchical structure with several levels of responsibility above that of teacher. Concepts of the roles of team members vary somewhat from school to school but generally include a team leader, professional teachers, regular teachers, teacher interns, teacher specialists, clerical aides, teacher aides, resource and support personnel. Varying group sizes ranging from small groups of 12 to 15 pupils, working groups of 3 to 8 pupils, and large groups of 40, 75, 100 or 150 pupils are a central aspect of most teams. Joint planning sessions, around which the team's activities generally centre, tend to focus on making overall curriculum decisions, on scheduling, on discussing the special problems of students, and on assessing and reporting student progress. Detailed planning of individual lessons is usually done by one or two members who specialize in each area. Planning sessions in most teams are very time consuming and frequently overwhelm teachers by the increased work load. Most of the teams operate in open area schools. A few are housed in double-sized or large classrooms and a small minority function in traditional schools. On the whole, the facilities for large group activities are adequate but many teams find that small group or individual study facilities are poor or nonexistent. The third chapter gives the results of research studies completed to date in the area of elementary school team teaching. Most studies, however, have been descriptive rather than evaluative and any research done is generally of poor quality. The summary of findings is, therefore, somewhat hypothetical and represents only a crude start in gaining an understanding of team teaching and its validity. Almost without exception, pupil achievement, as shown on standardized tests, has been found to be about the same in team teaching programmes as in self-contained classrooms. Findings on student adjustment are all highly similar with most pupils favoring the team approach. Team teaching, as any other plan of organization, seems to improve the adjustment of some students and lessen the adjustment of others. As far as parental attitudes are concerned, research studies consistently show that a considerable majority of parents hold favourable attitudes toward team teaching. The findings are, however, generally not sufficiently specific or detailed to indicate what features of team teaching were chiefly responsible for these attitudes. Not surprisingly, because most are volunteers, the majority of teachers who have worked on teams express favourable attitudes. These teachers also, however, apparently undergo a rather stressful period in adjusting to the demands team teaching makes on them. Even in schools that have been engaged in team teaching for a considerable period of time, there is no conclusive evidence to indicate that greater teacher competency or efficiency results from this type of organization. Writers in the field of team teaching give considerable attention to team planning. Most reports agree that this area poses many problems. There is usually a lack of time for planning and it takes much longer to make plans as a team. Frequently planning sessions are hampered by personality conflicts and disagreements over ideas or basic philosophy. Teachers, however, generally feel that the results are worth putting up with such difficulties. Research on flexible grouping within team organizations is limited and when available remains inconclusive as to the relative merit of large group instruction, small group activities and independent study. Conviction does seem to be building up, however, that the size of group is best determined by the nature of what is taught, the ability of those being taught and the competence of those doing the teaching. Claims for enormously increased flexibility of pupil grouping and teacher assignment in teams are often exaggerated. The basic restraints are the amount of school time, the number of pupils, and the number of teachers. These factors usually remain unchanged in team organizations as compared with traditional school arrangements. In general, the new patterns of team teaching in themselves do not require greater outlay of funds, nor do they effect great savings. Increased costs may arise through the purchase of needed equipment and materials when team teaching is initiated, but once established costs are the same as self-contained classroom organizations. Many educators believe that one of the greatest benefits a school derives from introducing team teaching, is that such a plan is a catalyst for needed changes. Installing team teaching is apt to expose needs for improving curriculum materials, for purchasing instructional equipment, and for developing better instructional techniques through in-service teacher education. Frequently, team teaching has stimulated fresh thinking about class size and organization, grouping practices, basic curriculum decisions, division of the workload among teachers, and the bases of pupil welfare. School architecture appears to be considerably influenced by the demand for flexible and varying space. The decision as to whether team teaching should be continued, discontinued or even propagated is not dictated by these findings. The final chapter points out that team teaching is one approach to the search for new ways of organizing personnel for the teaching function. If team teaching projects are undertaken, it should be with the full understanding of what can be achieved and what shortcomings are inherent in the structure. As an organizational plan, it offers opportunities for conducting instruction but does not, in itself, guarantee any instructional outcomes. It is encouraging, however, to note that most schools involved in team teaching have expressed approval of it. They are generally also the schools which are pioneering with the problems of facilities, scheduling and grouping. If a catalyst is needed to accomplish changes in an attempt to provide better conditions for instruction and learning, team teaching could be the agent. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Facilitators are encouraged to get all meeting attendees to participate in the meeting. There is the assumption made that, if they do participate, then this participation will increase the group's general satisfaction of the meeting. Also, knowing the factors that can increase the probability of a successful meeting has been a focus of previous research, yet attendee participation has not been studied. The current research study empirically examines participation's effect on meeting evaluations. This study is a field experiment conducted in a team-based organization, where successful meetings are critical. Data was collected on the amount of participation of team members in their weekly team meeting and their evaluations of the meeting. After running correlations and a principal components analysis, this study found a relationship between participation and meeting evaluations. A scale of meeting success was also created.

Encouraging positive work team growth depends on, in part, the form and availability of organizational resources and support. Support systems have been found to be important for work team health and survival. However, managers are challenged to make resource decisions while working within company budgetary restraints. Previous research has indicated a positive relationship exists between teams provided with appropriate resources and support, and increased team performance. This study extended previous research by exploring if team performance can predict resources and support. Specifically, the means by which managers allocate resources based on team performance was examined. Archival data included 36 work teams and their managers drawn from four geographically dispersed manufacturing companies. Information gathered from a modified version of an original team support system instrument was used to assess the importance and presence of four resource systems. Additionally, a gap score was calculated from these scores to assess the alignment between resource need and resource existence. Data was used to assess the potential relationships between managers' perceptions of team performance and the manner by which resources are allocated. All hypotheses produced non-significant findings. Results of the hypotheses, data patterns, and limitations of the study are discussed, and opportunities for future research are presented.

This research explores the relationship of self-monitoring with team leader behavior and work environment preference. Those who are high on self-monitoring demonstrate flexibility in their actions with others and are socially perceptive. They perform well in a variety of leadership positions and are viewed as leaders by group members. High self-monitoring types choose "socially" based careers, including teacher and psychologist, in which they adapt their interaction styles to effectively meet the demands of clients. The demands placed on a team leader appear to require similar characteristics to those that high self-monitoring individuals possess. As a team matures through different stages of development, the role of the leader ranges from director to facilitator to consultant. In order to effectively meet team needs, a leader must be socially sensitive to interpersonal cues and have the ability to assume various roles. In addition, given the fact that the position of team leader is a highly social type of career that requires behaviors similar to careers chosen by high self-monitoring individuals, it is likely that high self-monitors would prefer working in a team work environment over a traditional one. A survey methodology was used to assess the characteristics of 100 team members. No relationship was found between self-monitoring and flexible team leader behavior. However, when a job relevant version of a traditional self-monitoring scale was used, some of the data suggested that flexible people prefer a team work environment over a traditional one. Also, individuals who demonstrated ineffective team leader behaviors tended to show a preference towards traditional work environments.

Despite the existence of robots that are capable of lifting heavy loads, robotic assistants that can help people move objects as part of a team are not available. This is because of a lack of critical intelligence that results in inefficient and ineffective performance of these robots. This work makes progress towards improved intelligence of robotic lifting assistants by studying human-human teams in order to understand basic principles of co-manipulation teamwork. The effect of modus, or the manner in which a team moves an object together, is the primary study of this work. Data was collected from over 30 human-human trials in which participants in teams of two co-manipulated an object that weighed 60 pounds. These participants maneuvered through a series of five obstacles while carrying the object, exhibiting one of four modi at any given time. The raw data from these experiments was cleaned and distilled into a pose trajectory, velocity trajectory, acceleration trajectory, and interaction wrench trajectory. Classifying on the original base set of four modi with a neural net showed that two of the three modi were very similar, such that classification between three modi was more appropriate. The three modi used in classification were \emph{quickly}, \emph{smoothly} and \emph{avoiding obstacles}. Using a convolutional neural net, three modi were able to be classified from a validation set with up to 85\% accuracy. Detecting modus has the potential to greatly improve human-robot co-manipulation by providing a means to determine an appropriate robot behavior objective function. Survey data showed that participants trust each other more after working together and that they feel that their partners are more qualified after they worked together. A number of modified scales were also shown to be reliable which will allow future researchers in human-robot co-manipulation to properly evaluate how humans feel about working with each other. These same scales will also provide a useful comparison to human-robot teams in order to determine how much humans trust robots as co-manipulation team members.

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