The purpose of this paper was two-fold. The first was to investigate the impact of conflict as a mediator in the relationship between distribution and team performance. The second was to examine how that relationship was affected by virtuality. Four-member teams of different distributions (partially distributed, fully distributed, and fully collocated) and different virtuality conditions (videoconferencing, teleconferencing, and chat) played a team-oriented game. Significant results were found only in the videoconferencing condition, in which both distribution and task conflict had a negative impact on team performance, but task conflict did not mediate the relationship between distribution and team performance. Further research investigating how virtuality impacts distributed teams in needed.

This thesis extracts organizational lessons from the U.S. Army's Human Terrain Teams. In the past, the Human Terrain Teams have been the topic of various debates, but none discussed their performance. Studying what influences how Human Terrain Teams perform is important to the National Security System to improve its use of socio-cultural knowledge during conflicts. A contextual narrative of team members formally involved with Human Terrain Teams and information from journalistic articles tells the story of what organizational characteristics affected the performance of the U.S. Army's Human Terrain Teams. / Master of Arts

<p dir="ltr">In this research, I study the role of empathy in first-year engineering design teams. Engineering programs provide students with opportunities to practice and develop teamwork skills to help them become more effective team members. Thus, it is essential to understand factors that contribute to effective teaming experiences for engineering students. One key factor for promoting effective teaming experiences is empathy.</p>

In recent years, remote work has been increasingly adopted globally, with manyorganizations adopting working in remote teams. Remote teams are a new phenomenon thathave unique challenges compared to traditional teams. Distance makes it more difficult tocommunicate and collaborate effectively which can lead to misunderstandings andmisinterpretation causing conflicts. There is existing literature specifically on conflictmanagement in remote teams but is to some extent out-of-date as technology has developed.This study aims to complement existing literature to better understand how conflicts inremote teams are best prevented and managed by answering the research question: “Whatare the unique challenges of conflict management in remote teams, main causes of conflictsin remote teams and how can they be resolved effectively?” This study had an inductive qualitative approach, utilizing interviews to answer our researchquestion. Six participants were interviewed, and the data was analyzed using a thematicanalysis. Our findings present unique challenges, with poor communication standing out asa primary concern causing conflicts. To overcome these challenges the findings concludesfour main strategies for leaders and managers to use in conflict management within remoteteams. These strategies are to enhance communication and provide structure, fosterinterpersonal connections and trust, practicing explicit management, and compromising asa method in conflict resolution

There have been thousands of studies on teams and their performance, but there are still many unanswered questions. An important one is how an organization's reward structure supports the growing trend of using teams. Many organizations implement teams without changing the organizational systems to align with and support the use of teams, i.e., training, feedback, information and reward systems. As predicted by many authorities in the field of team effectiveness research, these teams often fail. One organizational subsystem that has been determined to be important is the reward structure. If the reward structure is not changed to support a team-based structure, the misalignment could negatively impact team effectiveness. This research investigated the relationship between reward structure and team effectiveness using a laboratory experiment. This experiment involved groups of students working as a team on a design problem. The independent variable is the type of reward structure, manipulated over three levels: interdependent (group), independent (individual) and mixed rewards (both group and individual). The experiment used a design task, intended to be more representative of project team work where team members were assigned a functional discipline and worked together to solve a design problem. The primary dependent variable in this study was team effectiveness: team performance as measured by the quality of the team's design, satisfaction of team members, and the ability and desire of team members to work together in the future. Other control variables investigated for their effect on these dependent variables included: cooperative behaviors, reward valence, effort, and autonomy preferences. Few significant effects of reward structure were found. The reward treatment had a significant main effect on both cooperation and effort, but little difference existed between reward treatments. Some unusual results were found in the relationship between effort and cooperation with performance. Both effort and cooperation were negatively related to team performance. Cooperation, satisfaction and ability to exist were all found to be correlated. No one reward structure was found to be significantly better than any of the others in terms of team effectiveness or team process. / Master of Science

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The research assignment was conducted to evaluate the influential dimensions for building high performing teams in virtual organisations. The new business unit, Middle East and Africa has the challenge of operating globally for the first time. The leadership has the daunting task of getting the virtual team to become a high performance team. An intensive literature review was conducted to draw on the knowledge of previous theory for both high performance teams as well as virtual organisations. A representative sample of the organisation’s leadership was interviewed by means of an online questionnaire, whilst employees were survey by means of both physical and online surveys. The results provided insights into the dimensions that strongly influence high performance teams in virtual global organisations. A deeper understanding of success factors that influence team performance and virtual organisations were learnt and recommendations was made to the company.

No description available.

No description available.

Prof. W. Backer

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Commerce (M Com) at the University of the Witwatersrand, February 2017 / Information systems development (ISD) project teams are involved in requirements elicitation, analysis, development, testing and deployment of various information technology solutions. These teams often compete with each other for limited resources in an attempt to fulfil their organisational mandate. As a result, project teams can exert power over each other and employ various influence tactics in attempt to gain and maintain positions of power which allow them to control key resources and influence decision making processes. This study examined the strategic environmental and structural conditions of fulfilment which influence the power of ISD project teams, and the extent to which influence tactics can impact on team power level. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire instrument. A sample of 106 teams from five companies was obtained. The companies operate in the financial services and government sectors. A single key informant responded on behalf of their team. Correlation and regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized links between power and the structural conditions of fulfilment namely centrality and substitutability, as well as, the environmental condition of coping with uncertainty. The moderating effects of influence tactics on these relationships was tested via hierarchical moderated regression. Results indicated that the strategic condition of coping with uncertainty significantly and positively affects perceived team power, whilst substitutability significantly and negatively affects perceived team power. Support for the structural condition of centrality was not found to be significant. Additionally, the influence tactic of rational persuasion was found to moderate the relationship between power and coping with uncertainty such that rational persuasion interacts with coping with uncertainty to affect power. Results also indicated that the influence tactic of collaboration was not a moderator but rather has significant direct effects on perceived team power. The study concluded that ISD project teams who cope with project uncertainties and whose tasks and functionalities are difficult to replace, as well as, those who effectively collaborate with other teams will have greater power within project settings. Moreover, ISD project teams can combine rational persuasion tactics with coping with uncertainty to exert even stronger effects on power. The outcomes of this study help to bring an understanding of the impact of the strategic conditions factors on perceived team power within ISD project settings, as well as the role of specific influence tactics in the formation of power. / GR2018