Multicultural teams are capable of producing creative and high quality solutions, but are also prone to conflict (Stahl, Maznevski, Voigt, & Johnson, 2010). Thus, it is important to understand the conditions which encourage the development of strong identity in multicultural teams. Third culture, a team’s shared schema of task knowledge, team knowledge, and team motivational values (Adair, Tinsley, & Taylor, 2006), is a construct which may help fill this gap in knowledge. Two field studies were conducted (1) to examine whether participant expectations of productivity, satisfaction, and psychological safety differed among four types of third culture, and (2) to examine how individual differences in cognitive-motivation, ideology, national culture, and multicultural team experience are related to expectations of productivity, satisfaction, and psychological safety among four types of third culture. In general, results suggest that people expect more creativity and satisfaction in teams with Fusion and Mosaic third cultures, as well as less psychological safety. Future research directions are discussed.

Bakgrund: Team och samarbete är ständigt aktuellt inom hälso- och sjukvården. Operationspersonal är en grupp som behöver ha ett bra teamarbete med varandra, speciellt när det gäller att jobba för en säkrare vård för patienterna. I en operationssal jobbar ett multiprofessionellt team, där tillvaratagande av varandras kompetenser är en förutsättning för ett bra resultat. Operationssjuksköterskan, med sin unika kompetens, har tillsammans med resten av teamet ett ansvar för att bidra till ett gott och välfungerande teamarbete inne på salen. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att belysa operationssjuksköterskors upplevelser av att arbeta i ett team på en operationssal. Metod: Semistrukturerade individuella intervjuer genomfördes med elva operationssjuksköterskor på två sjukhus i Sverige. Det insamlade materialet analyserades med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Analysen resulterade i två teman, och fyra underteman. De två övergripande teman som framkom var: Att interagera med varandra och Att visa respekt och förståelse för varandra. En god kommunikation var en grund till ett gott samspel inom teamet. Fler tillfällen för reflektion och samtal med arbetskamraterna önskades, eftersom ett bra teamarbete tog tid att utveckla.  Att bemöta varandra med respekt och att vara hjälpsam ansågs vara viktigt, även att ha kunskap om teamets olika professioner. Slutsats: Ett väl fungerande teamarbete i operationssalen är en viktig del för patientsäkerheten. Att arbeta i team i operationssalen innebär komplexa interaktioner mellan olika yrkeskategorier med olika utbildning där alla är beroende av varandra. Grundpelarna för ett bra teamarbete är att samarbeta och hjälpa varandra, upprätthålla en god kommunikation, bemöta varandra med respekt och värdighet samt inneha kunskap om såväl ens egen profession som andras profession i teamet.  Den här studien visar att det behövs mer stöd från organisationen samt tid för samtal och reflektion mellan teammedlemmarna.

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of communication differences in effective and ineffective teams. It investigates task and socio-emotional verbal behaviours over time and its relationship to team effectiveness and team members' self-perceived member viability. The author used an aural observational method to examine verbal communication of three teams. Participants were post-graduate students formed into teams, working on a complex and dynamic task over a project duration of five days in a classroom setting. Spoken interaction was audio recorded and analysed using Bales' (1950) Interaction Process Analysis (IPA). Three questionnaires were developed, mainly by combining existing measurement instruments from communication and small group research, measuring team effectiveness and member viability. The analysis of selected team meetings with IPA displayed interesting task and socio¬emotional communication differences in effective and ineffective teams. These differences were more visible in socio-emotional interaction than in task-related interaction. Observed interaction patterns changed over time, although communication behaviours were more stable in the effective teams. Findings indicate that a consistently high level of positive socio-emotional communication in combination with a consistently low level of negative socio-emotional interaction seem to facilitate team effectiveness, while a high level of negative socio-emotional interaction or constantly changing socio-emotional behaviour seems to inhibit team effectiveness. It seems to suggest that communication behaviours impact upon team effectiveness and member viability. When communication behaviours could be described as task focused with a consistent level of positive reactions, outweighing negative reactions, effectiveness and member viability can increase. Opposite behaviours, shifting from task to interpersonal issues in combination with negative reactions outweighing positive reactions can lead to low levels of perceived member viability and a lack of effectiveness. The results lead to the suggestion that communication behaviours and member viability, particularly cohesion and willingness to continue as a member of this team, seem to be indicators for a team's 'well-being' and impact upon its effectiveness. These factors seem to be especially visible at the beginning and the temporal midpoint of a project. During these two periods, monitoring of the team process is recommended, either self-managed or with support from outside the team in order to prevent communication problems impacting on team effectiveness.

This thesis is concerned with the development of a consistent, information-theoretic basis for understanding of coordination and cooperation decentralised multi-sensor multi-platform systems. Autonomous systems composed of multiple sensors and multiple platforms potentially have significant importance in applications such as defence, search and rescue mining or intelligent manufacturing. However, the effective use of multiple autonomous systems requires that an understanding be developed of the mechanisms of coordination and cooperation between component systems in pursuit of a common goal. A fundamental, quantitative, understanding of coordination and cooperation between decentralised autonomous systems is the main goal of this thesis. This thesis focuses on the problem of coordination and cooperation for teams of autonomous systems engaged in information gathering and data fusion tasks. While this is a subset of the general cooperative autonomous systems problem, it still encompasses a range of possible applications in picture compilation, navigation, searching and map building problems. The great advantage of restricting the domain of interest in this way is that an underlying mathematical model for coordination and cooperation can be based on the use of information-theoretic models of platform and sensor abilities. The information theoretic approach builds on the established principles and architecture previously developed for decentralised data fusion systems. In the decentralised control problem addressed in this thesis, each platform and sensor system is considered to be a distinct decision maker with an individual information-theoretic utility measure capturing both local objectives and the inter-dependencies among the decisions made by other members of the team. Together these information-theoretic utilities constitute the team objective. The key contributions of this thesis lie in the quantification and study of cooperative control between sensors and platforms using information as a common utility measure. In particular, * The problem of information gathering is formulated as an optimal control problem by identifying formal measures of information with utility or pay-off. * An information-theoretic utility model of coupling and coordination between decentralised decision makers is elucidated. This is used to describe how the information gathering strategies of a team of autonomous systems are coupled. * Static and dynamic information structures for team members are defined. It is shown that the use of static information structures can lead to efficient, although sub-optimal, decentralised control strategies for the team. * Significant examples in decentralised control of a team of sensors are developed. These include the multi-vehicle multi-target bearings-only tracking problem, and the area coverage or exploration problem for multiple vehicles. These examples demonstrate the range of non-trivial problems to which the theory in this thesis can be employed.

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2007. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Education Policy and Management, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-288).

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of British Columbia, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-122). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (D.N. Sc.)--Catholic University of America. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaves 109-113.

Thesis (B.A.)--Whitman College, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-174). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.