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Work-integrated learning (WIL) experiences provide opportunities for students to become part of a community of practice. The aim was to determine whether a WIL student caused changes to workplace team dynamics. Using a mixed methods approach data was collected from WIL students and supervisors. Having a student in the team: encouraged a culture where staff and students could share ideas; encouraged staff to be reflective and to raise their own standards; and for some, provided leadership opportunities. Pre-placement preparation is needed so students are aware of positive behaviours and the potential power relationships or tensions they may be exposed to.

The objective of this study is to explore how various personality types correlate with enhanced work performance. The Enneagram type of the participants in the experiment was established by using the simplest version of the Riso–Hudson test. A two-way ANOVA was performed under the principles of the Design of Experiments, which allowed the identification of main effects and interactions in the response, i.e., the marks of the university teams. We found that the interactions between certain Enneagram types seem to increase the average performance marks as a primary effect. Conversely, when certain Enneagram types coincided within a team, the marks significantly decreased, posing a risk to project success. According to our results, the Enneagram framework may be used as a preliminary stage for identifying potential team members for future projects.

Group formation studies are rare in the literature on teacher professional learning communities (PLCs). But they are needed to render realistic scenarios and design interventions for practitioners who work in schools where teachers encounter distress and social adversity. Under these conditions, we may need approaches to PLC development that are not adequately captured with conventional models. Drawing from the literature on teacher collaboration, effective work teams, group development and identity, problem solving, conflict and collective resilience, the article traces the development of a grade level team in a distressed urban middle school that was charged to make the learning environment for students safer, more orderly, and more caring. When teachers face the social adversity that students bring to them from their life experiences, the problems faced by teachers are often not “friendly” problems. Rather these problems cause suffering: being challenged in one’s basic competencies as a teacher or one’s personal integrity. Oftentimes, they require collective action while they at the same time increase individual distress, fear of being seen as weak, and isolation. Work team development under these circumstances needs to capitalize on the desire to connect that may be imbued in collective suffering. Against norms of privacy, non-interference, and conflict avoidance, ideological rifts, and interfering interpersonal dynamics work team members need to look for the seeds of the desire to connect in the midst of this suffering.

The authors report the results of an investigation on how demographic heterogeneity in work teams influences team empowerment and team effectiveness. Using data collected from 111 intact work teams in four organizations, it was found that team race heterogeneity was negatively related to team empowerment and to multiple indicators of team effectiveness. Teams were also less effective when their team leaders had longer, rather than shorter, organizational tenure. Team empowerment fully mediated the relationships that race heterogeneity had with team leader ratings of team effectiveness and partially mediated the relationships with team member ratings. In addition, demographic dissimilarity between team leaders and their teams on race was negatively related to empowerment and team leader ratings of team effectiveness; and team members reported less empowerment when led by older team leaders. The authors discuss both theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.

Team-based work systems are emerging as key source of sustained competitive advantage in manufacturing and engineering design operations. The focus on teams derives in no small part from the competitive success of Japanese corporations, where team-based systems have been central to manufacturing and engineering design for more than three decades. For years, Japanese operations were seen as dependent on what was perceived as the collective nature of Japanese culture, but these assumptions have been shattered by the success of Japanese firms in establishing manufacturing operations in North America. This article features a detailed look at team-based work systems in eight Japanese-affiliated factories located in North America. There are three distinct types of team systems in these factories: lean production teams, socio-technical system teams, and off-line team structures. The team systems vary in the degree of interdependency and autonomy among teams and in the amount of team-responsibility for daily production operations. These variations in team systems are attributable to the timing of Japanese investment, the nature of the production technology, and the influence of U.S. business partners. This research thus provides a roadmap to the diverse mix of Japanese work practices and identifies important lessons for any organization moving toward greater use of team-based work systems.

This paper considers the effect of team structure on a team's engagement in learning and continuous improvement. We begin by noting the uncertain conceptual status of the structure concept in the small groups literature and propose a conceptualization of team structure that is grounded in the long tradition of work on formal structure in the sociology and organization theory literatures. We then consider the thesis that, at least in self-managed teams dealing with stable tasks, greater team structure-i.e., higher levels of specialization, formalization, and hierarchy-can promote learning by encouraging information sharing, reducing conflict frequency, and fostering a climate of psychological safety; that is, we examine a mediated model in which the effect of structure on learning and improvement in teams is mediated by psychological safety, information sharing, and conflict frequency. This model was largely supported in a study of self-managed production teams in a Fortune 100 high-technology firm, although the observed pattern of mediation was more complex than anticipated. Higher structure was also associated with actual productivity improvements in a subsample of these teams. The theory and results of this study advance our understanding of team learning and underscore the importance of team structure in research on team processes and performance.

Despite the growing interest in extreme teams, there is currently a lack of understanding concerning leadership within such teams, as the literature has predominantly focused on team leadership within the context of traditional organizations. The current study investigates team leadership within the context of teams operating in extreme environments, with a specific focus on teams operating in isolated, confined environments. We seek to identify team leadership functions as well as a subset of structural characteristics associated with team leadership in extreme environments (i.e., formality of leadership, locus of leadership, and leadership distribution). We leverage a historiometric approach to capitalize on real historical examples of extreme teams that are rich with critical information regarding actual team leadership functions occurring in extreme settings. Results suggest that team leadership functions such as team problem solving, supporting social climate, structure and planning, and sensemaking are among the most prevalent. Results also indicated that the degree to which leadership is distributed throughout the team as well as the formality of leadership varies across action and transition phases of the team's task cycle.

Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership brings together the foremost thinkers on the subject and is the first book of its kind to address the conceptual, methodological, and practical issues for shared leadership. Its aim is to advance understanding along many dimensions of the shared leadership phenomenon: its dynamics, moderators, appropriate settings, facilitating factors, contingencies, measurement, practice implications, and directions for the future. The volume provides a realistic and practical discussion of the benefits, as well as the risks and problems, associated with shared leadership. It will serve as an indispensable guide for researchers and practicing managers in identifying where and when shared leadership may be appropriate for organizations and teams.

This paper develops and tests a theory of expertise recognition and utilization in groups that focuses on the critical role of members' status cues as indicators of task expertise. The theory draws on status characteristics theory and past research on groups to propose that while attributions of expertise in work groups will be informed by both specific (i.e., task-relevant) and diffuse (i.e., social category) status cues, the strength of this association will be contingent on the type of cue as well as on characteristics of the group context. So, whereas specific status cues will better predict attributions of expertise in decentralized, longer-tenured groups, diffuse status cues will better predict attributions of expertise in centralized, shorter-tenured groups. Further, attributions of expertise should fully mediate the relationship between members' status cues and intragroup influence. A multilevel test of these hypotheses in a sample of self-managed production teams in a Fortune 100 high-technology firm provides strong support. Group-level analyses confirm that the alignment of intragroup influence with specific status cues is positively associated with group performance.

Critical Reflections is a process that leaders can use to help their groups learn lessons from key events, positive or negative. The basic process is short and simple. It begins with a key event and includes three stages: exploring—reliving the event and sharing perceptions of what happened; reflecting—reaching an understanding of how and why it happened; and projecting—harvesting lessons for the future. The goal is to create a specific action plan that will set the stage for a productive future.