Team Dispersion, Emergent States, and Performance in Virtual IT Service Provisioning Teams

Today, virtual teams composed by dispersed team members relying on computer-supported collaborative work are common in the information technology (IT) service provisioning industry. Despite the increasing interest in virtual team research, there is a limited understanding of a multidimensional view of team dispersion and its effect on the performance of virtual teams via the team´s socioemotional states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of team distribution and variety of work practices on the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams via the emergent states of trust and cohesiveness. To this aim, an input-process-output framework was adopted to develop a conceptual model and a survey with IT service provisioning professionals was conducted. The results suggest that a variety of work practices constitutes a barrier to the performance of virtual IT service provisioning teams; and that trust and cohesiveness are important mediators in this cause-effect relationship.

A farewell to the lone hero researcher: team research and writing

Criminology have long celebrated the lone hero researcher. Doing and writing up research in solitude has been the key to academic success and institutional promotions. However, the social sciences in general have increasingly moved towards more collaborative ways of doing research, and co-authorship has become more common. In this study, we summarize and discuss the pros and cons of working in teams when doing qualitative research. Drawing upon our own experiences from Mexico and Norway, we argue for a radical approach to team research and co-authorship, which we describe as team writing. Most importantly, we suggest opening up to include stakeholders and community partners, thus challenging the borders between researchers and those researched. This is arguably particularly important for research done in the academic, geographical and topical periphery of criminology. Team research and writing answers some of the critique of power inequality, representativity and lack of diversity in contemporary academic research. We also believe that team research, and writing, can make criminological research more multifaceted, reflexive, and thus better.

Team Composition Revisited: A Team Member Attribute Alignment Approach

Research methods for studying team composition tend to employ either a variable-centered or person-centered approach. The variable-centered approach allows scholars to consider how patterns of attributes between team members influence teams, while the person-centered approach allows scholars to consider how variation in multiple attributes within team members influences subgroup formation and its effects. Team composition theory, however, is becoming increasingly sophisticated, assuming variation on multiple attributes both within and between team members—for example, in predicting how a team functions differently when its most assertive members are also optimistic rather than pessimistic. To support this new theory, we propose an attribute alignment approach, which complements the variable-centered and person-centered approaches by modeling teams as matrices of their members and their members’ attributes. We first demonstrate how to calculate attribute alignment by determining the vector norm and vector angle between team members’ attributes. Then, we demonstrate how the alignment of team member personality attributes (neuroticism and agreeableness) affects team relationship conflict. Finally, we discuss the potential of using the attribute alignment approach to enrich broader team research.

Promoting the Emergence of Team Flow in Organizations

An important question in the field of team research is how teams can optimize their collaboration to maximize their performance. When team members who are collaborating towards a common purpose experience flow together, the team, as a performing unit, improves its performance and delivers individual happiness to its members. From a practical point of view, it is relevant to know how team flow experiences arise within professional organizations. The aim of this study is therefore to get more insight into the how the elements of team flow emerge. We conducted interviews with team members, business leaders, and team experts, and in addition a survey with team members. The results provide confirmation of the existing research on team dynamics, flow, group and team flow and indicate that a collective ambition, professional autonomy, and open communication must be deliberately and carefully cultivated to set the stage for the other team flow prerequisites and thence for team flow to emerge.

Transdisciplinary Team Research to Develop Theory of Mind in Human-AI Teams Panelists

This panel will provide a transdisciplinary perspective on developing artificial social intelligence for teams. A panel with representatives from the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences will discuss theoretical, methodological, and technological insights derived from their respective disciplines. These perspectives will be integrated via a set of questions meant to guide synthesis across disciplines in support of a transdisciplinary team research approach. Through discussion across the panel and audience, our goal is to contribute to research and development in the area of Human-AI-Robot Teaming effectiveness.

Qualitative Virtual Team Research as Training Method in a Postgraduate Program in Administration

This study is a retrospective review of methodological strategies employed during a virtual team-based training qualitative study about the emergent process of adapting to remote education among students and professors from a Master Management Program. The aim of this study was to test the technique of collaborative research as an educational and training strategy for Ph.D. students of management who are inexperienced in qualitative inductive research carried out in a virtual environment. A professor and eight Ph.D. students formed the research team and applied a qualitative inductive approach. As a result, 18 methodological steps emerged, which required just over one hundred hours of work. We describe advantages and challenges faced during the process, including greater credibility and validity for the results, technical and interactional difficulties of the virtual research environment, and difficulty reaching consensus in the data analysis stage. The findings also highlight the importance of coordination, active participation, and continuous assessment as Ph.D. educational and teaching strategies. Qualitative Virtual Team Research has proved to be a potential training tool for beginning researchers. We also contribute to the body of research on Ph.D. education and teaching by detailing the procedures used to coordinate the project and clarifying details regarding the strategies used to reach consensus in data analysis development.

Fundamental Requirements for Contemporary Performance Evaluation of Emergency-Response and Safety-Critical Teams

This is a review-article which selectively reviews key concepts adopted in team performance evaluation literature. This review intends to promote future innovative methods for objective quantification and analysis of team performance. The review summarizes methods, experimental frameworks, sensors for physiological and behavioral recordings, data processing to derive team level objective measures, in the light of team performance evaluation. Observing the advancements in sensor technologies and computation power, towards advancing team performance evaluation, this review summarizes some of the current multimodal based team research. Finally, the review provides suggestions on aspects that the future research focus to overcome some of existing limitations and drawbacks. <br>

Fundamental Requirements for Contemporary Performance Evaluation of Emergency-Response and Safety-Critical Teams

This is a review-article which selectively reviews key concepts adopted in team performance evaluation literature. This review intends to promote future innovative methods for objective quantification and analysis of team performance. The review summarizes methods, experimental frameworks, sensors for physiological and behavioral recordings, data processing to derive team level objective measures, in the light of team performance evaluation. Observing the advancements in sensor technologies and computation power, towards advancing team performance evaluation, this review summarizes some of the current multimodal based team research. Finally, the review provides suggestions on aspects that the future research focus to overcome some of existing limitations and drawbacks. <br>

Religious Elements in Advertising - on the Margin of a Certain Projekt

This paper refers to the team research led by the author, financed by the German Research Foundation, conducted at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Humboldt University. In the years 2009–2015 an online dictionary was created under the title Religiöse Lexik in der Allgemeinsprache (Deutsch, Polnisch, Slowakisch, Tschechisch), available online under www2.hu-berlin.de/sacrumprofanum. It is an intensive type dictionary, its purpose is to provide a deep description and not the big number of output token. In a typical lexicographic system based on a grid of dictionary entries taken from the four languages compared here, there is also a column “cultural contexts”, which includes examples of the use of religious words in advertising.

The Degree of the Graduate Students' usage of the Internet in Scientific Research from their Perspectives at the Jordanian Universities

This study aimed at identifying the degree of graduate students' usage of the internet in scientific research from their perspectives at the Jordanian universities. The researchers used the survey method and developed the instrument of the study, a questionnaire consisted of (40) items. Its validity and reliability were confirmed. The questionnaire was distributed to the sample which consisted of (440) students from Jordanian universities. The findings revealed that students' usage of the internet in scientific research and in identifying statement of the problem was at a medium degree; and their usage of the internet was high in preparing the chapter of the literature review and previous studies and in publishing scientific research papers, too and low in conducting team research. The results indicated that there are statistical significant differences attributed to gender on the four domains in favor of the females. No statistical significant differences were indicated attributed to the type of the college (scientific, literary) on the four domains of the instrument. The results also indicated that there are significant statistical differences attributed to the graduate program level in favor of the doctoral students.. The conclusion emphasized the necessity to hold training courses for the graduate students in the usage of the internet and data bases in scientific research.