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The purpose of this paper is to focus on job‐related skill heterogeneity and action team performance by considering that team members may differ in the levels of their job‐related skill, as well as in the way their job‐related skill is spread over the different dimensions of the task.

Data were used from 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams collected over 21 seasons (1986/1987 through 2006/2007). The total number of team‐seasons analyzed was 584.

A positive relationship was found between job‐skill level heterogeneity and action team performance that declines as average job‐skill level in the team grows. Furthermore, action teams showed poorer performance when their members with a low job‐related skill level have a high specialization.

From the practical perspective, it is of special interest to an action team manager to know that job‐related skill heterogeneity has a positive influence on team performance – mainly when the average job‐related skill level in the team is low – and that highly specialized members may have a negative influence on action team performance.

The results contribute to the team literature by focusing on action teams. This kind of team has not received attention despite their increasing importance within organizations. Additionally, using sports teams as a sample offers the possibility of gathering a large amount of objective job‐related skill data as well as the possibility of testing hypotheses in a relatively controlled environment, but with real actions instead of experimental actions.

The purpose of this paper is to expand our understanding on team listening by incorporating an action component. The authors empirically test the effect of this expanded concept, namely team action listening on team success, and investigate how team commitment moderates the relationship between team trust and team action listening.

The authors explored listening in teams in the field and in the lab, both qualitatively and quantitatively, through studying 474 team members representing 100 teams. The authors tested the hypotheses by structural equation modeling augmented with in-depth team interviews.

The findings showed that: teams demonstrate that they listen by taking action, teams that exhibit action listening are more successful, there is a direct relationship between team trust and team action listening and team commitment negatively moderates this relation in larger teams.

Managers should encourage taking action in team discussions. Yet, they should be wary of the detrimental effects of team commitment to team action listening particularly in teams with high trust. Commitment increases the risk of groupthink and decreases the participation to team discussions and listening. In particular, managers may benefit from keeping the team smaller, as in large teams, commitment suppresses the relationship between trust and team action listening.

This study extends research on team listening by adding the action aspect that distinguishes successful teams. It is one of the first to investigate the interrelationships between team trust, commitment, team action listening and success in teams.

The idea of Simon according to which instructions are premises for further decisions is formalized with respect to informationally decentralized organizations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper is built on the economic theory of teams by Marschak and Radner. Team theory is particularly suited to the analysis of informationally decentralized systems. Teams are composed of agents who strive for a common aim, but are informed of different parameters that characterize the state of nature. In particular, the members want to maximize the team payoff function that depends on both the actions of the members and the state of nature.

For teams à la Marshack-Radner, since every member needs to compute optimal action rules, the paper shows that two types of expertise are required: forecasting expertise (as competence over the randomness of the parameters that affect the team payoff function) and organizational expertise (as comprehension of the relevant characteristics of the other members). When the members are supposed to have complete expertise, the only role of orders is the communication of information about the state of nature. Instead, when instructions report actions under the control of the senders, the team population can be classified into ranks, each one having a particular computational problem to solve. The paper analyzes the conditions under which instructions can correspond to different and ordered degree of intelligibility of the team operations. Through instructions non-decodable information is built directly into the decision rules chosen by the receivers, and instructions can realize economies in the use of expertise.

Instructions are formally shown to play a crucial role when expertise is differently distributed across agents.

The purpose of this study was to explore the team process-sequences executed within and across performance episodes and their relation to team performance. In doing so, this effort responds to the call for examining the temporal and dynamic aspects of teams.

Data (i.e. observations and audio recordings) was collected from the stand-up meetings of three high-performing Scrum teams across six points in time during two consecutive performance episodes (i.e. beginning, midpoint, end). After content coding the data, lag sequential analyses was used to examine patterns of executed team processes to determine whether particular process-sequences occurred significantly different from others.

Teams shifted between transition and action phase processes during performance episodes. During and across performance episodes, process-sequences primarily consisted of transition processes. When teams executed process-sequences consisting solely of action phase processes, their focus was on monitoring processes.

This study hopes that the findings here will serve to spur researchers to more fully investigate the relationship between process-sequences and team performance across various team types. However, limitations (e.g. small sample size, unknown point of teams’ life cycle and focus on explicit team processes) should be taken into account when building on the present findings.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the temporal and dynamic nature of team processes by analyzing how the team process and process-sequences occur across time. In addition, this study moves beyond most studies that assess team processes as static retrospective perceptions and consider their natural ordering.

This study aims to describe the use of action‐learning projects in 14 regional leadership development programs called public health leadership institutes.

During the period of April through August 2009, directors of the public health leadership institutes were interviewed about the action‐learning project requirement in each of their programs. Notes from these interviews, as well as relevant program materials were reviewed and summarized.

Action‐learning projects are commonly used by the public health leadership institutes to build leadership skills. However, this component of these programs varies considerably across the institutes. Frequently mentioned challenges to using action‐learning projects include lack of time for participants to meet for project work, lack of resources available for team coaching and a perceived higher value of taking action over making time for learning by many participants.

Research shows that most people develop leadership skills from actual work experiences. Action‐learning which focuses on solving complex, real‐world challenges is a common component of leadership development programs. In this paper, the authors describe how this methodology is being carried out in public health leadership institutes and recommend ways to increase the developmental return on these work experiences in public health settings.

These public health leadership programs, partially funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reach health care practitioners in 46 states and the District of Columbia. The application of best practices from these initiatives could lead to increased understanding of how to maximize the return from experiential learning initiatives designed to promote life‐long learning.

This chapter addresses how project teams achieve coordinated action, given the diversity in how team members may perceive and value time. Although synchronization of task activities may occur spontaneously through the nonconscious process of entrainment, some work conditions demand that team members pay greater conscious attention to time to coordinate their efforts. We propose that shared cognitions on time – the agreement among team members on the appropriate temporal approach to their collective task – will contribute to the coordination of team members’ actions, particularly in circumstances where nonconscious synchronization of action patterns is unlikely. We suggest that project teams may establish shared cognitions on time through goal setting, temporal planning, and temporal reflexivity.

Building on a social‐technical approach to project management, the authors aim to examine the effect of action‐centered leadership attributes on team member's learning, knowledge collaboration and job satisfaction during IT‐related projects.

Structural equation modeling was utilized to assess the work environment of team members as well as the leadership practices of their respective project team leaders. Data were collected with a survey questionnaire from 327 team members in a variety of organizations in 15 industry sectors including financial services, software, manufacturing, retail, government and universities.

The identified action‐centered project leadership practices (effective task management, team efficacy cultivation, and individual autonomy support) create a project team environment that fosters individual learning and knowledge collaboration along with individual performance and job satisfaction, and ultimately project success.

The action‐centered leadership practices construct, developed in this study, can be a good surrogate measure of what is required to be an effective leader in an IT project team environment. The main limitations of the research are those inherent in the survey method (self‐reported; subjective data).

In a project team environment, it is essential that all team members collaborate effectively to increase the likelihood of project success. The implication for managers from these findings is that concentrating more on the identified action‐centered leadership practices can positively influence the team environment.

Although previous studies have described attributes that influence team performance, a clearer understanding of what team leadership practices enable a project manager to be effective warrants further investigation. A second order construct merges these team leadership practice attributes and validates its use.

Evidence from the USA/Australia suggests whole‐school interventions designed to increase social inclusion/engagement can reduce substance use. Completeness of implementation varies but contextual determinants have not been fully explored. Informed by previous interventions, the paper aims to examine these topics in an English pilot of the Healthy School Ethos intervention.

This intervention, like previous interventions, balanced standardization of inputs/process (external facilitator, manual, needs‐survey and staff‐training delivered over one year to enable schools to convene action‐teams) with local flexibility regarding actions to improve social inclusion. Evaluation was via a pilot trial comprising: baseline/follow‐up surveys with year‐7 students in two intervention/comparison schools; semi‐structured interviews with staff, students and facilitators; and observations.

The intervention was delivered as intended with components implemented as in the USA/Australian studies. The external facilitator enabled schools to convene an action‐team involving staff/students. Inputs were feasible and acceptable and enabled similar actions in both schools. Locally determined actions (e.g. peer‐mediators) were generally more feasible/acceptable than pre‐set actions (e.g. modified pastoral care). Implementation was facilitated where it built on aspects of schools' baseline ethos (e.g. a focus on engaging all students, formalized student participation in decisions) and where senior staff led actions. Student awareness of the intervention was high.

Key factors affecting feasibility were: flexibility to allow local innovation, but structure to ensure consistency; intervention aims resonating with at least some aspects of school baseline ethos; and involvement of staff with the capacity to deliver. The intervention should be refined and its health/educational outcomes evaluated.

Incivility is widespread in the workplace and has been shown to have significant affective and behavioral consequences. However, the authors still have a limited understanding as to whether, how and when discrete incivility events impact team performance. Adopting a resource depletion perspective and focusing on the cognitive implications of such events, the authors introduce a multi-level model linking the adverse effects of such events on team members’ working memory – the “workbench” of the cognitive system where most planning, analyses, and management of goals occur – to team effectiveness. The model which the authors develop proposes that that uncivil interpersonal behavior in general, and rudeness – a central manifestation of incivility – in particular, may place a significant drain on individuals’ working memory capacity, affecting team effectiveness via its effects on individual performance and coordination-related team emergent states and action-phase processes. In the context of this model, the authors offer an overarching framework for making sense of disparate findings regarding how, why and when incivility affects performance outcomes at multiple levels. More specifically, the authors use this framework to: (a) suggest how individual-level cognitive impairment and weakened coordinative team processes may mediate these incivility-based effects, and (b) explain how event, context, and individual difference factors moderators may attenuate or exacerbate these cognition-mediated effects.

This chapter describes two change efforts involving participatory action research within the pharmacy operations division of Kaiser Permanente. Focus is on a parallel learning mechanism that has been used to support communications and change during two large-scale information technology interventions. It begins with basic background information on participatory action research in organizations. Since the case setting is Kaiser Permanente, the chapter provides some information on the U.S. healthcare industry context and then shifts to Kaiser’s communication forum, a learning mechanism that has been in place for 35 years. Cognitive, structural, and procedural aspects of the learning mechanism are explored, and the chapter features interviews with some of the key forum players. Both in the forum’s infancy and in its current more institutionalized state, the pharmacy organization has been in crisis. Implications for the use of parallel learning structures on a long-term basis to support long-term participatory action research are explored along with contributions to theory on insider/outsider action research.