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This article investigates (in)direct relationships between team-level entrepreneurial orientation and team performance, where team entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is measured as a team-level construct, not as concentration of team members' scores. In this article, the authors present and explore how EO-oriented behaviour within a team affect its performance, taking into account the team's trust in a manager and commitment to team and company goals.

This article focuses on a quantitative analysis of 55 teams operating within a large high-tech manufacturing enterprise, gathered through a traditional survey. The conceptual framework for this research was based on the theories of organisational citizenship, extra-role behaviour and social exchange. The authors explain how contextual factors establish a framework which enables team EO transformation towards higher performance of teams.

The results show that (team) performance benefits from EO-related behaviours. However, individual dimensions of EO are not universally beneficial and need to be combined with a mutual trust and/or commitment to team enterprise's goals to achieve high performance.

The findings provide important insight into which team factors may be targeted at the intervention or support of team members, including managers and immediate superiors who lack an active personality and are not willing to take risks at workplace. The authors adopted EO instruments, mutual trust and commitment from an individual scale to a team one, and also offer new opportunities to analyse such phenomena from a new level and evaluate them from the perspective of team managers.

This article couples organizational theory with practice with the union of action learning and the ambidextrous organization. It aims to show how action learning contributes to the creation and sustainment of an ambidextrous (learning) organization.

A side-by-side comparison of action learning and the ambidextrous organization was used.

Action learning “teaches” and promotes the framework and processes of ambidexterity and the practical creation of learning organizations. An action learning team in action performs like an ambidextrous organization to the extent that “acting” is synonymous with exploitation and “learning” with exploration.

Action learning is a powerful tool for the ambidextrous organization, serving as a template for the practitioner to create a learning organization.

This paper extends the literature on organizational structure, leadership, culture and change as it relates to ambidexterity, learning organizations and action learning. It integrates learning theory through action learning with the practice of the ambidextrous organization. A synergistic theory/practice circle is created through the combination of the processes of “theory informing theory” from academia and “practice informing practice” from industry, creating a “theory informing practice and practice validating and updating better theory” circle.

The Mental Wellbeing Impact Assessment (MWIA) is an evidence-based tool that guides decision makers, such as policy makers and service managers, about the potential impacts of a new programme or policy change. It was initially used in urban regeneration but has subsequently been used in housing, children’s centres and education. The purpose of this paper is to report, for the first time, on the strengths and weaknesses of using the MWIA in the workplace.

Feedback was collected from staff who participated in stakeholder workshops as part of the MWIA process at two different public sector organisations.

The MWIA can be used as an effective workplace assessment tool and is valuable as both a diagnostic tool and as an intervention in its own right. The MWIA generates tailored action plans focussed on addressing the organisation or team-specific issues. The weaknesses of the MWIA in the workplace are mainly focussed around management cooperation and commitment to the process which should be screened for prior to engaging in the full stakeholder workshop.

This is the first report of MWIA’s use in the workplace but suggests that it is a useful tool which can be used to support workplace wellbeing, especially in relation to a policy or organisational change. Further studies should be carried out to fully understand the impact of the MWIA in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how inspection team members work together to conduct surveys of hospitals, the challenges teams may face and how these might be addressed.

Data were gathered through an evaluation of a new regulatory model for acute hospitals in England, implemented by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) during 2013-2014. The authors interviewed key stakeholders, observed inspections and surveyed and interviewed inspection team members and hospital staff. Common characteristics of temporary teams provided an analytical framework.

The temporary nature of the inspection teams hindered the conduct of some inspection activities, despite the presence of organisational citizenship behaviours. In a minority of sub-teams, there were tensions between CQC employed inspectors, healthcare professionals, lay people and CQC data analysts. Membership changes were infrequent and did not appear to inhibit team functioning, with members displaying high commitment. Although there were leadership authority ambiguities, these were not problematic. Existing processes of recruitment and selection, training and preparation and to some extent leadership, did not particularly lend themselves to addressing the challenges arising from the temporary nature of the teams.

Conducting the research during the piloting of the new regulatory approach may have accentuated some challenges. There is scope for further research on inspection team leadership.

Issues may arise if inspection and accreditation agencies deploy temporary, heterogeneous survey teams.

This research is the first to illuminate the functioning of inspection survey teams by applying a temporary teams perspective.

This paper aims to enrich the scholarly discourse on learning within small social entrepreneurial organisations by examining how leadership can facilitate conditions conducive to collective learning during crises.

A longitudinal single-case study was conducted on a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden, operating within the integration field. The study involved comprehensive interviews and observations. Using a longitudinal approach facilitated an in-depth analysis of the organisation’s development over time.

The findings underscore that shifts in leadership can significantly influence collective learning. Specifically, the results suggest that establishing trust between the CEO and team members is a pivotal factor in cultivating conditions for collective learning and fostering the related processes, which persisted even during the pandemic. This trust catalysed inclusive and interactive actions that encouraged team members’ participation in day-to-day decision-making and strategic planning. Consequently, the organisation successfully leveraged its diverse knowledge resources, promoting knowledge sharing and experience exchange, crucial components of successful collective learning.

This paper advocates for a departure from conventional leadership perspectives, proposing that a focus on team–leader relationships – a form of leadership in practice – can offer valuable insights into cultivating collective learning. This approach underscores the significance of collaboration and engagement among team members in promoting collective learning and accentuates the role of leadership in creating these conditions.

The examples provided on structuring, organising and leading virtual meetings could offer valuable insights for leaders. With the increasing adoption of hybrid workplaces combining remote and office environments, communication challenges within teams may arise. Therefore, these examples can aid leaders in formulating effective communication strategies that bridge the gap between remote and in-person team members, ensuring that everyone stays informed and engaged.

This study seized a unique opportunity to explore how leadership can create favourable conditions for collective learning during crises by collecting data both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of two formal controls, namely target rigidity and process autonomy, on team adaptability and project success in new product development (NPD) projects. Target rigidity refers to performance goals that are non-negotiable once they have been set. Process autonomy refers to the extent to which a project team is free to choose ways to achieve its goals. Team adaptability is considered a key factor that explains the relationship between formal controls and project success.

Two separate models related to resource and cost measures are analysed, since different target types may influence managerial perceptions. This study uses data collected from a survey with 113 project managers as respondents.

The findings show that target rigidity and process autonomy support team adaptability. Furthermore, team adaptability mediates the impact of formal controls on project success. The effects are more pronounced for cost targets as compared to resource targets.

Firms can increase project success by using formal controls in such a way that they allow project managers to provide their teams with motivating guidelines (target rigidity) and discretion (process autonomy) to adapt to new circumstances.

This study reveals the impact of formal controls on NPD project success through team adaptability. A balanced use of target rigidity and process autonomy may help improving NPD project success.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the leadership behaviors of managers of virtual teams (VTs), particularly in the areas of trust building and conflict management. This study aims to expand the research of VT performance by offering first-person accounts from VT leaders on the strategies implemented to drive VT performance.

This study used a grounded theory approach to examine the leadership behaviors through in-depth interviews with eight field managers of VTs employed by different technology companies. Interview questions focused on trust-building and conflict management techniques. This structured qualitative study incorporates elements of narrative inquiry interwoven in the findings.

Building a high-trust environment was found to be critical to VT performance. VT managers indicated that effective conflict resolution skills were also important.

Although the sample size is within the suggested range for a valid phenomenological study, the results may lack generalizability. Participants were limited to the technology industry; leaders of high-performing VTs in other industries could offer differing results.

This study’s contribution is the exploration and identification of innovative techniques that VT managers implemented to build trust and resolve conflict. A lack of holistic training programs for the VT leader is also considered along with suggestions for future research and implications for the VT managers.

This study’s contribution is the exploration and identification of innovative techniques that VT managers implemented that drive VT performance, particularly related to building high levels of trust and managing conflict effectively. Practices are suggested whereby both the VT leader and the organization take an active role in ensuring that the VT has the opportunity to perform optimally.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between shared leadership (SL) and decision quality, utilizing shared leadership theory (SLT) and behavioral decision theory (BDT). The authors will explore the mediating role of “decision comprehensiveness” in the SL–decision quality linkage. Additionally, the authors will examine how individual “self-leadership” and “debate” among team members moderate the relationship between SL and decision comprehensiveness.

The authors tested the hypothesized moderated mediation model using a sample of 506 professionals employed in 112 research and development (R&D) teams, along with their direct managers from large Italian firms. To examine the relationships, the authors employed confirmatory factor analyses and path analyses. In order to address endogeneity concerns, the authors incorporated an instrumental variable, namely delegation, into the analysis.

SL positively influences decision quality, mediated by decision comprehensiveness, where teams include comprehensive information in decision-making. The level of debate among team members positively moderates the SL–decision comprehensiveness relationship. High levels of self-leadership can harm SL by reducing decision comprehensiveness, indicating a downside. However, low or moderate levels of self-leadership do not harm decision comprehensiveness and can even benefit SL.

This is the first work to investigate the relationship between SL and decision quality, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying this association. By integrating SLT and BDT, the authors provide insights into how managers can make higher-quality decisions within self-leading teams. Moreover, this research makes a distinct contribution to the field of self-leadership by delineating its boundaries and identifying a potentially negative aspect within the self-influence process.

The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which teamwork (developed either during an initial training phase or during a subsequent deployment phase) is influenced by the nature of the team’s environment (extreme vs non-extreme) and the extent to which teamwork is one of the explaining mechanisms for team performance.

Data was collected from 60 teams at 2 time-points: training phase in The Netherlands or Germany and deployment phase (in locations such as Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina).

This study’s results indicate that when teams consider working in extreme environments, they develop higher levels of teamwork as compared to teams expecting to work in non-extreme environments. These differences remain stable also during the deployment phase, such that teams operating in extreme environments will continue to have higher levels of teamwork as compared to teams operating in non-extreme environments.

With this study, the authors contribute to the teamwork quality research stream by empirically studying how teamwork quality develops in unique military contexts such as extreme environments. Studies in such contexts are relatively rare.

Team collaboration is essential to ensure the quality of care and patient safety when critically ill patients are transferred from an intensive care unit (ICU) to a general ward. Measuring team collaboration in the patient transfer process can help gain insights into how team collaboration is perceived and how it can be improved. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and testing of a questionnaire aiming to measure perceived team collaboration in the patient transfer process from ICU to the general ward. This study also aims to analyze the results to see how the survey could help improve team collaboration within ICU transitional care.

Statements, factors and main areas intended to measure perceived team collaboration were developed from a theory. The questionnaire was tested in two ICUs at two hospitals located in Sweden, and the results were analyzed statistically.

The results showed that the questionnaire could be used for measuring perceived team collaboration in this process. The results from the survey gave insights that can be useful when improving team collaboration in ICU transitional care.

The collaboration between two research subjects, Nursing Science and Quality Management, has given new perspectives in how cultural and systemic differences and opportunities can help improving team collaboration in ICU transitional care, by shifting focus from the individual to team, culture, system, process and continuous improvement.

The developed questionnaire can be used to measure perceived team collaboration and to identify areas for improving team collaboration in the ICU transitional care process.

There is a sparse amount of research about measuring team collaboration in ICU transitional care, and this study contributes to filling this research gap.