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The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management with a sense of how collaborative team integration processes were required in order to be reasonably successful in attaining the required manufacturability goals. It aims to accomplish this by investigating: the role of team collaborative efforts in high‐technology projects associated with comparing aggressiveness towards and actual achievement on meeting time targets and manufacturing costs; the moderating effects of project‐team autonomy and control issues; and management involvement and top management support activities.

A review of the applied literature on collaborative team integration processes of manufacturers and direct suppliers of the smart card and automatic identification and data capture (AIDC)‐related industry in the USA was conducted. Only project managers and/or their designees were asked to complete the survey. The results of two mailings netted a total of 180 usable questionnaires out of an original sampling frame of 311 (response rate of appropriately 58 percent, with some missing data on a number of variables).

The paper finds that especially the variables of product acceleration, technological uncertainty, complexity, and product newness are traditionally outside the immediate control of the firm's project managers. The team integration variables, as measured by the factor scores of top management. manufacturing involvement, collaborative working environment, and supplier influence, offered the most explained variance in the present study.

By understanding the variety of team performance and integration constructs in high technology‐intensive and manufacturing environments, management may be able to take the steps to become more sensitive to the roles of not isolating team members and being able to relinquish control at the appropriate times in order to enhance manufacturability.

The rapid pace of internet products and web‐enabled services, especially in the high‐technology manufacturing industries, presents new strategic management issues to be addressed in project management. Understanding the many issues associated with project team management and integration within new‐product development/new‐product manufacturability processes may ultimately decrease the cost and promote timely introduction of beneficial commercial developments, if properly managed.

This paper seeks to examine how aerospace design and integration teams in a highly partnered supply chain are able to leverage extant capabilities and develop new ones when faced with the necessity to adapt to organizational change.

Building on the concept of contextual ambidexterity (Gibson and Birkinshaw), this research uses a combination of qualitative material and objective performance data to investigate the working context of five aerospace design and integration teams, their solutions to crisis-triggering events, and their subsequent schedule adherence.

Team members enacted ambidextrous roles similar to those identified by Birkinshaw and Gibson. These behaviors allowed teams to create ambidextrous solutions when faced with crisis. Teams working in a supportive context were found to produce a greater diversity of ambidextrous solutions, which was found to relate to both overall ambidexterity and schedule adherence performance.

Although the results should be interpreted with care, the research answers Raisch and Birkinshaw's call for a more precise definition of organizational ambidexterity as the paper focuses on specific roles played by team members. The findings also point to a potential link between the diversity of ambidextrous behavioral roles and their ability to craft ambidextrous solutions.

Teams that can quickly adapt to challenge through ambidextrous solutions are particularly useful in the context of highly partnered supply chains. Managers should therefore actively promote ambidextrous behaviors to ensure that the search for ambidextrous solutions becomes a conscious and deliberate process.

This paper substantiates the ambidexterity concept by providing concrete examples drawn from highly partnered aerospace supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of project settings on empowerment experiences of individuals and teams by examining the effects of specific project characteristics on facets of the empowerment concept (i.e. the structural and psychological perspectives).

A parallel questionnaire survey of client, consultant and contractor organisations was conducted in Hong Kong to test hypotheses relating three facets of the empowerment concept and five project-level antecedents. Hierarchical linear modelling and ordinary least square regression were employed to test the hypotheses.

The analyses show that dynamic project environments, high project team integration and high interdependence of project tasks lead to high individual psychological empowerment, while public-client projects (compared with private-client projects), a hostile project environment and high client integration lead to a low individual psychological empowerment. Uncertainty in project technology also leads to high team psychological empowerment, while hostile project environments lead to low team psychological empowerment. Further, dynamic project environments lead to more empowering work climate, while hostile project environments lead to less empowering work climate. However, project team integration, project complexity, project lifecycle and quasi-public-client projects (compared with private-client projects) have no significant association with the empowerment of individuals and teams.

This study examined task-related factors (i.e. project in this case) which traditionally have not been the focus of studies examining the antecedents of empowerment. Further, project-level antecedents and their link to an integrated perspective of empowerment comprising a sociostructural perspective, a psychological perspective and a team-based perspective are examined, which is a significant departure from the unitary perspective of empowerment taken in most previous studies.

This study aims to reveal the necessary human resource management (HRM) teamwork processes for achieving HRM integration.

A research survey was carried out among 233 HRM professionals from 29 HRM teams.

The findings revealed significant correlation between formal HRM aspects of HRM teams (HRM goals and strategy, formal communication and formalization) and informal HRM aspects (perceived proximity and trust). Another significant correlation was found between trust and HRM integration. Also, trust fully mediated the relationship between informal communication and centralization, on the one hand, and HRM integration, on the other.

The study contributed to the understanding of formal and informal aspects of HRM team (HRMT) processes.

The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management with a sense of how collaborative team integration processes and new product development (NPD) processes were required in order to be reasonably successful in the current economic recession.

The four relatively large Pittsburgh‐based general service and/or manufacturing‐oriented companies, most with global operations and reach capabilities, were selected and reviewed for the principles of the strategic, financial, informational, and operational viewpoints.

Even conservative companies found that more radical approaches to NPD, such as product newness and uncertainty in new product innovation/production, may remove, not increase, barriers to incremental and/or radical manufacturability. This is especially true in firms that make proper use of the managerial connectivity provided by proper use of limited resources, which are enhanced by the timeliness of good strategies.

The roles of uncertainty, supplier influences, team integration processes, as well as technology, may act as change agents, especially under the current economic recession. These factors may result in leveling the playing field for incremental and radical innovators as they integrate processes associated with NPD.

The executive teams involved recognized the need for more radical product offerings by turning their focus to meeting customer needs instead of making risky investments. Through successful product implementation, the companies studied found stability in a very turbulent financial and service‐oriented marketplace.

This paper aims to draw on know-how from the study of Team and Project Management, to seek insights into enhancing the effectiveness of supply chain management (SCM) ventures, with the aim of contributing to their effective and efficient decision-making and operation processes.

Based on an analysis of the obstacles that may stand in the way of the efficient implementation of SCM processes, six specific conditions for such mega-projects’ success are proposed. A couple of practical tools for their attainment are presented.

The article suggests that the construction of the teams involved, as well as the working procedures that may render their work effective, should be flexible and made adaptable to the specific assignment or case, which is handled by each team, at the time; and that the optimal set of procedures to adopt, throughout the working sessions of the teams, which are involved in the process, are those which will gear the team with the means to contribute to the eventual materializing and finalization of a quality and practical set of decisions for the benefit of the overall SCM process.

The article offers a practical step-by-step set of six guidelines to lead executives and managers of SCM processes toward a relatively high level of control in the establishment of effective and efficient team-decision-making and implementation processes within SCM inter-and intra-organizational teams.

Limited attention has been given in the literature to the studying of practical and applicable managerial techniques for successful decision-implementation processes in SCM teams. This article focuses on this neglected domain, proposing a solution, in the form of an integrative micro-level SCM operational strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to validate a list of key indicators (KIs) of team integration identified from construction management literature, identify the most significant KIs and provide suggestions on how to influence team integration, based on the opinion of an established construction peer group in New Zealand.

A literature review was conducted to identify and consolidate a set of KIs of team integration. Subsequently, a set of questions was designed to gain insight and opinion in terms of the significance and ranking of the identified indicators, as well as suggestions on how to influence the integration practice.

Analysis of the survey results showed that all relevant indicators have a strong influence towards determining the success of team integration in construction projects. The top-ranked indicators that contribute towards successful team integration are all relationship orientated as follows; single team focus on goals and objectives, trust and respect, commitment from top management, free flow communication and no blame culture. A framework for influencing these indicators of team integration is proposed which includes four elements: first, team formation; second, contractual model; third, teamwork principle; and fourth, operational monitoring.

The findings are limited to practitioners’ perceptions who are registered with an established construction peer group in New Zealand.

The results of the study are expected to provide insight for construction practitioners to help them embrace team integration practice and, hence, provide both the opportunity and a platform to enhance and measure their team performance.

The paper recognises that while the process of integration is a result of a combination of many indicators, it further extends the team integration literature by providing insights into what are the dominant relationship indicators of team integration, and how to influence these indicators based on a proposed framework.

This paper aims to disseminate the knowledge integration process modelling throughout the phases of the early contractor involvement (ECI) procurement methodology, to optimise the benefit of ECI procurement method. The development of the model was aimed at taking advantage from the associated benefits of integrating knowledge and of ECI procurement. ECI provides contractors with an alternative means to tendering, designing and constructing projects. Thus, this paper explores knowledge interconnectivity and its integration involving numerous disciplines with various stakeholders to benefit from the collaborative environment of ECI.

The methodology implemented in the research includes a thorough literature review to establish the characteristics of the ECI tender stage as well as the characteristics of knowledge to be integrated in an ECI setting. Following this, an embedded case study research methodology was used involving three healthcare ECI projects undertaken by a Western Australian commercial contractor through 20 semi-structured interviews and project archival study, followed by the development of knowledge integration process models throughout the ECI process of the studied cases.

The research findings provide the basis to develop a knowledge integration process model throughout the ECI stages. The tender stage was found to be the most crucial stage for knowledge integration, particularly from the main contractor’s perspective to impart change and to influence the project outcome. The outcome of this research identifies the richness and interconnectivity of knowledge throughout the knowledge integration process in an ECI project starting from the intra-organisational knowledge integration process followed by the inter-organisational process of knowledge integration. This inside-out perspective of knowledge integration also revealed the need for mapping the implementation of knowledge integration from instrumental to incremental approach throughout the ECI stages in optimising the intended benefits of integrating knowledge.

This paper reports the development of a knowledge integration process model with the view to optimise the management effectiveness of integrating knowledge in ECI projects. Although knowledge integration and ECI can be considered existing and widely accepted concepts, the novelty of this research lies in the specific use of the knowledge integration process to analyse the knowledge flow, transformation and, hence, management in ECI projects. As it has been acknowledged that knowledge integration is beneficial but also a complex process, the methodology implemented here in modelling the process can be used as the basis to model knowledge integration in other ECI projects to further capitalise from ECI as a collaborative procurement method.

The purpose of this paper is to investigates strategies for achieving better integration between the design and construction (DC) and operation and maintenance (OM) supply chains in Singapore. The specific objectives are to: discover the goals that stakeholders want to achieve in integrating the supply chains; identify the stakeholders that play important integration role in each supply chain; and investigate the effective strategies that may yield better integration of the supply chains.

Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The sampling frame was Singapore-based clients, consultants and construction firms involved in developing and managing built facilities.

The most important strategies for integrating the supply chains are: sharing relevant information and addressing sustainability issues jointly with DC and OM teams; and integrating life cycle optimization options in DC and OM supply chains.

The limitations include low response rate, and the subjective nature of a Likert scale which was used to rate importance levels. The research implication is that activities in DC and OM supply chains can indeed be integrated, and this leads to higher value for all stakeholders.

The practical implication is that stakeholders could adopt the effective strategies identified by this study to foster closer integration of the two supply chains in Singapore. Teams from both supply chains need to work jointly instead of consecutively. Sharing information through an online platform by setting up a web-based database may help in their collaboration. It is also important that common goals need be set out at the onset, preferably by clients of built facilities, with strong buy-in by main contractors and consultants, so as to achieve better value.

The study revealed effective strategies for integrating DC and OM supply chains.