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This case study feature aims to focus on team performance in a global product development environment and endeavors to enable managers and leaders of global teams to benefit from the insight.

The paper outlines a case study conducted in an organizational setting spanning a period of five years. The researchers studied a department consisting of product development team members in an emerging region and report findings in the context of existing concepts.

Based on the case study, it is observed that global product development teams are similar to other teams and are governed by structure, task, leadership and team processes. The distance and culture aspect of global teams tend to have additional challenges. Some of these challenges can be mitigated by enabling a robust team design, the right team composition, common processes, alignment with structure, focused training and development, consistent performance and evaluation mechanisms, as well as implementing knowledge management systems and having senior management support.

Usage of global teams for product development is rapidly increasing and the understanding of team performance is critical for their success. This case study is based on an actual product development team engaged over a period of five years. The insights gathered provide a practical perspective of global team functioning that can be used for further exploration and research.

The case study findings can be used by practicing managers, leaders of global teams and organizations to help them understand various factors and implications that may reduce global team challenges in a product development scenario. Some of the best practices suggested in the study may help those creating a global team.

The case study illustrates some of the practical aspects of a global product development function. The approach into examining the functioning of a working team over a period of time helps provide a valuable and coherent view of a complex phenomenon. The factors uncovered during the study help provide a basis for further research.

Current trends such as a steadfast movement toward globalization, increased connectivity and use of networks in business relationships, rapidly changing technology, increased pressure for economic profitability, and economic concern create an environment where a focus on global team effectiveness is imperative. This study provides greater clarity on the workings of global hybrid team effectiveness including an examination of accelerators and decelerators. It also proposes a new model of Global Working behaviors to be applied systematically to all McKinsey 7-S areas – Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Style, Skills, and Staff – in order to accelerate global hybrid team effectiveness.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The field of global leadership has flourished and advanced in the preceding decade. However, in contrast to the term global leadership, which enjoys conceptual clarity enabling accumulative progress, the construct of global leadership effectiveness is comparatively undertheorized, with instances of definitional ambiguity and disjointed methodological operationalizations across studies. The purpose of this chapter is, thus, to provide a systematic review of the global leadership effectiveness literature. In doing so, our contributions are fourfold. First, we offer an inclusive, comprehensive definition of global leadership effectiveness. Second, we map its construct domain. Third, we review research findings at the individual, group, and organizational levels. Finally, we integrate extant insights and offer suggestions for future research, organized within the typology of the content domain along the identified dimensions of global leadership effectiveness. Together, our goal is to build a foundation for future research examining the roles of leadership and the global context as antecedents of global leadership effectiveness.

In this essay, we seek to understand how international business schools contribute to the development of effective global leaders. To do so, we start by examining the practical needs and challenges faced by multicultural teams operating in diverse global environments. Next, we compare and contrast three models of global leadership skills development used at three international institutions in Poland, Mexico, and Canada. We analyze each approach using Brake’s (1997) global leadership triad and Oddou and Mendenhall’s (2018) transformational axes model. We then discuss the future of global leadership education and the role business schools should play in the development of appropriate skills.

In this chapter we develop a conceptual model describing how global teams do more than accomplish discrete tasks, and create “spillover coordination” effects by influencing the amount of work-related direct contact among team members outside the task boundaries of the team. We theorize that spillover coordination is the result of relational and cognitive social capital developed through team interaction. We also propose that the design of the team and the context in which it operates influence the degree to which social capital develops.

We develop a conceptual model including propositions that can be tested empirically. We suggest avenues for future research.

Our model proposes that teams are a more powerful cross-border integration mechanism than originally thought in existing literature in international management and organizational behavior, since they affect social capital that can benefit the broader MNE beyond scope of the task and after the team disbands. Our approach suggests that MNE managers should be mindful of global team spillover effects and intentional in the way they design global teams if those benefits are to be achieved.

Most research on global teams, and teams in general, does not look past the task and time boundary of the team. We expand the view of team effectiveness to encompass those dimensions.

This study aims to evaluate the extent to which similar team mental models (TMMs) at the beginning of a team's lifecycle influence the level of relationship conflict within the team, TMM-similarity at the middle of the team lifecycle, and in turn team effectiveness. Thus far, no research has analysed the mediating role of a dysfunctional team process between TMM-similarity and effectiveness.

The study was conducted in a strategy and management competition involving 414 individuals who comprised 92 teams (3-5 members). Data were collected at four moments in time. The questionnaires were developed based on validated scales and adapted for the specific context.

The results provide support for the mediating role of conflict between the similarity of team-TMMs at the beginning of team lifecycle and effectiveness. The results also provide support for the mediating role of task-TMMs in the middle of team lifecycle between task-TMMs at the beginning of team lifecycle and effectiveness. Findings suggest that teams with more similar TMMs, experience less relationship conflict which in turn improves effectiveness.

In this study TMM-accuracy was not analysed. Future research should analyse the role of TMM similarity and accuracy. Further, future research should explore the optimal level of TMM-similarity and when the similarity of TMM is disruptive to teams.

This paper sheds light on the role of conflict as a dysfunctional team process between TMM-similarity and effectiveness. Moreover, this paper shows that more research on TMM evolution is needed.