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This study aims to explore key factors influencing the work of interdisciplinary university research teams of small size.

This is a multiple-case study of four interdisciplinary university research teams of small size in which science and/or engineering was an important component.

Data analysis revealed 17 critical factors classified into five groups. Although some factors were more influential than others, it was rather multiple factors at various levels of analysis, and not a single factor, that influenced the work of research teams. Another important finding was the identified need to develop project management capacity of university researchers. The study also revealed two strategies, conditioned on the availability of funds, that small university research teams use as a way to adapt to situational demands and research opportunities.

Although previous research examined various aspects pertinent to the work of industry research teams and large research groups, empirical research into interdisciplinary university research teams of small size has been limited.

The authors examined team-learning processes in short-term student project teams operating in an intensive design competition at a public university. The purpose of this paper is to explore the critical facilitators, inhibitors and processes for fostering students' creativity within interdisciplinary design teams in higher education.

The authors used a qualitative design to explore facilitators, inhibitors and critical processes in interdisciplinary student project teams. They conducted focus group interviews with three winning interdisciplinary teams that participated in a three-day design competition and used a constant comparison to analyze the data.

The authors identified themes that contributed to creativity at the individual level, the team level and the resource level. The key findings included 12 critical team process phases to achieve one common goal.

The findings of the study yielded to a holistic model of interdisciplinary team development for creativity. Implications for educators and practitioners and suggestions for researchers to expand the interdisciplinary team process model were discussed to facilitate interdisciplinary team creativity in higher education.

Working in interdisciplinary teams is recognised as fundamental to contemporary workplaces in the knowledge economy. Current research across the disciplines clearly shows that working successfully in interdisciplinary teams is associated with increased productivity, improved outcomes, higher levels of creativity and enhanced personal fulfilment. But why is there a perception that it is hard to work in such teams in higher education contexts, and what does it take to work successfully in an interdisciplinary team? In this chapter we use embedded intergroup relations theory as a way of conceptualising the tensions and complexities that exist within interdisciplinary teams in universities. We draw on the constructs of group membership, parallel processes, group boundaries, power differences, affective patterns, cognitive formations and leadership behaviours to deconstruct why working in interdisciplinary teams often challenges academic identities, cultures and contexts. We then consider the core factors that underpin successful interdisciplinary teams, based on a synthesis of the work in the fields of social sciences, organisational behaviour, education, health and psychology. Understanding the complexities of working in interdisciplinary teams within universities provides insights into how to facilitate positive outcomes for all involved in interdisciplinary teamwork.

The following case study aims to explore management's, health professionals' and patients' experiences on the extent to which there is visibility of management support in achieving effective interdisciplinary team working, which is explicitly declared in the mission statement of a 60-bed acute rehabilitative geriatric hospital in Malta.

A total of 21 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the above-mentioned key stakeholders.

Three main distinct yet interdependent themes emerged as a result of thematic analysis: “managing a team-friendly hospital”, “interdisciplinary team components”, and “interdisciplinary team processes”. The findings show that visibility of management support and its alignment with the process and content levels of interdisciplinary teamwork are key to integrated care for acute rehabilitative geriatric patients.

The emerging phenomena may not be reproducible in a different context; although many of the emerging themes could be comfortably matched with the existing literature.

The implications are geared towards raising the consciousness and conscientiousness of good practice in interdisciplinary teamwork in hospitals, as well as in emphasizing organizational and management support as crucial factors for team-based organizations.

Interdisciplinary teamwork in acute rehabilitative geriatrics provides optimal quality and integrated health care delivery with the aim that the older persons are successfully discharged back to the community.

The authors draw on solid theoretical frameworks – the complexity theory, team effectiveness model and the social identity theory – to support their major finding, namely the alignment of organizational and management support with intra-team factors at the process and content level.

Integrated transitions of care for rural older persons are key issues in policy and practice. Interdisciplinary partnerships are suggested as ways to improve rural-care transitions by blending complementary skills of disciplines to increase care’s holistic nature. Yet, only multidisciplinary efforts are frequently used in practice and often lack synergy and collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to present a case of a partnership model using nursing, gerontology and public health integration to support rural-residing elders as a part of building an Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program.

This paper uses the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland/O’Sullivan framework to examine the creation of an interdisciplinary team. Two examples of interdisciplinary work are discussed. They are the creation of an interdisciplinary public health course and its team-based on-campus live simulations with a panel and site visit.

With team-building successes and challenges, outcomes show the need for knowledge exchange among practitioners to enhance population-centered and person-centered care to improve health care services to older persons in rural areas.

There is a need to educate providers about the importance of developing interdisciplinary partnerships. Educational programming illustrates ways to move team building through the interdisciplinary continuum. Dependent upon the needs of the community, other similarly integrated partnership models can be developed.

Transitions of care work for older people tends to be multi- or cross-disciplinary. A model for interdisciplinary training of gerontological practitioners in rural and frontier settings broadens the scope of care and improves the health of the rural older persons served.

This paper aims to explore if health professionals share understanding of teamwork that supports collaborative ward rounds.

A purpose-designed survey was conducted in two acute medical and two rehabilitation wards from a metropolitan teaching hospital. Medical officers, nurses and allied health professionals participated. To understand characteristics that support collaborative ward rounds, questions developed from literature and industry experience asked: what are the enablers and challenges to teamwork; and what are clinicians’ experiences of positive teamwork? Descriptive and thematic analyses were applied to the dimensions of effective teamwork as a framework for deductive coding.

Seventy-seven clinicians participated (93% response rate). Findings aligned with dimensions of teamwork framework. There was no meaningful difference between clinicians or specialty. Enablers to teamwork were: effective communication, shared understanding of patient goals, and colleague’s roles. Challenges were ineffective communication, individual personalities, lack of understanding about roles and responsibilities, and organisational structure. Additional challenges included: time; uncoordinated treatment planning; and leadership. Positive teamwork was influenced by leadership and team dynamics.

Ward rounds benefit from a foundation of collaborative teamwork. Different dimensions of teamwork present during ward rounds support clinicians’ shared understanding of roles, expectations and communication.

Rounds such as structured rounding, aim to improve teamwork. Inverting this concept to first develop effective collaboration will support team adaptability and resilience. This enables teams to transition between the multiple rounding processes undertaken in a single ward. The emphasis becomes high-quality teamwork rather than a single rounding process.

Team learning is critical to interdisciplinary research teams (IDR teams) to use heterogeneous knowledge effectively. Nevertheless, team learning is rarely addressed in the IDR team literature. Also, few studies investigate the antecedents and consequences of team learning in IDR teams, leading to a lack of guidance for management practices. This study aims to investigate how team learning can be developed and how team learning influences team outcomes in IDR teams.

A questionnaire survey on 304 members of 37 IDR teams in a research university in China is conducted. Data are analyzed using a partial least square structural equation modeling.

The results support most hypotheses in general. For the antecedent variables, task interdependence, trust and constructive conflict positively affect team learning. For the outcome variables, team learning improves shared mental models, coordination quality and team performance significantly. Additionally, task uncertainty positively moderates the team learning-coordination quality relation and team learning-team performance relation. However, this paper does not find support for the moderating role of task uncertainty on the team learning-shared mental models relation.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study investigating the antecedents and consequences of team learning in IDR teams. A multidimensional measurement of team learning for the IDR team context is developed. This study investigates how team behavioral factors influence team learning and the effect of team learning on shared mental models, coordination quality and team performance. This study also explores the contingency role of task uncertainty in the effects of team learning.

Interdisciplinary higher education is becoming more important in learning across subject boundaries. This is occurring in global, national and institutional contexts. In Malaysia, interdisciplinarity is clear in the country's National Higher Education Strategic Plan (2007). While varying interpretations of interdisciplinary learning and teaching exist, there are also commonalities. These common elements address complex problems and focus questions by drawing on the disciplines. They also integrate insights and produce new understandings of complex problems. In this chapter, 21 senior administrators (deans, deputy deans and program chairs) from three public universities in Malaysia were surveyed, and 10 respondents were interviewed to determine their views on their use of the interdisciplinary approach: that is, their level of awareness, their perceptions of interdisciplinarity, and their self-reported level of knowledge of what interdisciplinarity means. The findings showed that 76% of the respondents were aware of interdisciplinarity, and that most respondents had a ‘moderately sufficient’ level of self-reported knowledge about the application of interdisciplinarity in current courses. The interview sessions also revealed that respondents interpreted the interdisciplinary approach in different ways. The implications of the results from this exploratory study suggest that public universities in Malaysia have various obstacles to deal with before effective interdisciplinary learning and teaching can be implemented.

The aim of this paper is to consider how exploitative and exploratory team processes contribute to adaptive and innovative outcomes. The paper integrates the team learning and team adaptation literature and examines factors that stimulate and support exploitative and exploratory processes in interdisciplinary and homogeneous teams. This has implications for team learning research and facilitation that fosters adaptation and innovation.

The paper reviews how teams learn to be exploitative and exploratory and the extent to which adaptive and innovative outcomes ensue. The paper suggests the value of teams understanding how different conditions (environment, leadership, member characteristics, and team composition) affect team members' interactions as they learn and apply exploitative and exploratory processes to produce adaptive and/or innovative outcomes.

Teams learn frames of reference for being exploitative and exploratory influenced by environmental conditions, leadership, particularly leadership that creates psychological safety, and team member characteristics and team. Interdisciplinary team composition and resulting possible subgroup formation pose challenges for exploitative and exploratory teams.

Future research should study teams over time to observe subgroup formation and integration, and facilitation by leaders, team members, and group dynamics professionals to support exploratory and exploitative frames and the emergence of adaptations and innovations.

Teams may be more successful in implementing innovations when they have learned how to weave between exploratory and exploitative frames of behavior.

The paper applies exploitative and exploratory processes to teams to increase their capacity to produce adaptive and innovative outcomes.

Urban heritage areas are under significant pressure as a result of increasing populations and significant visitor growth. The growth in visitor numbers is of particular concern as this is leading to the phenomenon of overtourism. In Asia, although the issue of overtourism requires immediate attention in order to avoid the loss of tangible and intangible heritage, many of those responsible for managing urban heritage areas lack the skills and competencies to prevent it or mitigate its effects. The purpose of this paper is to present an exploratory competency framework for managing urban heritage areas sustainably, for thereby preventing and/or mitigating overtourism.

In developing this framework, the authors examined how the context needs to change in order to implement sustainable urban heritage management, and they identified the particular competencies and associated skills and knowledge that are required of the stakeholders responsible for urban heritage areas to manage, prevent and/or mitigate overtourism. This analysis was based on a series of case studies examining the planning and management of urban heritage areas in Asia.

It was found that meeting three key objectives was essential in improving the competencies of stakeholder heritage area planners and developers as it relates to overtourism: integrated team approach, a mindset change on the part of key stakeholders and a common vision guiding the development process.

It was found that in order for urban heritage managers to sustainably manage the heritage under their responsibility and prevent and/or mitigate overtourism, a fundamental shift in mindset is required on the part of key stakeholders, moving away from a “silo” approach and towards an integrated approach to urban heritage management, in which the team leaders and management teams have an interdisciplinary set of competencies and are supported in the planning and management process by subject/discipline specialists. The authors found that the set of competencies that are required by heritage management teams lie at the intersection of the four key areas of policy and planning intervention in urban heritage areas, which are: community economic development, urban planning and design, urban heritage area planning, and tourism planning and management. The competencies can be categorized under three headings: interdisciplinary perspective, soft management competencies and technical competencies.

This paper was developed based on the authors’ experience in planning and tourism initiatives throughout Asia and on a long history of urban heritage tourism and planning work around the world. Most of the discussion focusses on how urban destinations can prevent and/or address the issues associated with overtourism by enhancing the competencies of the teams and practitioners who are responsible for managing urban heritage areas.