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Extending a model of how teams learn, this paper aims to present a model of multiteam system (MTS) learning, comparing similarities and differences between how MTSs learn and how component teams learn. The paper describes the value of adaptive, generative and transformative learning for increasing MTS development over time.

The model proposes that environmental demands trigger adaptive, generative and transformative MTS learning, which is further increased by the MTS’s readiness to learn. Learning can happen during performance episodes and during hiatus periods between performance episodes.

Learning triggers coupled with readiness to learn and the cycle and phase of MTS process influence the learning process (adaptive, generative or transformative), which in turn influences the learning outcomes.

The study offers a number of research propositions with the idea that the model and propositions will stimulate research in this area.

This model allows MTS and component team leaders and facilitators to recognize that MTS learning is a process that is needed to help component teams work together and help the MTS as a whole perform in current and future situations, thereby improving MTS effectiveness.

Little attention has been given to the notion that MTSs learn and develop. This manuscript is the first to emphasize that MTSs learn and identify processes that can improve learning. Adaptive, generative and transformative processes describe how MTSs learn and produce changes in MTS structure and actions.

Multiteam systems (MTSs) have been employed across numerous organizations and occupations (e.g., healthcare, emergency disaster response, business, and military) to achieve complex goals over time. As MTSs are inherently different than team level and organizational level theories, this chapter highlights the defining features of these dynamic systems through a temporal lens. Thus, the main purpose of our chapter is to address the challenges and issues concerning MTSs over time in order to provide a future agenda to guide researchers and practitioners.

To explore temporality throughout this chapter, we leverage two key MTSs frameworks along with contributions from the literature to produce a review, which demonstrates the extent of MTS theoretical and practical findings. After reviewing the definitional components of MTSs, we highlight various compositional, linkage, and developmental attributes that operate within a system. We then expand upon these attributes to consider the structural features of the system that enhance boundaries between component teams (i.e., differentiation) and may disrupt the system over time (i.e., dynamism).

After reviewing and integrating current MTS literature, we provide a new conceptual framework for MTSs and their temporal complexities. We offer several methodologies that managers and researchers can employ to assess these complex systems and suggest practical recommendations and areas for future research as we continue to study MTSs.

Our original conceptual framework considers MTSs through a dynamic lens developing over time and suggests the need for future research to build upon this perspective.

As work demands have become increasingly complex, organizations and agencies are progressively turning toward larger systems comprised of teams, or multiteam systems (MTSs), to accomplish multifaceted tasks in challenging environments. Today, many organizations require these complex systems in order to achieve the dynamic goals that are required of our ever-changing world. Subsequently, MTSs have become a growing area of interest in organizational research, primarily due to their increasing prominence in organizational settings.

In this introductory chapter, our goal is to highlight a selection of existing research regarding MTSs that serves to answer the question, “What do we know about MTSs?” while also setting up the question that serves as a recurrent theme throughout this volume, “Where does our research need to go in order to better serve MTSs in practice?”

While there has been a great advancement in the area of MTSs in recent years, there is still much to be explored in terms of the challenges and opportunities that MTSs afford in practice.

It is the goal of this chapter that we will set the stage for readers interested in identifying the current trends, dynamics, and issues in MTSs in the real world for the purposes of both expanding our research and theory on MTSs as well as further building the foundation for improving their development, implementation, and effectiveness “in the wild.”

This inquiry aims to determine the features and mechanisms that specially enable a multiteam system (MTS) to develop ambidexterity that can deal effectively with rapid changes in dynamic environments. The MTS is an emerging organizational unit comprised of tightly integrated networks of teams that may originate from one or more firms. The inquiry also considered how an MTS can engage those features and mechanisms to maximize ambidexterity as dynamic capabilities for increased innovation and long-term adaptation under complex, volatile conditions.

This conceptual inquiry integrates the emerging research on MTSs with theory and studies relating to ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities. This inquiry focuses on the attributes and linkages that specially characterize an MTS. It analyzes these to determine the key mechanisms and interactions enabling and engaging ambidexterity at MTS unit level.

MTSs can engage powerful mechanisms for ambidexterity functioning as dynamic capabilities at meso-organizational level. The attributes and linkages that distinguish an MTS from other units enable it to deal effectively and efficiently with near-term task demands by simultaneously balancing the essential tasks of exploration and exploitation, and by being able to rapidly adapt by reconfiguring taskwork and reallocating resources as required for sustainable innovation and long-term success within a dynamic environment.

This inquiry provides valuable insights for designing MTSs that are equipped with selected teams, flexible memberships, specialized skills and permeable interfaces. Autonomy for an MTS allows the unit to span internal and external organizational boundaries to gain access to new discoveries and to exchange information and material resources for increased innovation. Ambidexterity as dynamic capabilities facilitates exploitation of current resources by efficiently reconfiguring taskwork and reallocating materials for adaptation and competitive advantage.

This inquiry appears to represent the most integrative effort to examine the underexplored potential of MTSs for developing and engaging ambidexterity functioning as dynamic capabilities. The inquiry appears to be a first effort at articulating a concept of MTS ambidexterity distinct from organizational ambidexterity. The analysis synthesizes a systems model that guides organizational leaders and opens new opportunities for future research.

This paper aims to examine the dynamics of the communication network established within a multi-team system (MTS) and analyzes its implications for the MTS processes, emergent states and performance during a search and rescue operation.

The authors take a bifocal approach and combine both network analysis metrics and a qualitative analysis of the message content in addressing the research questions.

The findings illustrate the emergence of a decentralized network and that the extent to which decentralization is conducive toward MTS performance also depends on the density of the communication lines established among the component teams (CTs) and the communication content. Low density of the communication network was associated with impaired MTS processes and low effectiveness. Node centrality metrics indicate a limited connectivity between the leader of the operation and the MTS CTs, also with negative impact on MTS performance. Whereas, informal CTs become central to the MTS communication network and positively influence MTS performance during the last episodes of the mission.

This paper is among the first to use a social network approach to the study of MTS functioning and illustrates how the fluid structure of the MTS alters communication networks, which in turn influence other MTS processes, emergent states and overall performance.

Meetings can serve the important role of facilitating communication and coordination for systems of teams known as “multiteam systems” (MTSs) that work interdependently to achieve grand societal challenges. Given that MTSs often appear in complex, ambiguous, urgent, and multifaceted task contexts, the MTSs require effective, and efficient but thorough, communication within and between teams in order to achieve shared goals. However, the extant literature regarding the science of meetings has left much to be explored in regard to the inter- and intrateam influences and impacts. This chapter considers the significance of meetings and their practical value in facilitating MTS processes and performance by leveraging what is known thus far regarding MTS structural attributes, their value, their challenges, and opportunities, integrating this foundation with the broader science of meetings. Building on this rationale, the authors move toward empirically and theoretically derived considerations for how meetings may best be designed, facilitated and utilized for MTS effectiveness, as guided by our current understanding of critical MTS attributes.

Although the practice of multiteam systems (MTSs) has been around for decades, the science of these systems has only just begun. Within the past decade and a half, although much remains to be investigated, substantial progress has been made in breaking the surface of this research. The current volume provides a review of MTS case studies and the current chapter provides a synopsis of this research. The goal of this chapter is to identify how MTSs are operating under real-world conditions in order to bridge MTS science and practice.

In this chapter, the authors provide a case analysis of the presented MTSs in the current volume in order to identify issues innate to MTSs. An approach based on the SWOT analysis technique was utilized to identify strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of the identified MTSs. In addition, six lessons learned were extracted from a content analysis of the successes and failures of these MTSs.

Although MTSs may be unique to the environment in which they operate, there are several features which seem to be inherent to all. Strengths include possessing the ability to manage complex tasks and unexpected events, being flexible in nature, and integrating communication across levels. In opposition, weaknesses include the use of nontraditional communication patterns, challenges stemming from unit diversity and resources, and the lack of common training. Lessons learned from identified MTSs include (1) utilize effective communication; (2) establish shared mental models; (3) identify roles and responsibilities; (4) convey accountability and ownership; (5) consider the ramp-up period; and (6) train individuals in an MTS at multiple levels. Opportunities and threats to MTSs are also discussed in this chapter.

This chapter offers several contributions to the state of the field in regard to MTSs. The current chapter provides a detailed content analysis of several real-world MTSs. Characteristics inherent to MTSs are identified and discussed, and lessons learned are extracted. Traditionally, science and practice has focused on the presentation of lab-based MTSs; the current volume breaks new ground by identifying how MTSs operate “in the wild.” This chapter provides a summation of this volume and offers lessons learned for MTS researchers and those working within MTSs.

To present a case study of coordination mechanisms employed by a multiteam system (MTS) charged in an international oil and gas company.

Qualitative method with longitudinal observation and interviewing.

The MTS, and particularly its coordination mechanism of a regular collaboration meeting, provided multiple benefits, such as access to diverse competences, capabilities for solving problems crossing team boundaries, and opportunities for developing relationships between the different teams involved. There were also observed challenges: a lack of shared understanding between the participants concerning the purpose of the main collaboration session of the MTS, different levels of insight into each other’s areas of competence, information sharing, shifting team membership, multiteam membership, time pressure, and technology-mediated communication.

Providing an illustration of the MTS concept in a real organizational setting and the role of a regular collaboration meeting as a coordination mechanism for the MTS.

Spaceflight presents a unique environment in which multiteam coordination is often required for mission success. This chapter will explore the topic of multiteam systems (MTSs) and their functioning in this environment.

This chapter describes the MTS case of human spaceflight in terms of a specific subset of the system involved in current human spaceflight missions: NASA Mission Control and the NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station. In addition to describing the system itself, this chapter describes notable advantages and disadvantages of this particular MTS, along with potential future issues in human spaceflight and research directions for use of MTSs in spaceflight.

More than 40 years of successful human spaceflight missions have demonstrated many of the benefits and drawbacks of MTSs across some of the most challenging environments faced by any teams attempting coordination. These environmental challenges include extreme distances, limited modes of communication, complex systems, novel problems, and coordination between teams from multiple countries with differing goals and priorities. The specific advantages and drawbacks of MTSs in this environment, and the impacts of the aforementioned environmental challenges, are discussed.

This chapter examines a known operational and successful MTS that operates in an environment in which many of the standard assumptions regarding teams and MTSs may not apply.

Multiteam systems (MTSs) comprise much of the financial corporate landscape. However, little is known about these MTSs regarding formation, goal setting, daily operation, and maintenance. In order to learn more about the ways in which these MTSs might operate and the tasks they may be charged with, the authors interviewed professionals from the financial industry.

The current chapter presents a case study analysis based on information gathered from these interviews and proposes directions for future research efforts.

The information gathered suggests that there is much opportunity for MTS research in the corporate sector, particularly in the financial services industry. Information from the case study also suggests that individual differences can hinder group process and organizational change.

This chapter contributes to the literature on MTSs by discussing multiteam situations as they relate to executive management, higher-level leadership, and organizational change in a particular financial services company.