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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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of collaboration mode (face‐to‐face versus non‐collocated using collaborative technology) on team‐based problem solving behaviors associated with team learning, team reflexivity (i.e. reflectiveness) and team mental model development.

The study used a single factor (collaboration mode) between subjects randomized experimental design. The experimental manipulations of collaboration mode were face‐to‐face versus technology‐mediated collaboration. Observer ratings of problem solving behaviors were used to generate data analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance.

Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated that face‐to‐face collaboration is superior to technology‐mediated collaboration in facilitating team level cognitive functions such as team learning, team reflexivity, and shared mental model development.

To better manage the psychological/cognitive aspects of teamwork, managers must detect and accurately interpret the behavioral indicators that evidence the extent of team learning, reflexivity and shared mental model construction of task requirements and execution.

This paper represents one of the first to investigate the impact of technology‐mediated collaboration on team cognition and to conceptualize team cognition as a set of mental processes and intra‐team communication exchanges that facilitate team learning, reflection, and shared understanding.

Shared leadership is increasingly important in today's organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between shared leadership and team performance, the moderating role of demographic diversity and the mediating role of information sharing on this relationship.

The research used a field study design, quantitative data of employees from two different organizations. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling analyses.

Shared leadership was positively associated with team performance and this association was mediated by information sharing. Demographic diversity moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance, such that shared leadership was more strongly associated with team performance in more diverse teams and less in less diverse teams.

The results found support for moderating and mediating variables, explaining under what conditions and how shared leadership is associated with team performance in organizations.

The findings highlight the importance of nurturing shared leadership, in particular as teams tend to grow more diverse in our todays’ work settings. They also highlight the importance of diversity in how shared leadership unfolds its potential.

The research highlights that shared leadership, diversity, and information are increasingly important in today's organizations and should be considered from a more positive standpoint.

This research explored the association between shared leadership, demographic diversity, and information sharing with team performance. It represents a first step in examining the moderating and mediating variables of the shared leadership and team performance association.

The purpose of this study is to examine the psychometric properties of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS-Arabic form) and investigates the relationship between Emirati students' employability skills and their career adaptability in the workplace, against the backdrop of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0).

A survey was conducted of 420 full-time, working and part-time students in their final year in the United Arab Emirates (UAEs).

As hypothesized, career adaptability is positively related to the employability skills of complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management and coordinating with others, even when controlling for demographic characteristics.

Consistent with career construction theory, this study presents evidence of the instrumental role of skills required for IR 4.0 in managing career resources and subjective career success. Understanding the relationship between IR 4.0 skills and career adaptability offers valuable insights for academia and policymakers on formulating strategies and action plans to continually update Emirati students' transferable skills. It is also crucial for long-term success in human capital sustainability under the Emiratization policy.

This study is a preliminary step toward clarifying the complex mechanism through which career adaptability relates to career outcomes and sustaining employability. Concentrating on UAE undergraduates, this study elucidates the relationship between employability skills and career adaptability, and advocates more research employing boundary conditions that might limit their effects on adapting behaviors.

The study aimed to use geographic information system (GIS) based multi-criteria decision making analysis (GIS-MCDA) to select areas suitable for siting landfills in Ashanti region. It also sought to ascertain variables most sensitive to the siting of landfill in the region.

This study utilized GIS-based Multi-criteria decision making analysis –AHP to model and select areas most suitable to siting landfills within the region. Overall, 16 variables including wind speed and hydraulic conductivity (which were previously neglected in landfill siting in Ghana) were identified through comprehensive literature review. These variables were weighted using AHP method and integrated using the weighted linear combination (WLC) in GIS environment to develop five sub-models: the physical environmental, sociocultural, economic/technical, climatic and hydrogeological sub-models. These sub-models were further weighted and then integrated to derive the final suitability model.

Results show that 13% (3,067 km²) of the region was identified as most suitable to siting engineered landfills. The study also identified 11 sites which are considered most suitable for situating landfills. On a sensitivity angle, hydrogeological (R² = 0.5923; p = 0.003) and physical environmental sub-model (R² = 0.254; p = 0.034) significantly predicted the final suitability model developed.

Ghana's Landfill Guidelines seeks to optimize site selection and ancillary services that culminate into achieving sanitary landfills by 2020. Evidence still abounds on the unsuitability of existing and in some cases, new landfill sites presenting environmental and social negative impacts. The comprehensive evaluation of most crucial variables – social and environmental factors that determine an optimal landfill location – will be of immense help to policy planners like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) towards upgraded landfills. The authors hope that, concerned agencies will adopt the model in the study and integrate into their existing landfill suitability modeling techniques to provide a more grounded framework that optimizes landfill site selection within the study area.

This study is the first attempt to consider a regional-level waste collection site selection in Ghana using comprehensive sets of social and environmental factors and will therefore contribute immensely to EPA's goal of achieving upgraded landfills by 2022.

Emergency management groups aiming to address community resilience work with complex systems which consist of multiple interacting dynamics. The purpose of this paper is to help ensure that information is displayed in a way which supports strategic performance, to address longer term challenges faced by these groups.

Ten professional emergency managers completed an online simulation of complex, community resilience related tasks faced in their normal working lives. They responded to either table-or diagram-based information about a relevant emergency management strategy. Responses were rated by academic and practitioner experts using 0-5 point Likert scales.

Analyses of the expert ratings found that certain components of macrocognitive performance reached large degrees of inter-rater reliability (ρ=0.76, p=0.003; ρ=0.58, p=0.03; ρ=0.53, p=0.05). Current situation awareness increased by an average of 29 per cent in the diagram condition. Prospective amendment quality also increased, by an average of 38 per cent. A small sample size meant that these increases are difficult to generalise.

Extensions of this pilot research could use larger samples and more generic simulation conditions, to increase confidence in the claim that certain displays help improve strategic emergency management planning.

It is recommended that further research continues to focus on current and prospective situational awareness, as measures of strategic emergency management performance which can be reliably expert rated.

This research provides novel methodological considerations for supporting a more strategic approach to emergency management, with a focus on longer term implications.

The project “Public schools in change – collaboration as a resource” was aimed to strengthen professional capital (social- human- and decision-capital) in public schools and as a part of this to strengthen collaboration within teams. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the approach of linking development of professional capital to the development of team competence through facilitating and discuss the adequacy of the methods used to fulfil the purpose.

This study was designed as a multiple case intervention implemented at four worksites. It was organized as a course consisting of four sessions among 15–20 team coordinators from each school unit. The research group provided insights and methods to increase the team’s ability to manage tasks and cooperate.

Based on observations of team meetings, the study provides a discussion on the usefulness of the approach of linking team competence and professional capital. Both at theoretical and practical levels, the study finds it is meaningful to combine facilitating as methods to ensure the creation of value in organizational teamwork, in general, with the concept of professional capital pointing on the quality of the core task and particularly developed within an educational context.

The study provide a presentation of two theoretical frameworks and a discussion of the adequacy of linking these frameworks to the development of team competences in a school context.

The study suggests that organizations and educational institutions (of teachers, physicians, and social workers) may benefit from linking professional capital and facilitating and thereby provide employees and students training in professional collaboration.

In a still more complex society, collaboration is crucial. The study suggests ways to improve collaboration, quality of the core task along with the relational dimensions in the psychosocial work environment.

Development of professional capital through increased team competences and facilitating skills represents a new and promising approach with theoretical as well as practical implications within a school context. Indeed, not only school teams but also teams in other organizations dealing with social- task- and contextual complexity can benefit from the insights and experiences of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore job design mechanisms that enhance team proactivity within a lean production system where autonomy is uttermost restricted. We propose and test a model where the team learning process of building shared meaning of work mediates the relationship between team participative decision-making, inter team relations and team proactive behaviour.

The results are based on questionnaires to 417 employees within manufacturing industry (response rate 86 per cent) and managers’ ratings of team proactivity. The research model was tested by mediation analysis on aggregated data (56 teams).

Team learning mediates the relationship between participative decision-making and inter team collaboration on team proactive behaviour. Input from stakeholders in the work flow and partaking in decisions about work, rather than autonomy in carrying out the work, enhance the teams’ proactivity through learning processes.

An investigation of the effects of different leadership styles and management policy on proactivity through team-learning processes might shed light on how leadership promotes proactivity, as results support the effects of team participative decision-making – reflecting management policy – on proactivity.

Lean production stresses continuous improvements for enhancing efficiency, and such processes rely on individuals and teams that are proactive. Participation in forming the standardization of work is linked to managerial style, which can be changed and developed also within a lean concept. Based on our experiences of implementing the results in the production plant, we discuss what it takes to create and manage participative processes and close collaboration between teams on the shop floor, and other stakeholders such as production support, based on a shared understanding of the work and work processes.

Learning at the workplace is essential for long-term employability, and for job satisfaction and health. The lean concept is widely spread to both public bodies and enterprises, and it has been shown that it can be linked to increased stress and an increase in workload. Finding the potential for learning within lean production is essential for balancing the need of efficient production and employees’ health and well-being at work.

Very few studies have investigated the paradox between lean and teamwork, yet many lean-inspired productions systems have teamwork as a pillar for enhancing effectiveness. A clear distinction between autonomy and participation contributes to the understanding of the links between job design, learning processes and team proactivity.

The purpose of this study is to reveal and analyse dominant learning processes in emergency response work from the fire‐fighters' point of view, and how fire‐fighters develop their competence.

This study adopted an explorative approach using participant observation. The objective of this open‐minded approach was to discover how, when and where learning took place.

There are several areas for learning that contribute to fire‐fighters' development of competence: training, exercises, responses to incidents, storytelling, discussions, lectures, courses, introduction of new technology/knowledge and reading of articles/literature. However, learning to act appropriately in emergency situations is mainly a result of the embodiment of skills and knowledge (getting the feel of it, or “getting it in the finger” as the Norwegian idiom puts it), personal experience and interpersonal sharing of stories.

The study concludes that learning amongst fire‐fighters follows a process of legitimate peripheral participation, as well as learning being a personal development for the individual fire‐fighter. A combination of a socio‐cultural approach to learning and an individual cognitive approach is thus needed to fully understand learning processes.

Learning can be improved by actors becoming more reflexive practitioners, where responses are critically evaluated and established knowledge and practice are questioned. Efforts to improve learning amongst fire‐fighters should accordingly include systematic sharing of experiences and development of more challenging exercises which will help to enhance bodily experience of new knowledge.

This study extends current understanding of learning and competence development in emergency work. It presents essential learning activities, in addition to the dominant learning mechanism in personal development. The study clarifies the potential for learning through planned learning processes as opposed to the contribution from informal, ad hoc, socio‐cultural means of learning.

The purpose of this paper is to present the use of simulation in both the development and assessment of Fire & Rescue Service incident commanders. Continuous development and assessment is required due to a reduction in incident numbers causing skill fade.

This paper details the development and implementation of the “Introspect model” of assessment by Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service (OFRS) over a five-year time-span, and discusses its key findings in line with current decision-making ideologies and principles.

The “Introspect model” provides a unique assessment and development tool, which adheres to current national guidelines. It is also an accredited component of incident commander development within OFRS. The authors propose that this model becomes “best practice” for other Fire and Rescue Services.

The national use of the “Introspect model” will ensure that all incident commanders benefit from understanding the rationale behind their decisions, striving towards a universal state of unconscious competence within incident command nationally on the fire-ground.

The originality/value of this paper lies in an in-depth analysis of simulation-based software for the development and assessment of incident commanders. This paper is the first to suggest a model of “best practice” regarding the assessment and development of Fire and Rescue Service incident commanders.