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The aim of this study is to describe work-engaged teams in terms of interpersonal interaction.

Six teams (N = 31 individuals) were videotaped during a decision-making task, for one hour. Based on a priori defined categories, the authors coded the videos in terms of the degree of interaction between team members, the physical distance between members, the degree of team’s activation and the valence of their interaction. The videos were also coded in terms of motivational and affective processes. Team work engagement was assessed using questionnaires.

Highly engaged team members work physically close and have an increment on their interactions up until the task’s temporal midpoint. They have an initial peak of activation and show more positive emotional valence in the first and the last moments of the task. The most interpersonal processes used are affective. The worst performing team had the highest initial interaction levels followed by an abrupt decrease both in their levels of interaction and in their levels of activation. Simultaneously, they present higher peaks of positive emotional valence.

Although engaged teams are essentially characterized by the presence of positive interactions, it is fundamental to alternate more “exited” and fun moments with more task focused ones and collective interaction moments with individual work.

This study answers to Kozlowski and Chao’s (2012) call for studying emergence in a more direct way, using qualitative analysis of video data.

This study aims to explore how individual personal growth initiative (PGI) mediates the relationship between a positive error orientation and job crafting. Furthermore, it explores the moderating role of the feedback from the leader in this relationship.

Data was collected through a survey conducted on 209 international employees from multiple occupations.

A positive error orientation is indirectly related to job crafting through its relationship with PGI. Also, feedback from leadership has a negative effect on the relationship between a positive error orientation and PGI. Indeed, the mediation effect of PGI on the relationship between a positive error orientation and job crafting loses significance when the leadership feedback is high.

As far as job crafting is concerned, it is essential to develop an error management culture to promote proactive behaviors among individuals.

Although the literature tends to highlight the positive effects of receiving feedback from the leader on employee’s professional development, this paper highlights the potential detrimental effects of leader feedback on PGI, therefore opening a new interesting area that demands attention.

The purpose of this study is to explore the military team members’ (mid-senior multinational officers’) perceptions of shared leadership and analyze the facilitation of shared leadership in military teams.

The sample size was 20 interviewees that participants must hold leadership positions at the mid-senior management level and from NATO member countries. To analyze the data, the authors used Gioia’s thematic analysis methodology (Gioia et al., 2013) and manual coding rather than computer usage for the analysis, due to the small data pool and their proficiency in literature.

Complexity and the new information era force military organizations toward the change and that with shared leadership they can even change the organization’s culture. The final framework highlights five main dimensions that emerged from mid-multinational military officers’ experience: driving forces of change, triggers to shared leadership, specific cases shared leadership, operational team environment and operational team characteristics. Results of the study supported that driving forces of change comprised the primary factor affecting shared leadership in military project teams.

The Headquarter environment (strategic and operational planning) and planning were critical factors for the successful implementation and development of shared leadership in military project teams. Thus, military organizations could easily implement the shared leadership approach in the military research teams and planning teams.

The authors present a framework of leadership change context for military teams, which depicts how shared leadership could be implemented differently in military teams.

This paper aims to test if team reflexivity is a countermeasure to the detrimental effect of team virtuality on team performance improvement, in decision-making teams.

Study 1 regarded 210 individuals (N = 44 teams) executing five decision-making tasks. Study 2 regarded 60 individuals (N = 20 teams) executing four decision-making tasks. Study 1 was longitudinal, with no experimental manipulation. Study 2 had an experimental longitudinal design comprising two between-team manipulations: medium of communication and team reflexivity; the outcome was team performance improvement.

Study 1’s results show that team reflexivity positively moderates the effect of virtuality on team performance improvement over time. Study 2’s results shows that a reflexivity manipulation benefits face-to-face teams more so than virtual teams, probably because team reflexivity is more effective when media richness is high.

The implications of reflexivity’s lack of effect in low virtuality (Study 1) and high virtuality (Study 2) teams are discussed. This study contributes to the team learning and virtual teams’ literatures by expanding current knowledge on how team reflexivity can facilitate team learning under face-to-face versus virtual communication conditions.

Context‐aware services platforms aim at supporting the handling of contextual information in order to provide better user‐tailored services. This paper proposes a novel services platform architecture to support mobile context‐aware applications, giving emphasis to the configurability of the platforms generic functionality. The paper introduces concepts and a language to cope with configurability aspects. The paper also reports on the implementation of a prototype, which implements a Web services‐based context‐aware services platform that runs on top of 3G networks.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether work engagement can be predicted by two core dimensions, energy and involvement, both at the individual and team levels.

Based on the circumplex model of affective well-being (Russell, 1980), the authors propose the work engagement grid and collect data on individual and team work engagement (TWE) from two different samples (n=1,192 individuals).

Results show a significant positive relationship between the individual engagement grid and individual work engagement. However, only the energy dimension significantly predicted TWE. The authors also provide evidences for the relationship between the engagement grid and related variables (e.g. adaptive performance, team cohesion, satisfaction), and show that the combination of energy and involvement present smaller correlations with those variables than the complete engagement scales.

Data were collected from simulation samples, therefore generalization of the findings must be done with caution. The findings allow for developing a brief measure of work engagement, particularly useful for longitudinal or diary study designs.

When teams are the work unit, the displays of energetic behaviors ought to be fostered in order to boost collective engagement.

The authors add to the existing literature on work engagement, concluding that individual and team-level work engagement have structural differences between them, with the collective construct being dependent on external manifestations of energy, and that individual work engagement needs a cognitive component of absorption in order to foster performance.

The purpose of this article was to examine how individual positive emotions and team work engagement (TWE) relate to the perceptions of team viability.

A total of 254 teams (N = 1,154 individuals) participated in this study, and a multilevel analysis was conducted of the effects of individual and team-level factors.

The multilevel analysis results suggest a partial compensatory effect. High levels of individual positive emotions and high TWE are associated with a positive effect on the perceptions of team viability. Simultaneously, being part of a highly engaged team has a protective effect on perceptions of team viability, when individuals experience low levels of positive emotions.

As the study was conducted with teams involved in a management simulation, generalizing the results to “real world” teams must be done with caution.

Nonetheless, these findings have important implications for managers of work groups. They highlight the need to consider collective states of work groups as relevant for their effectiveness, and suggest that promoting positive interactions between team members may result in gains in team viability perceptions, mostly when individual emotions are less positive.

We consider both individual and collective affective experiences at work, and focus on a less studied outcome, team viability. Additionally, we empirically demonstrate the relevance of collective states of teams for team members’ individual perceptions, as a top-down influence mechanism.

In the recent decades, research and industry on city logistics have tried to seek for environment-friendly solutions that are efficient enough to satisfy both society and suppliers’ needs. One of the potential solutions is the use of small-size electric vehicles (SEVs), due to their improved energy efficiency, local zero emissions, and lower traffic disturbance.

In spite of all the benefits of SEV for society, advertised through experimental trials focused on social and environmental benefits, research on these vehicles’ impacts seems to overlook the effects on private stakeholders operations, namely, disregarding the replacement rate needed to assure the same delivery patterns and their purchasing and battery charging implications.

In this chapter, the authors contribute in filling this research gap by considering private interests, related to operation costs levels (running and driving costs), service levels, and efficiency in the promotion of SEV. Simultaneously, its balance with public interests, related with sustainability, quality of life, mobility, and environmental issues are also addressed.

The authors aim to evaluate the usage of SEV in this research and to estimate the effects of replacing conventional vans by SEV on city logistics operations. The results of this quantitative analysis enlighten if SEVs are indeed a viable solution to satisfy public and private stakeholders, when operational and external costs are fully accounted.

The chapter presents a case study that addresses the effects of replacing vans by SEV on city logistics operations in the city of Oporto (Portugal), considering public and private stakeholders’ interests. The study compares four scenarios of 5%, 10%, 30%, and 70% of SEVs replacing diesel vans used in transport and unloading operations. The four scenarios are tested on different geographical scales: street and city levels. First, the authors estimate how the use of SEV in city logistics affects traffic, energy consumption, and emissions. Second, the respective operating and external costs are quantified and the acquisition and battery issues are discussed.

When considering the goal of promoting SEV as a sustainable city logistics policy, under a methodology focused on mobility, operational performance, and environmental externalities, the authors concluded (a) the replacement rate SEV:van is determinant to make a decision on whether or not to use SEVs replacing vans, (b) SEVs are economically competitive with conventional vans if the replacement rate is 1:1, (c) SEVs have a better performance at the street level rather than at the city level, (d) SEVs can be used with normal traffic as a niche of market (lower than 5%), and (e) SEVs benefits exist, but they are not significant enough to drive suppliers for their adoption.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Researchers based in Portugal showed in a study how individual personal growth initiative (PGI) mediates the relationship between human errors and job crafting. The results also revealed how feedback from leadership had the opposite moderating effect to what was expected – the higher the feedback, the weaker the positive relationship between error orientation and PGI.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.