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Purpose – This chapter considers the consequences on liberty in relationship to the development of the international problem-solving court movement.

Design/methodology/approach – The research, which relies principally on ethnographic fieldwork in six different common law countries (England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, and the United States), explores the development of local problem-solving courts in each jurisdiction. These include drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts, and mental health courts. The ethnographic fieldwork was supplemented with data from various other sources, including government reports, parliamentary debates, evaluations of individual court programs, publications issued by various advocacy groups, media accounts, public statements and articles by problem-solving court judges, and analyses of specialty courts in law reviews and other academic journals.

Findings – The research reveal that the five countries outside of the United States demonstrate greater concern with protecting the dignity of the court, due process, and individual rights – or what the Australians refer to as open and natural justice.

Originality/value – It is the first large-scale comparative study of problem-solving courts in the common law countries where the movement is most advanced.

In a variety of domains, teams represent the main mechanism for dealing with change, complexity, and uncertainty in organizations. Consequently, teams need to be able to adapt and effectively use shared and complementary cognitive processing while collaborating to deal with these challenges.

A conceptual review is provided that addresses this type of complex collaborative cognition via discussion of macrocognition and the processes contributing to effective team problem-solving.

Despite extensive research on problem-solving, research and theories regarding how problem-solving changes over time as teams develop is missing. With this review, we extend research on team problem-solving and team development through integration of existing theory and concepts from the team literature.

This review provides a theoretical foundation for understanding and studying the developmental dynamic of team problem-solving.

A team problem-solving development model is described which outlines the degree to which the primary elements of team development are likely to affect macrocognitive processes within problem-solving phases. A set of propositions is offered in order to guide research on team development in collaborative problem-solving.

This chapter describes our innovative approach to the teaching of computer programming and writing; professors worked with students across classes united by a theme of narrative. A year-long study examined if using Alice, a three-dimensional microworld programming software that allows users to create interactive narratives, was more effective than Visual Basic (VB) in developing problem-solving abilities in first-year college students in introductory computer programming courses. Results revealed that although both the Alice and VB group showed a statistically significant (p<0.05) increase in performance for problem-solving questions related to computer programming, only the Alice group showed a significant increase in problem-solving abilities not directly related to computer programming, and an increase in student retention.

Team cognition research continues to evolve as the need for understanding and improving complex problem solving itself grows. Complex problem solving requires members to engage in a number of complicated collaborative processes to generate solutions. This chapter illustrates how the Macrocognition in Teams model, developed to guide research on these processes, can be utilized to propose how intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) could be developed to train collaborative problem solving. Metacognitive prompting, based upon macrocognitive processes, was offered as an intervention to scaffold learning these complex processes. Our objective is to provide a theoretically grounded approach for linking intelligent tutoring research and development with team cognition. In this way, team members are more likely to learn how to identify and integrate relevant knowledge, as well as plan, monitor, and reflect on their problem-solving performance as it evolves. We argue that ITSs that utilize metacognitive prompting that promotes team planning during the preparation stage, team knowledge building during the execution stage, and team reflexivity and team knowledge sharing interventions during the reflection stage can improve collaborative problem solving.

While deficits for students with learning disabilities (LD) are prevalent in almost all aspects of mathematics, difficulty in the application and understanding of problem-solving tasks are much more challenging to remediate than computational and procedural skills. Given the complexities involved in authentic problem-solving activities emphasized in current mathematics standards and the inherent challenges presented to students with LD, the importance of using strategies and techniques guided by evidence-based practices is paramount. Yet, ineffective instructional strategies for problem solving are still widespread in both mathematics curricula and available teacher resources. In this chapter, we provide a description of a commonly used ineffective problem-solving strategy (i.e., the keyword strategy), an overview of the keyword research, and an explanation for its ineffectiveness. We conclude with a description of three evidenced-based problem-solving approaches and practices that significantly improve the mathematical performance of students with LD.

This study aims to investigate the role of team problem-solving creativity in new product development (NPD) in the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) in business-to-business firms. This study synthesizes perspectives from NPD, creativity and leadership to examine how work-related factors such as NPD managers’ role ambiguity and individual-related factors such as CEO’s ambidextrous leadership style interact to determine team problem-solving creativity and its effect on new product performance (NPP).

The hypotheses are tested using data from a multi-informant survey of 274 middle-level managers within 137 local BoP manufacturing firms in a sub-Saharan African country.

The results show that an NPD team’s ability to solve problems creatively determines NPP in BoP markets. The findings also show that NPD managers’ role ambiguity has a negative effect on team problem-solving creativity. However, a CEO’s ambidextrous leadership neutralizes the negative impact of role ambiguity on problem-solving creativity.

This study combines three distinct streams of literature, including NPD, creativity and leadership, to explore the antecedents and outcomes of problem-solving creativity. Drawing on creativity and leadership theories, this study reports that the success of creative idea exchanges depends heavily on a supportive environment for NPD team members and minimizing the NPD manager’s role ambiguity.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify and map contemporary research on advanced technology implementations for problem-solving purposes in the manufacturing industry, and to further understand the organizational learning possibilities of advanced technology problem-solving in the manufacturing industry.

This paper outlines a scoping review of contemporary research on the subject. The findings of the review are discussed in the light of theories of contradicting learning logics.

This paper shows that contemporary research on the subject is characterized by technological determinism and strong solution-focus. A discussion on the manufacturing industries’ contextual reasons for this in relation to contradicting learning logics shows that a Mode-2 problem-solving approach could facilitate further learning and expand knowledge on advanced technology problem-solving in the manufacturing industry. A research agenda with six propositions is provided.

The introduction of advanced technology implies complex effects on the manufacturing industry in general, while previous research shows a clear focus on technological aspects of this transformation. This paper provides value by providing novel knowledge on the relationship between advanced technology, problem-solving and organizational learning in the manufacturing industry.

Research has shown that colleagues' norms promoting the need to respond quickly to work-related messages (CN) have a negative effect on work recovery experiences. In the present study, the authors examine the direct and indirect – through affective rumination and problem-solving pondering – effects of these norms on work–family conflict, family–work conflict and job satisfaction, and verify whether and how these associations differ between employees working onsite (n = 158) or remotely (n = 284).

A total of 442 employees completed an online survey that covered measures on CN, affective rumination, problem-solving pondering, work–family conflict, family–work conflict and job satisfaction.

As hypothesized, the study results revealed that CN were positively related to work–family conflict and family–work conflict, but not to job satisfaction. Moreover, the indirect effects of CN on work–family conflict and job satisfaction were significantly mediated by affective rumination and problem-solving pondering, whereas the indirect effects of these norms on family–work conflict were significantly mediated by affective rumination. Finally, the relations between CN and the mediators (affective rumination and problem-solving pondering) were stronger among employees working onsite than among employees working remotely.

These results revealed that working remotely buffered the detrimental effects of CN on affective rumination and problem-solving pondering.

This study compared the results of self-report and ability-based tests of problem-solving abilities of 144 hospitality managers working at hotels and restaurants through an online survey. In the first stage of the study, the managers were asked to fill in the self-report problem-solving ability scale by Tesone et al. (2010). In the second stage of the study, the managers were asked to respond to questions in a case-study-based problem-solving test.

Problem-solving is a key aspect of business process management. This study aims to investigate and compare hospitality managers' actual and claimed (self-report) problem-solving abilities. A lack of unawareness of the actual level of skills may be an important problem as managers who tend to have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill or ability they lack. They are also more likely to take risks regarding that skill or ability.

The results of the study showed that there was a major difference between the results of the self-report test and the actual test. This meant that the managers who participated in the study had inflated self-efficacy beliefs regarding their problem-solving abilities, i.e. they operated under the influence of the Dunning–Kruger effect. The study showed that self-report tests that are commonly used in businesses in recruitment and promotion may not provide a correct level of people's abilities. In general, managers who have inflated self-efficacy beliefs are less likely to be interested in developing a particular skill due to the overconfidence arising from their inflated self-efficacy beliefs. The study showed that managers were less likely to allocate resources, e.g. time, money and effort, to develop a particular skill they lack and are more likely to take risks regarding that particular skill.

Managers in the hospitality industry appear to lack problem solving-abilities. While the hospitality managers assigned high marks for their problem-solving abilities in a self-report problem-solving scale and appeared to be performing significantly good overall in problem-solving, they performed poorly in an actual problem solving exercise. It is recommended that businesses rather than depending on self-report problem-solving scales, they should resort to ability-based scales or exercises that actually measure managers' problem-solving abilities. Also, as managers who had formal tourism and hospitality education performed poorly, tourism and hospitality programme managers at universities are recommend to review their syllabi and curriculum so as to help support their graduates' problem-solving abilities.

The study is original as no previous study compared managers' problem-solving abilities by using self-report and ability-based tests. The study has implications for researchers in terms of developing knowledge, ability and skill-based scales in the future. The study has also significant practical implications for the practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to present a process for managing project problem‐solving patterns. It focuses on shifting the emphasis of project teams toward a more collaborative and knowledge‐based style of dealing with challenges to project performance. The methods proposed in this paper encourage project managers to integrate processes for becoming more agile by tapping into lesson learned and knowledge gained to create higher quality solutions to problems.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for recognizing problem‐solving patterns and transforming problem solving from an individual passive event to a more open, agile active, systemic process. Several actual case examples are provided to illustrate applications.

The paper examines how taking a more open approach to problem solving in projects leads to better solutions. The proposed method and lessons from actual cases offer support to these proposals.

The proposed models in this paper originate from the conclusions and observations drawn by the authors over many years of experience. However, they are not the product of a systematic research effort. This paper is intended to provide a new lens for project managers to view projects. It does not purport to declare findings of any research or analyze any sort of research.

The conceptual framework provided in this paper is a practical one derived from the practices used in leading companies. The paper provides practical guidelines to aid project managers in recognizing and managing problem‐solving patterns to create better solutions to problems.

Modern society is plagued by the effects of ineffective problem‐solving initiatives in business, government, and not‐for‐profit organizations. Flawed proposed solutions exact a toll on organizations, their members, and the constituents they serve. This paper proposes a way of improving the quality of problem‐solving processes that may benefit a broad scale of people.

The concept of a problem‐solving pattern and a typology of problem‐solving patterns presented in this paper, provide project managers with a new way of conceiving of how problem solving can be used to improve project performance and adaptability.