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1 – 10 of over 114000
Article
Publication date: 1 May 1998

Stephen W. Nason and Madan M. Pillutla

Many, if not most, academic researchers interested in international business have worked on teams made up of individuals from many different countries. Ironically, there has been…

804

Abstract

Many, if not most, academic researchers interested in international business have worked on teams made up of individuals from many different countries. Ironically, there has been little research attempting to explain the unique dynamic of such teams and their advantages and disadvantages. The goal of this paper is to develop a model of international academic research teams with an aim towards understanding how they can be managed more effectively. We highlight some of the important variables that affect team functioning and discuss their relationships with both antecedents and outcomes. Specific propositions are developed and their implications are discussed.

Details

Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol. 13 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0268-3946

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 January 2024

Fernando Martín-Alcázar, Marta Ruiz-Martínez and Gonzalo Sánchez-Gardey

This study aims to examine the connection between scholars' research performance and the multidisciplinary nature of their collaborative research. Furthermore, in response to…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to examine the connection between scholars' research performance and the multidisciplinary nature of their collaborative research. Furthermore, in response to mixed results regarding the effects of multidisciplinarity on research performance, this study explores how human resource management (HRM) practices may moderate this link.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors built a model based on the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence found in the review of diversity and HRM literature. The authors also performed a quantitative study based on a sample of scholars in the field of management. Different econometric estimations were used to test the proposed model.

Findings

The results of this empirical analysis suggest that multidisciplinary research has a non-linear effect on research performance. Certain HRM practices, such as development and collaboration, moderated the curvilinear relationship between multidisciplinarity and performance, displacing the optimum to allow higher performance at higher levels of multidisciplinary research.

Originality/value

The paper provides advances on previous works studying the curvilinear relationship between multidisciplinarity and the researchers' performance, confirming that multidisciplinarity is beneficial up to a threshold beyond which these benefits are attenuated. In addition, the findings shed light on important issues related to team-oriented HRM practices associated with the outcomes of multidisciplinary research.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 62 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 May 2023

Eduardo Piqueiras, Erin Stanley and Allison Laskey

The purpose of this paper is to expand the use of ethnography to advance research on team science by revealing the barriers to teamwork as manifesting at institutional, cultural…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to expand the use of ethnography to advance research on team science by revealing the barriers to teamwork as manifesting at institutional, cultural, and interpersonal contextual scales. The analysis suggests strategies to enhance team science's collaborative potential.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper considers some of the practical and analytical challenges of team science through the use of ethnographic methods. The authors formed a three-person subteam within a larger multisited, federally-funded, interdisciplinary scientific team. The authors conducted six months of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group, using iterative deductive and inductive analyses to investigate the larger team's roles, relationships, dynamics, and tensions.

Findings

Integrating ethnography into the study of team science can uncover and mitigate barriers faced by teams at three primary levels: (1) academic culture, (2) institutional structures, and (3) interpersonal dynamics. The authors found that these three contextual factors are often taken for granted and hidden in the team science process as well as that they are interactive and influence teams at multiple scales of analysis. These outcomes are closely related to how team science is funded and implemented in academic and institutional settings.

Originality/value

As US federal funding initiatives continue to require scientific collaboration via inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary research, there is little work done on how teams grapple with the practical tensions of scientific teamwork. This paper identifies and addresses many practical tensions and contextual factors across institutional and organizational structures that affect and challenge the conduct of collaborative scientific teamwork. The authors also argue that ethnography can be a method to challenge myths, understand contextual factors, and improve the goals of team science.

Details

Journal of Organizational Ethnography, vol. 12 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2046-6749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 August 2022

Tongyang Zhang, Fang Tan, Chao Yu, Jiexun Wu and Jian Xu

Proper topic selection is an essential prerequisite for the success of research. To study this, this article proposes an important concerned factor of topic selection-topic…

Abstract

Purpose

Proper topic selection is an essential prerequisite for the success of research. To study this, this article proposes an important concerned factor of topic selection-topic popularity, to examine the relationship between topic selection and team performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors adopt extracted entities on the type of gene/protein, which are used as proxies as topics, to keep track of the development of topic popularity. The decision tree model is used to classify the ascending phase and descending phase of entity popularity based on the temporal trend of entity occurrence frequency. Through comparing various dimensions of team performance – academic performance, research funding, relationship between performance and funding and corresponding author's influence at different phases of topic popularity – the relationship between the selected phase of topic popularity and academic performance of research teams can be explored.

Findings

First, topic popularity can impact team performance in the academic productivity and their research work's academic influence. Second, topic popularity can affect the quantity and amount of research funding received by teams. Third, topic popularity can impact the promotion effect of funding on team performance. Fourth, topic popularity can impact the influence of the corresponding author on team performance.

Originality/value

This is a new attempt to conduct team-oriented analysis on the relationship between topic selection and academic performance. Through understanding relationships amongst topic popularity, team performance and research funding, the study would be valuable for researchers and policy makers to conduct reasonable decision making on topic selection.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 75 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 September 2022

Sara Bolduc, John Knox and E. Barrett Ristroph

This article considers how the evaluation of research teams can better account for the challenges of transdisciplinarity, including their larger team size and more diverse and…

1017

Abstract

Purpose

This article considers how the evaluation of research teams can better account for the challenges of transdisciplinarity, including their larger team size and more diverse and permeable membership, as well as the tensions between institutional pressures on individuals to publish and team goals.

Design/methodology/approach

An evaluation team was retained from 2015 to 2020 to conduct a comprehensive external evaluation of a five-year EPSCoR-funded program undertaken by a transdisciplinary research team. The formative portion of the evaluation involved monitoring the program’s developmental progress, while the summative portion tracked observable program outputs and outcomes as evidence of progress toward short- and long-term goals. The evaluation team systematically reviewed internal assessments and gathered additional data for an external assessment via periodic participation in team meetings, participant interviews and an online formative team survey (starting in Year 2).

Findings

Survey participants had a better understanding of the project’s “Goals and Vision” compared to other aspects. “Work Roles,” and particularly the timeliness of decision-making, were perceived to be a “Big Problem,” specifically in regard to heavy travel by key managers/leadership. For “Communication Channels,” Year 2 tensions included differing views on the extent to which management should be collaborative versus “hierarchical.” These concerns about communication demonstrate that differences in language, culture or status impact the efficiency and working relationship of the team. “Authorship Credit/Intellectual Property” was raised most consistently each year as an area of concern.

Originality/value

The study involves the use of a unique survey approach.

Details

Higher Education Evaluation and Development, vol. 17 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-5789

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 13 September 2022

Ramy Hindiyeh and Jennifer Cross

The purpose of this paper is to identify, through an exploratory meta-analysis, which process- and outcome-related antecedents have the strongest relationship to overall team…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify, through an exploratory meta-analysis, which process- and outcome-related antecedents have the strongest relationship to overall team performance. The secondary objective is to create an understanding of the extent to which relative research interest in each construct to date has aligned with its reported effects.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a random-effects meta-analysis on studies that have measured the relationship between at least one process or outcome factor and overall team performance. The number of studies, effect size and between-study variances are captured and analyzed for each process/outcome factor. Prior literature has explored relationships between various process/outcome factors and overall team performance. This study expands on previous literature by examining a comprehensive set of process/outcome factors and their relative impact on overall team performance.

Findings

A meta-analysis of 190 effect sizes extracted from 52 empirical studies over the past two decades (1999–2020) showed the specific process and outcome factors that most strongly contributed to overall team performance were efficiency, schedule and innovation. In addition, only a weak correlation was found between process and outcome factors’ relationships with overall team performance and how often they are studied in the research community.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on team performance by examining prior research to identify the relevant impact of various process and outcome factors on overall team performance. In addition, this study also assesses the extent to which research interest in these factors has appeared to match their relative impact. Analyzing the relative impact of various process and outcome factors allows researchers and practitioners to better identify methods to create improvement in overall team performance. Based on the findings, prioritizing efficiency, schedule and innovation may promote overall team performance.

Details

Team Performance Management: An International Journal, vol. 28 no. 7/8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-7592

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 July 2014

Louisa Allen, Kathleen Quinlivan, Clive Aspin, Fida Sanjakdar, Annette Brömdal and Mary Lou Rasmussen

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to theorise difference as encountered by a team of six diverse researchers interested in addressing cultural and religious diversity in sexuality education. Drawing Todd's (2003, 2011a, b) concepts of “the crossroads”, “becoming present” and “relationality” in conversation with Barad's (2003, 2007, 2012) ideas around relationality and intra-activity, the paper explores how “difference” in team research might be re-conceptualised. The aim is to theorise difference, differently from Other methodological literature around collaborative research. Typically, this work highlights markers of difference based on researcher identity (such as gender and ethnicity) as the source of difference in research teams, and examines how these differences are worked through. The aim of this paper is not to resolve difference, but understand it as occurring in the relational process of researchers becoming present to each other. Difference that is not understood as the product of the individual (Barad, 2012), may engender an orientation to ethical relationality, whereby research teams might hold in tension a conversation between the individual and the collective.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is philosophical and methodological. It draws on conceptual understandings from feminist educational philosophy and new materialisms. Findings are based on empirical experiences of a team of researchers exploring cultural and religious difference in sexuality education. Its aim is to re-think the ontology of “difference” as conventionally understood in qualitative methodological literature around team research.

Findings

The contribution to conceptualising difference in research teams is to apply Todd's (2011a) theoretical work around “becoming”, “relationality” and the “crossroads” and further delineate it with Barad's (2012) concept of intra-activity. Combining these theorist's ideas the paper offers a conceptualisation of difference that is not the product of individual researcher identities that manifests at the point of collision with (an)other identity. Rather, difference becomes intra-actively in meeting at the crossroads where the “who” is formed. The author argues it is a configuration that cannot be known in advance, and that blurs individuals (and contingent identities) in its uniqueness.

Practical implications

Although conceptual in nature, this paper can be seen as having implications for working with difference in research teams. Drawing on Todd (2003, 2011a) what becomes important in attending to difference in research teams is being openly receptive to the Other. For instance, that the differences of perspective in relation to a research project are not melted into consensus, but that the singularities are always held in relation to each-other.

Originality/value

This paper takes new and emerging ideas in educational philosophy and new materialisms around relationality and applies them to a re-thinking of “difference” in qualitative methodological literature. The result is to offer a new ontology of “difference” as experienced by members of a qualitative research team. It also brings the work of Barad and Todd into conversation for the first time, in order to think ethically about how researchers might work with difference.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 14 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Lynn McAlpine, Isabelle Skakni, Anna Sala-Bubaré, Crista Weise and Kelsey Inouye

Teamwork has long featured in social science research. Further, with research increasingly “cross-national,” communication becomes more complex, for instance, involving different…

2116

Abstract

Purpose

Teamwork has long featured in social science research. Further, with research increasingly “cross-national,” communication becomes more complex, for instance, involving different cultures, languages and modes of communication. Yet, studies examining team communicative processes that can facilitate or constrain collaboration are rare. As a cross-national European team representing varied disciplines, experiences, languages and ethnicities, we undertook to examine our communication processes with the aim to promote better qualitative research practices.

Design/methodology/approach

Viewing reflection as a tool for enhancing workplace practices, we undertook a structured reflection. We developed an empirically derived framework about team communication, then used it to analyse our interaction practices and their relative effectiveness.

Findings

The results highlighted two under-examined influences, the use of different modes of communication for different purposes and the need for face-to-face communication to address a particularly challenging aspect of research, negotiating a shared coding scheme to analyse diverse cultural and linguistic qualitative data.

Practical implications

The study offers a procedure and concepts that others could use to examine their team communication.

Originality/value

The communicative processes that can constrain and facilitate effective cross-national research team collaboration are rarely examined. The results emphasise the need for careful negotiations around language, epistemologies, cultures and goals from the moment collaboration begins in formulating a project, through applying for grant funds, to when the last paper is published – timely in a context in which such work is increasingly expected.

Details

Qualitative Research Journal, vol. 21 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1443-9883

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 July 2014

Ji Hoon Song, Doo Hun Lim, In Gu Kang and Woocheol Kim

This aim of the current research is to provide empirical evidence for the relationships among several organizational factors affecting team performance improvement, including the…

4344

Abstract

Purpose

This aim of the current research is to provide empirical evidence for the relationships among several organizational factors affecting team performance improvement, including the learning organization and employee engagement. In addition, the mediating effect of employee engagement was assessed to explain team performance improvement within the supportive learning organization. The target sample consisted of major Korean for-profit firms, and a total of 309 cases were used for data analyses. Structural equation modeling was used along with basic descriptive and multivariate research assumption tests. Results support that cultural aspects of the learning organization in Korean for-profit firms positively and directly affect the employee engagement, whereas cultural aspects of the learning organization positively affect team performance positively and indirectly only through employee engagement, and employee engagement plays a full mediating role in explaining the relationship between the learning organization and team performance. Conclusions are discussed, followed by implications for organizational development, limitations and future research suggestions.

Design/methodology/approach

The target sample consisted of major Korean for-profit firms, and a total of 309 cases were used for data analyses. Structural equation modeling was used along with basic descriptive and multivariate research assumption tests.

Findings

Results support that cultural aspects of the learning organization in Korean for-profit firms positively and directly affect the employee engagement, while cultural aspects of the learning organization positively affect team performance positively and indirectly only through the employee engagement, and the employee engagement plays a full mediating role in explaining the relationship between the learning organization and team performance.

Originality/value

This research has not been conducted in the Korean context, and this research will provide not only scholarly evidences on the importance of the learning organization for performance improvement, but also the practical guideline for the practitioners to make effort to make their organizations as the learning organization for performance improvement.

Details

The Learning Organization, vol. 21 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-6474

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 April 2008

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of collaboration in interpretive consumer research.

1720

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of collaboration in interpretive consumer research.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews literature on research teamwork, particularly on qualitative and international projects. It also provides an account of research collaboration on an interpretive research project across four countries, involving eight researchers.

Findings

Despite the cult of individualism in academic life, most articles in leading marketing journals are now written by multi‐author teams. The process and implications of research collaboration, particularly on qualitative and international projects, have received little attention within the marketing literature. Qualitative collaborations call for another layer of reflexivity and attention to the politics and emotions of teamwork. They also require the negotiation of a social contract acceptable to the group and conducive to the emergence of different perspectives throughout the research process.

Originality/value

While issues surrounding the researcher‐research participant relationship are well explored in the field, this paper tackles an issue that often remains tacit in the marketing literature, namely the impact of the relationships between researchers. The paper draws on accounts of other research collaborations as well as authors' experiences, and discusses how interpersonal and cross‐cultural dynamics influence the work of interpretive research teams.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 114000