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The crisis exposed Greek municipalities to bilateral financial pressures from cutbacks and increased needs for social assistance. They were directly affected by cheese-slice austerity measures that were implemented in the whole public sector (hiring freeze, cutbacks of salaries, dismissal of employees on contract basis) and successive cutbacks of state grants. In this chapter we discuss the case of four Greek municipalities. The sample was selected by taking into account the average financial performance of municipalities in terms of accrual accounting surplus/deficit over operating revenues and the volatility of this measure of financial performance over the period 2002–2012. In all four municipalities, interviews with an elected politician and municipal officials were conducted on the basis of a structured questionnaire that has been given to the interviewees before the meeting. The analysis revealed that all cities did not show significant anticipatory capabilities. This might be due to several shocks related to central government policies that were difficult to predict and to the ambiguity of the financial condition in the country. Municipalities proved to be particularly flexible and open towards social innovation and responded to the crisis through adaptation but they exhibited limited internal transformation. Nevertheless, the shock due to the crisis and the unprecedented decrease in municipal budgets has triggered a cultural shift towards more prudent management and parsimony. These findings show that Greek municipalities are still rather vulnerable to future shocks and especially to a further deepening of the on-going financial crisis.

In this chapter we develop a conceptual model describing how global teams do more than accomplish discrete tasks, and create “spillover coordination” effects by influencing the amount of work-related direct contact among team members outside the task boundaries of the team. We theorize that spillover coordination is the result of relational and cognitive social capital developed through team interaction. We also propose that the design of the team and the context in which it operates influence the degree to which social capital develops.

We develop a conceptual model including propositions that can be tested empirically. We suggest avenues for future research.

Our model proposes that teams are a more powerful cross-border integration mechanism than originally thought in existing literature in international management and organizational behavior, since they affect social capital that can benefit the broader MNE beyond scope of the task and after the team disbands. Our approach suggests that MNE managers should be mindful of global team spillover effects and intentional in the way they design global teams if those benefits are to be achieved.

Most research on global teams, and teams in general, does not look past the task and time boundary of the team. We expand the view of team effectiveness to encompass those dimensions.