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To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.

Literature review.

Our primary focus is on cohesion and adaptation – two critical aspects of team performance in ICE environments that have received increased attention in both the literature and funding initiatives. We begin by describing the conditions that define ICE environments and review relevant individual biological, neuropsychiatric, and environmental factors that interact with team dynamics. We then outline a unifying team cohesion framework for long-duration missions and discuss several environmental, operational, organizational, and psychosocial factors that can impact team dynamics. Finally, we end with a discussion of directions for future research and countermeasure development, emphasizing the importance of temporal dynamics, multidisciplinary integration, and novel conceptual frameworks for the inherently mixed work and social setting of long-duration missions in ICE environments.

A better understanding of team dynamics over time can contribute to success in a variety of organizational settings, including space exploration, defense and security, business, education, athletics, and social relationships.

We promote a multidisciplinary approach to team dynamics in ICE environments that incorporates dynamic biological, behavioral, psychological, and organizational factors over time.

Contemporary cinema and video games express considerable skepticism toward the colonization of further planets. Contemporary films including Elysium and Passengers depict space travel as the prolongation of inequalities within human civilization, while others such as Gravity and The Martian predict a rebirth of the human species through technological advances and space travel limited to a lucky few. Games, meanwhile, explore topics ranging from private spaceflight to the genetic modification required for long-term space habitation, especially in EVE Online, which we focus on in this chapter. Although both contemporary films and games celebrate technological advances, these media also show that multiple inequalities lurk behind the celebratory human renewal into a multiplanetary species.

In emerging economies, internationalization endeavors have been historically complex and uncertain. Issues such as competitiveness and financial volatility often act as detractors for exploring foreign markets. Nevertheless, state policies and commercial agreements have been boosting an increased participation in host economies, particularly relating to the metalworking sector. This study explores the underlying factors related to the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in two rising Latin American economies: Mexico and Peru. Comparisons are presented with the aim of understanding the global arena through both perspectives.

Meetings can serve the important role of facilitating communication and coordination for systems of teams known as “multiteam systems” (MTSs) that work interdependently to achieve grand societal challenges. Given that MTSs often appear in complex, ambiguous, urgent, and multifaceted task contexts, the MTSs require effective, and efficient but thorough, communication within and between teams in order to achieve shared goals. However, the extant literature regarding the science of meetings has left much to be explored in regard to the inter- and intrateam influences and impacts. This chapter considers the significance of meetings and their practical value in facilitating MTS processes and performance by leveraging what is known thus far regarding MTS structural attributes, their value, their challenges, and opportunities, integrating this foundation with the broader science of meetings. Building on this rationale, the authors move toward empirically and theoretically derived considerations for how meetings may best be designed, facilitated and utilized for MTS effectiveness, as guided by our current understanding of critical MTS attributes.

Building industrial clusters is getting much more political attention and strategic orientation in all developing countries. This study started by revising the conceptual and theoretical frameworks for industrial clusters, followed by some insights and contributions about empirical bases for clusters' dynamics and processes. The study focused on the case of Agadir Agreement between four Arab countries (Egypt, Jordon, Morocco, and Tunisia), which was initiated after the Euro-Mediterranean partnerships, and the rationale of the agreement was based on the concept of cumulative value-added origin. The study based its methodology on analyzing the international and bilateral trade flows of six industrial goods from the automotive sector among the four countries and with the EU countries to detect the degree of industrial collaboration and the achieved success of each country in this sector. The study indicated that the four countries used the concept of industrial clusters for economic development, but the results of the analysis showed that till now Agadir Agreement only achieved a shallow integration, while failed to deeply integrate as one big collaborative industrial cluster.

Space tourism is a rapidly growing sector of capital accumulation. As virtually all space on the Earth has been humanized and populated, outer space is being made by elite groups into the new exotic destination of choice. But the humanization of outer space also reinforces an ancient and powerful worldview concerning society’s relations with the cosmos. It relies on the idea that outer space is an apparently pure and serene “other” place offering a profound sense of awe, wonder, and renewed identity. This hegemonic view of the cosmos and society is a product of a new dominant social bloc, one incorporating pro-space activists, the aerospace industry, the tourism industry, and governments.