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In the 21st century team working increasingly requires online cooperative skills as well as more traditional skills associated with face to face team working. Virtual team working differs from face to face team working in a number of respects, such as interpreting the alternatives to visual cues, adapting to synchronous communication, developing trust and cohesion and cultural interpretations. However, co‐located student teams working within higher education can only simulate team working as it might be experienced in organisations today. For example, students can learn from their mistakes in a non‐threatening environment, colleagues tend to be established friends and assessing teamwork encourages behaviour such as “free‐riding”. Using a prototyping approach, which involves students and tutors, a system has been designed to support learners engaged in team working. This system helps students to achieve to their full potential and appreciate issues surrounding virtual teamwork. The Guardian Agent system enables teams to allocate project tasks and agree ground rules for the team according to individuals’ preferences. Results from four cycles of its use are presented, together with modifications arising from iterations of testing. The results show that students find the system useful in preparing for team working, and have encouraged further development of the system.

Explores the role of trade unions in relation to team working. Asks the questions: are unions incompatible with team working and what are the implications for shop stewards of team working? Argues that moves towards team working are likely to be fragile because of political and power‐based tensions, within and without the employment relationship, which impinge on trade union responses to team working, and likewise impact on management’s ability to adopt a sustained approach towards team working. Consequently, in contrast to its unitarist ethos, team working is characterized by resistance, conflict, accommodation and contradiction. This is an attempt to highlight the complex, temporal and contested nature of team working.

This paper aims to report on research into human resource management within an operations management environment; specifically, operational team‐work amongst health care workers in a hospital.

Eight operational teams within a UK National Health Service hospital took part and the research used a combination of survey and group discussions.

The results show the construct of the team had little operational definition. Key factors identified as contributing to effective team‐working include: leadership; frequency of team meetings; a climate of trust and openness. There was limited evidence of truly multi‐disciplinary teams and of organisational support for team‐working.

The methodology applied was appropriate, generating data to facilitate discussion and draw specific conclusions therefrom. A perceived limitation is the single case approach; however, Remenyi et al. argue this can be enough to add to the body of knowledge. In terms of implications this paper demonstrates that team‐working is no panacea; as part of a bundle of good operations management practices it is associated with efficiency, effectiveness, and in this case improved patient care.

The paper suggests a new input, process, output model of effective team‐working and identifies issues to be faced in adopting a strategy of developing an operational team‐based organisation.

The value of this paper is the conclusion that the importance of operational team‐working is as a paradigm for assessing how effectively individuals and groups work together, rather than as a specific organisational form with an optimal size.

The received wisdom is that team working is a good thing and is spoken about positively as a means of promoting co‐operation and of making the best use of employees' strengths. This article seeks to examine why this may be and to address the four areas highlighted by ACAS where improvements are made, i.e. productivity, quality, the use of new technology, and motivation.

The paper explores here in the light of the current organisational environment.

The study outlines the lessons learned in introducing teamwork, the need for managerial commitment, the changes in culture that can be promoted by team working and how to go about planning for change.

The paper presents a practical and realistic view. This is the first of two articles on the subject. The second will deal with the issues of establishing and running teams.

Team working has widely been seen by managers as a key way of utilising employee ideas and improving performance. But how important it is depends on circumstances. This article examines its introduction into a motor assembly plant, and draws attention to the specificity of the local context. It draws on research carried out at the Vauxhall Motors Luton plant.

This is the second of two articles on teamwork which aim to deals with the selection and formation of teams, team leadership, team roles and team development.

The paper builds on the first article which covered such issues as the reasons for moving to team working for improving performance, improving quality and encouraging innovation, promoting and exploiting technological advances and as a means of improving motivation. The article also looks at how teams are chosen and developed. Best practice as outlined by the UK Advisory, conciliation and arbitration service (ACAS) is used together with the personal experience of the author.

The first thing to recognize is that organizations will be at different points in their evolution in team working terms. Teams that need to work within and across an organization such as sales, marketing, purchasing, personnel and finance find that team working fosters a collaborative rather than a competitive or adversarial approach. It is vital that teams must be capable of doing the job for which they have been selected and this clearly implies that the membership should include people able to contribute towards the completion of task.

It is important that management, trade unions and employees ensure they know how team working will contribute to their business strategy and that it is likely to involve a long‐term transformation.

Maintaining user-focused integrated team working in complex care is one of the demands made of UK health and social care (H&SC) organisations who need employees that are resilient, resilience being the ability to persevere and thrive in the face of exposure to adverse situations (Rogerson and Ermes, 2008, p. 1). Grant and Kinman (2012) write that resilience is a complex and multi-dimensional construct that is underexplored in social care team work. The purpose of this paper is to capture the views of managers in H&SC to explore the making of resilient teams, identify factors that influence team performance and inform organisational workforce development strategy.

A general inductive approach (Silverman, 2011) was applied. Five focus groups were facilitated (n=40) each with eight participants all of whom were leaders and managers of teams in H&SC, working in the integrated care context in the UK.

Findings indicate that further investment in strategies and resources to sustain and educate employees who work in teams and further research into how organisational systems can facilitate this learning positively may contribute to resilient teams and performance improvement. The authors note specifically that H&SC organisations make a distinction between the two most prevalent team types and structures of multi-disciplinary and inter-professional and plan more targeted workforce development for individual and team learning for resiliency within these team structures. In doing so organisations may gain further advantages such as improved team performance in problematic care situations.

Data captured are self-reported perceptions of H&SC managers. Participant responses in the focus group situation may have been those expected rather than those actually modelled in the realities of team work practice (Tanggaard, 2008). Further, in the sample all participants were engaged in a higher education programme and it is possible participants may have been more engaged with their practice and thinking more critically about the research questions than those not currently undertaking postgraduate study (Ng et al., 2014). Nor were the researchers able to observe the participants in team work practice over time or during critical care delivery incidents.

The preliminary link made here between multi-disciplinary and inter-professional team type, and their different stress points and subsequent workforce intervention, contributes to the theory of resilient teams. This provides organisations with a foundation for the focus of workplace learning and training around resilience. H&SC practitioner views presented offer a greater understanding of team work processes, together with a target for planning workforce development strategy to sustain resilience in team working.

This preliminary research found that participants in H&SC valued the team as a very important vehicle for building and sustaining resilience when dealing with complex H&SC situations. The capitalisation on the distinction in team type and individual working practices between those of interprofessional and multidisciplinary teams and the model of team learning, may have important consequences for building resilience in H&SC teams. These findings may be significant for workforce educators seeking to develop and build effective practice tools to sustain team working.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the introduction of distributed leadership and team working in a therapy department in a healthcare organisation and to explore the factors that enabled the introduction to be successful.

This paper used a case study methodology. Qualitative and quantitative information was gathered from one physiotherapy department over a period of 24 months.

Distributed leadership and team working were central to a number of system changes that were initiated by the department, which led to improvements in patient waiting times for therapy. The paper identifies six factors that appear to have influenced the successful introduction of distributed learning and team working in this case.

This is a single case study. It would be interesting to explore whether these factors are found in other cases where distributed leadership is introduced in healthcare organisations.

The paper provides an example of successful introduction of distributed leadership, which has had a positive impact on services to patients. Other therapy teams may consider how the approach may be adopted or adapted to their own circumstances.

Although distributed leadership is thought to be important in healthcare, particularly when organisational change is needed, there are very few studies of the practicalities of how it can be introduced.

Eversure Textiles was founded in 1965 and moved to its present location in 1976. In 1986 the company became a wholly‐owned subsidiary of Sirdar Plc, which is based in Wakefield. Eversure is one of the leading manufacturers of window dressings in the UK and its marketplace is very varied including independent retailers, mail order, high street multiples, export, and as such, this variety places great demand on the business, specifically on delivery performance. The aim of the paper is to describe the introduction of team working in Eversure and to discuss the advantages derived by the company from this decision.

Purpose – To review three key areas of work managed by the Team Resource Management and Patient Safety Team (TRM), itself part of the Clinical Governance Support Team. Design/methodology/approach – Information has been collected from TRM staff, UK NHS Trust staff, research publications and reports. Findings – As treatment programmes become more complex and health care is delivered by multidisciplinary teams, the quality of care and of patient safety is ever more dependent on effective team working. External support and expertise can be effective in helping clinical teams achieve their full potential. Safety and team work practices from other domains such as aviation can be successfully translated into the work of clinical teams. Specific coaching input can also improve the effectiveness of teams and, where teams are recognised as having difficulty working together, external support in particular approaches and techniques can resolve team working problems. Originality/value – This review summarises the benefits of a healthcare support function which is specifically dedicated to the understanding, supporting and shaping of clinical teams.