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This study aims to understand how distributed agile teams (DATs), encouraged by globalisation, and recently accelerated by the COVID-19 outbreak, adopt agile practices to achieve project goals by working virtually.

This study developed a multiple-case study involving four companies undergoing several changes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors collected data mainly through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with seven key informants. Moreover, this study operates data triangulation by referring to secondary data sources and developing a grounded theory data analysis.

The findings highlight three main categories associated with the DAT functioning, namely, “DATs’ implementation issues”, “elements supporting DATs’ implementation” and “outcomes of DATs’ implementation”, that show DATs’ primary triggers, critical aspects and supportive actions for team functioning.

This paper produced valuable theoretical knowledge of DATs’ dynamics within a socio-technical approach that distinguishes soft and hard variables supporting DAT implementation. Moreover, the evidence provides useful suggestions for managers about creating an objective-oriented virtual work environment based on DATs’ self-organisation, digitally shared leadership and occasional on-site socialisation.

This paper provides new and interesting insights that bring to evidence the main variables related to DATs’ adoption and dynamics, showing supporting activities that enhanced their operativity. It provides a valuable descriptive framework for academics and practitioners to understand DATs’ functioning better and take action to improve their implementation.

Today, companies are struggling to develop their human resources analytics (HRA) capability, although interest in the subject is rapidly increasing. Furthermore, the academic literature on the subject is immature with limited practical guidance or comprehensive models that could support organisations in the development of their HRA capability. To address this issue, the aim of this paper is to provide a maturity model – i.e. HRAMM – and an interdependency matrix through which an organisation can (1) operationalise its HRA capability and assess its organisational maturity; (2) generate harmonious development roadmaps to improve its HRA capability; and (3) enable benchmarking and continuous improvement.

The research described in this paper is based on the popular methodology proposed by Becker et al. (2009) and the procedure for maturity evaluation developed by Gastaldi et al. (2018). This method combines academic rigour and field experience in analytics, in a process spanning eight main phases that involves literature reviews and knowledge creation techniques.

We define HRA maturity through four areas and 14 dimensions, providing a comprehensive model to operationalise HRA capability. Additionally, we argue that HRA maturity develops through an evolutionary path described in four discrete stages of maturity that go beyond traditional analytics sophistication. Lastly, the interdependency matrix reveals specific enablers for the development of HRA.

This paper provides practitioners with useful tools to monitor, evaluate and plan their HRA development path. Additionally, our research helps practitioners to prioritise their work and investment, generating an effective roadmap for developing and improving their HRA capability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide a model for evaluating the maturity of HRA capability plus an interdependency matrix to evaluate systematically the prerequisites and synergies among its constituting dimensions.

This paper aims to determine the impact of perceived virtuality on team dynamics and outcomes by adopting the Input-Mediators-Outcome (IMO) framework. Further, it also investigates the mediating role of team processes and emergent states.

The authors collected survey data from 315 individuals working in virtual teams (VTs) in the information technology sector in India using both offline and online questionnaires. They performed the analysis using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).

The authors investigated two sets of hypotheses – both direct and indirect (or mediation interactions). Results show that psychological empowerment and conflict management are significant in managing VTs. Also, perceived virtuality impacts team outcomes, i.e. perceived team performance, team satisfaction and subjective well-being.

The interplay between the behavioural team process (conflict management) and the emergent state (psychological empowerment) was examined. The study also helps broaden our understanding of the various psychological variables associated with teamwork in the context of VTs.

Findings from this study will aid in assessing the consequences of virtual teamwork at both individual and organisational levels, such as guiding the design and sustainability of VT arrangements, achieving higher productivity in VTs, and designing effective and interactive solutions in the virtual space.

The study examined the interplay between behavioural team processes (such as conflict management) and emergent states (such as psychological empowerment). The study also theorises and empirically tests the relationships between perceived virtuality and team outcomes (i.e. both affective and effectiveness). It may serve as a guide to understanding team dynamics in VTs better.

This exploratory study attempts to enhance the current understanding of the research and practice of VTs within a developing economy.

Manufacturers face various challenges and risks during their digital servitization (DS), due to the complexity caused by introducing breakthrough technologies, increasingly complex product-service solutions and new stakeholders in the business network. The process necessitates the implementation of various changes that usually happen over a long period of time. Using complexity management as a theoretical lens, this paper delves into manufacturers’ DS journeys and explores how manufacturers manage the associated complexities.

This paper investigates the DS journey of two manufacturers in a longitudinal case study from 2014 to 2021.

Three main complexity management actions during the DS journey were identified: shaping the digital service system, shaping the organization and shaping the network. Tied to different types of complexities, these actions demonstrate how manufacturers navigate their journey. The findings also reveal different complexity management approaches used at the different stages of this journey.

This paper offers a comprehensive framework for understanding complexity management in the DS journey, including the types of complexities, complexity management actions and complexity management approaches and their rationale. This paper shows that different requirements are created during emerge, consolidate and evolve stages of the DS journey. Manufacturers need a dynamic approach that considers changes in complexities and actions over time.

A healthcare unit's effectiveness largely depends on how well its interprofessional teams work together. Unfortunately, the strategies used to improve these teams often lack substance. This study analyzed these strategies and found a performance gap.

This study took a unique mixed-method approach, systematically reviewing both qualitative and quantitative studies that identified strategies to enhance interprofessional teams in healthcare units. To gauge the effectiveness of these strategies, the researcher utilized an Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) in four specialized clinical training centers in Hamadan province, Iran. The analysis of the IPA involved 35 experts from these centers as the statistical population.

Based on a systematic review, there are seven categories: contextual, strategic, communication, organizational, individual, Human Resources Management (HRM), and environmental for promoting interprofessional teams with a total of 36 sub-indicator. Based on the IPA, the HRM aspect shows the most extensive performance gap. The individual and organizational aspects fall under resource wastage, and the environmental aspect is within the indifferent zone. Also, some critical sub-indicators, such as incentives/rewards, roles and responsibilities, financial resources, team-initiated innovation, the culture of respect, partner resources, humility, data availability, set expectations, and team availability, are in the weak areas.

This research has identified critical areas for improvement in promoting teamwork in clinical training centers through a comprehensive gap analysis. It also presents practical policy solutions to address these weak points, providing a clear roadmap for enhancing interprofessional teams in healthcare units.

Improving teamwork in healthcare can be challenging, but it is possible with proper strategies and tools. One of the highlights of the recent study was the combination of systematic review studies with IPA to identify areas for improving interprofessional teamwork in clinical training centers.

This study aims to investigate how configurations of boundary objects (BOs) support innovation teams in developing innovative product concepts. Specifically, it explores the effectiveness of different artefact configurations in facilitating collaboration and bridging knowledge boundaries during the concept development process.

The research is based on data from ten undergraduate innovation teams working with an industry partner in a creative industry. Six categories of BOs are identified, which serve as tools for collaboration. The study applies fsQCA (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to analyse the configurations employed by the teams to bridge knowledge boundaries and support the development of innovative product concepts.

The findings of the study reveal two distinct groups of configurations: product envisioning and product design. The configurations within the “product envisioning” group support the activities of visioning and pivoting, enabling teams to innovate the product concept by altering the product vision. On the other hand, the configurations within the “product design” group facilitate experimenting, modelling and prototyping, allowing teams to design the attributes of the innovative product concept while maintaining the product vision.

This research contributes to the field of innovation by providing insights into the role of BOs and their configurations in supporting innovation teams during concept development. The results suggest that configurations of “product envisioning” support bridging semantic knowledge boundaries, while configurations within “product design” bridge pragmatic knowledge boundaries. This understanding contributes to the broader field of knowledge integration and innovation in design contexts.

This aims to explore the relationship between the agile methods barriers in large-scale contexts and the benefits for business, team and product and process, exploring the organizational readiness (OR) mediating role.

We propose a theoretical model through survey-based research, applying partial least square structural equation modelling.

We confirmed that OR mediating effect on the relationship between agile methods barriers and team benefits. We operationalized OR in a broader context that embeds the strategic alignment of large-scale agile implementation, considering variables such as organizational structure and culture.

The data are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal, which limits temporal interpretations of the associations between agile methods and organizational issues.

The findings offer a way forward for organizations already using or planning to implement agile management to understand the pathway towards achieving the expected benefits. Our study also unveils the importance of looking at OR when implementing such a complex change in management from traditional to large-scale contexts.

Our results show the significant and positive influence of agile method on all three benefit variables (team, business, product and processes). Furthermore, we identified the significant and positive mediating role of OR on the relationship between agile method and team benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the areas and logic of integration of different stakeholders using different methods and to analyse their applicability and challenges in practical projects. The main aim is to describe how these different methods impact value creation.

Action design research was carried out in a large hospital construction project where the first author acted as an “involved researcher” and the second author acted as an “outside researcher”. Two workshops were organised to evaluate the direct and indirect challenges and benefits of the applied four methods and to explain how different methods enable value creation.

All the studied methods provide good results in terms of usability and commitment to the aims of the project, thus delivering the direct benefits expected. Process, people and tools logic works well in this case project when applying the methods properly. Significant evidence was provided on secondary deliverables of the methods, and all analysed methods had a significant impact in the area of leading people, clarifying what “focus on people” means and how it is enabled.

Focus on people can be achieved through different operative methods if applied in the right way. It is necessary to select the most suitable methods based on all the direct and indirect deliverables.

This case project offered a platform to analyse integration methods in a real-life project using the collaborative contract method. The authors were able to participate in the analysis by taking action from the very beginning of the project in terms of training, learning, continuous development and coaching of these methods and evaluating the applicability.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This chapter provides an exhaustive analysis on the development of cricket in China in order to advance existing theories of cricket's development and consider future implications for the international game. Adapted from two journal articles of He and Malcolm (2021) and He et al. (2023), it structures the development of cricket in China according to two key historical era: cricket as an ‘expatriate-only’ game and cricket as an ‘Asian Games sport’. The first era, cricket as an ‘expatriate-only’ game, is constructed according to three key phases: early development; post-war and the ‘opening-up’ era. The second era, cricket as an ‘Asian Games sport’, is constructed according to five periods: budding period (2003–2005), peak period (2006–2010), stable period (2011–2014), trough period (2015–2018) and revival period (2019–present). This paper offers a broadened examination of cricket's development in China, contending that cricket in the country (specifically the mainland) manifests itself in two distinct forms, that is, first, it survives as a grassroots sport, sustained by a resilient expatriate diaspora community. Second, it exists as a sport primarily directed by the state and bolstered by the Asian Games and deeply integrated into the Chinese educational system. It concludes that the degree to which the co-existed motives of multiple stakeholders aligned and misaligned, and the interdependence with the unstable ‘Asian Games sport status’ will serve as the cornerstone for cricket's future in China and contribute significantly to the international sport's global development.