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Managers working in multinational companies carry out their organizational goals through multicultural teams. Performance of multicultural teams can be examined from an intercultural communication perspective. Executives, managers, management consultants, and educators interested in improving multicultural team performance need to know about intercultural competence and how it affects team performance. This article provides a working definition of high‐performance multicultural teams and outlines the challenges multicultural teams face. These definitions along with extensive interview data and detailed self‐reports of American and Russian managers working in multicultural teams emphasize the high importance of intercultural competence in improving the performance of these teams. This article also serves to highlight the characteristics of high‐performance multicultural teams, the common challenges of multicultural teams, and the sources of these challenges.

This paper seeks to focus on the design and testing of a web‐based online board game for teaching undergraduate students information literacy skills and concepts.

Project team members with expertise in game play, creative writing, programming, library research, graphic design and information seeking developed a web‐based board game in which students used digital library resources to answer substantive questions on a scholarly topic. The project team hosted game play in a class of 75 undergraduate students. The instructor offered an extra‐credit incentive to boost participation resulting in 49 students on 13 teams playing the game. Post‐game focus group interviews revealed problematic features and redesign priorities.

A total of six teams were successful meeting the criteria for the instructor's grade incentive achieving a 53.1 percent accuracy rate on their answers to substantive questions about the black death; 35.7 percent was the accuracy rate for the seven unsuccessful teams. Discussed in detail are needed improvements to problematic game features such as offline tasks, feedback, challenge functionality, and the game's black death theme.

Information literacy games test what players already know. Because this project's successful teams answered substantive questions about the black death at accuracy rates 20 points higher than the estimated probability of guessing, students did the research during game play which demonstrates that games have merit for teaching students information literacy skills and concepts.

Drawing on a qualitative study of youth microfranchising in the Tanzanian computer sales, service, and training sector, the purpose of this study is to identify the challenges and advantages of a team-based approach to owning and operating a microfranchise business in the context of a least developed country. However, disadvantaged entrepreneurs typically still lack a critical mass of specialized technical skills and general managerial skills to manage a differentiated and competitive microenterprise business. A team-based approach to microfranchising can allow for combining specialized skills among more than one business owner; however, the potential risks and opportunities of team-microfranchising have not been studied. This study makes a contribution toward filling this gap by identifying five challenges and five advantages of team microfranchising which provide guidance for future research and practice.

Qualitative data (interviews, observation and archival documents) were analyzed from an in-depth case study of youth microfranchising in the Tanzanian computer sales, service and training sector.

Results revealed that microfranchise businesses in sectors that require multiple complementary higher-level skills are suited to a team microfranchise approach. Findings suggest that the greater the limitations on franchisee skills and the more pronounced the lack of public goods and institutions, the greater the potential for team microfranchising to overcome the entrepreneurial capacity constraints and institutional voids in low-income market contexts. Further, team-based microfranchises may be able to compete more effectively in sectors where economies of scale are not a significant factor, such as service industries and small-scale niche manufacturing. Also identified are five potential challenges and five areas of opportunity for practitioners seeking to implement a team-microfranchise approach.

The current study examined microfranchising among teams of youth in the Tanzanian computer sales and service sector. Further research could examine team microfranchising among other demographic groups in different sectors and the different regulatory, institutional and cultural contexts of other regions and countries.

If developed effectively in the right contexts, the team-based approach to microfranchising can potentially double the job-creation impacts of microfranchising ventures.

This study is the first to assess the viability and boundary conditions of a team-based approach to microfranchising.

Our aim is to catalog how the functional behaviors that leaders engage in should change over time based on the needs of the team – thereby presenting a functional view of team leadership over time.

A critical review of the literature on team leadership, team development, and teams was conducted. This information was critically analyzed and integrated to produce a framework serving to depict how team needs change over time, and based on this, highlight the leadership behaviors which should be most critical at particular points in time. Based on the limited amount of literature that explicitly focused on team leadership over time, a series of propositions which flow from the framework are also put forth.

Great strides have been made in understanding team leadership; however, little work was uncovered that directly focused on how leadership dynamics change over time within the context of the team. Leveraging the limited work that existed, we developed a framework (and propositions) that serves to delineate how team leadership functions change over time. In doing so, we have integrated work delineating leadership functions within transition and action phases of team task cycles along with that highlighting how the role of the leader may vary based on team developmental needs.

The originality of this chapter lies in its using a functional approach to leadership to argue how the efficacy of particular leadership functions change over time based on team task cycles and development needs. This, in turn, can be used to focus training efforts.

VIBu – Virtual Teams in International Business – is the name of a training concept, which is aimed at familiarizing participants with collaborating in a virtual environment. Based on the online business simulation RealGame™, participants are assigned to multicultural virtual teams that represent different companies. These companies are either competing with or depending on each other in typical business processes of an internationally operating manufacturing company. Interaction and negotiation are required throughout the whole simulation. All communication takes place via information and communication technology, mainly Skype and Skype chat. The main challenge in the environment is that participants are located in different countries and time zones all over the world. The book chapter first outlines some of the challenges of global teamwork that organizations face. We argue that students need to learn how to navigate in global teams before they leave university as they are bound to become involved in organizational global teamwork sooner rather than later. We draw on frameworks for experiential learning (e.g., Kolb's learning model, Kolb, 1984) and the constructivist learning paradigm (Lainema, 2009) to outline the learning experiences that students need to gather in order to become effective global team members. In addition, we highlight the potential for learner engagement that this approach offers. The chapter concludes by highlighting the key learning and teaching outcomes from incorporating this cutting-edge simulation technology. Furthermore, we direct the reader's attention to ways in which the simulation can be used for research purposes, international inter-university collaborations, and multidisciplinary research on teaching practices and engaged learning.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to complement the research that has been done in global projects so far and has two objectives: to study organizational challenges in global projects, compared with those of traditional projects; and to define and analyze the main organizational challenges the project team members and project managers meet when assigned to global projects.

The research is based on a survey sent to 550 project managers and people working in a global environment, data from 246 respondents, and 30 interviews with senior project team members.

The results show that the main organizational challenges are managing the external stakeholders in the global project; the local government in the country, local content demand, local authorities, local industry, and lack of support from the base organization and management. One of the conclusions is that companies need a relationship management approach to managing these challenges in global projects.

Organizational challenges are an underestimated area in projects and when it comes to an in-depth understanding of organizational challenges in global projects only a very few studies have been published compared with other project management issues. This article contributes to existing research by presenting the organizational challenges in global projects and how they differ from traditional projects.

Drawing on job demands and resources theory and the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, this study aims to investigate the effect of team knowledge complexity on team information sharing and information searching and examine whether team learning goal orientation mediates these effects.

The authors conducted two studies. Study 1 used a field survey study conducted among 374 employees positioned in 68 new product teams. Study 2 used a three-wave online survey study conducted among 208 leaders to investigate the teams they managed.

The findings of the two studies reveal that team knowledge complexity has a positive direct effect on team information sharing and information searching. Furthermore, team learning goal orientation mediates these two relationships.

The findings indicate that team knowledge complexity is generally beneficial for the team information process. Therefore, instead of fearing an increase in the knowledge complexity of the projects, organizations should dare to present challenge demands to team members to enhance their engagement in information processing. Organizations could also pay attention to team member selection during team composition processes. For example, selecting team members with a high level of learning goal orientation is helpful in facilitating team information processing.

Although previous studies have found that knowledge complexity is beneficial for team output, less is known about how knowledge complexity influences team processes. This study clarifies the relationships between team knowledge complexity, information sharing and information searching and examines team learning goal orientation as a vital mediator.

The aim of this article is to describe a consultation/mentoring dialogue between a researcher of multi‐agency teams and a multi‐agency team manager, by providing a content analysis of the notes of a series of mentoring dialogues, presented in the form of a conversation. Themes discussed include: governance and the role of the steering group; managing the agencies; the role of the team manager; explanatory and practice/intervention models; job roles; professional procedures; workload; team functioning and culture; and the consultation process itself. The article suggests that research findings can usefully inform the development of new multi‐agency teams and that collaboration between researchers and service managers can be mutually beneficial.

The purpose of this article is to share the lessons learned about the role of team sponsors in action-learning teams as part of community-based health leadership development programs.

This case study uses program survey results from fellow participants, action learning coaches and team sponsors to understand the value of sponsors to the teams, the roles they most often filled and the challenges they faced as team sponsors.

The extent to which the sponsors were perceived as having contributed to the work of the action learning teams varied greatly from team to team. Most sponsors agreed that they were well informed about their role. The roles sponsors most frequently played were to provide the teams with input and support, serve as a liaison to the community and serve as a sounding board, motivator and cheerleader. The most common challenges or barriers team sponsors faced in this role were keeping engaged in the process, adjusting to the role and feeling disconnected from the program.

This work provides insights for program developers and community foundations who are interested in building the capacity for health leadership by linking community sponsors with emerging leaders engaged in an action learning experience.

This work begins to fill a gap in the literature. The role of team sponsors has been studied for single organization work teams but there is a void of understanding about the role of sponsors with multi-organizational teams working to improve health while also learning about leadership.