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This paper enhances our understanding of how national culture impacts manufacturing performance (assembly speed, consistency between teams, etc.) during a production process move. The authors also investigate the efficacy of co-location as a strategy to enhance knowledge transfer from one organization to another.

To study the impact of national culture on production process moves, the authors develop and employ a team-based behavioral experiment within and between an individualist society (the United States) and a collectivist one (China). The authors also examine the impact of co-location on knowledge transfer effectiveness within and between these two unique cultures.

Interestingly, co-location has little impact on the performance of US recipient teams. Without co-location, Chinese recipient team performance lags significantly behind the US teams. However, firms can overcome these knowledge transfer challenges by co-locating source and recipient team members. These results suggest that firms should assess the national cultural context when considering co-location to manage their production move. There are contexts where co-location may be incredibly useful to facilitate an effective knowledge transfer (e.g. collectivist cultures like China) and contexts where this approach may not be as valuable (e.g. individualistic cultures such as the United States).

This research contributes to the academic literature in several ways. First, while past research demonstrates that national culture can be an essential barrier to information and knowledge sharing, this paper extends these findings showing that co-location may effectively overcome this barrier. After the authors offer and test the merits of co-location, they also establish the boundary conditions of this approach by showing that the effect of co-location on knowledge transfer is contingent on the cultural context. This contribution enhances our understanding of the relationship between national culture and knowledge sharing and has implications for managers developing approaches to transfer knowledge between cultures. Second, the authors develop and execute a novel cross-country experimental design. While cross-country experiments have been done before (e.g. Ozer et al. 2014, Kuwabara et al. 2007, etc.), it is still rare to see such experiments due to them being “technically difficult and costly” (Ozer et al. 2014, p. 2437). This research not only offer insights into how teams of people from individualist and collectivist societies send, receive and comprehend production knowledge. It also documents how these teams convert this knowledge into production results.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions under which a co-design team comprised of in-house professionals and leading-edge service users can generate innovative service design concepts.

The investigation used a field-experimental design to conduct two studies. Observations and open-ended questionnaires were used to examine cross-comparison matrices with experts rating the generated outcomes and t-tests being used to compare the outcome ratings between teams of different compositions.

The outcomes produced by a co-design team seem to be linked to the team diversity – process facilitation relationship. Bringing a variety of knowledge and skills into the team can lead to original outcomes, while a high disparity between members’ backgrounds can require extensive efforts to facilitate a collaborative process. Separation between users’ objectives can result in a user-driven process and outcomes that are too specific for the broader marketplace. Co-design teams that characterize minimum separation, maximum variety, and moderate disparity are likely to produce the most promising results.

The research was restricted to a narrowly defined study setting and samples. Future research should replicate the current study in other service contexts using different team compositions.

Co-design requires the careful selection of users based on their background and motivations, as well as the facilitation of a process that enables the team to collaboratively transform relevant knowledge into innovative outcomes.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the team composition – process facilitation relationship affecting innovation outcomes. Doing so provides a more fine-grained picture of the co-design team composition and the facilitation requirements for service design.

The adoption of a team approach in new product design, particularly in recent years, has shaped the nature and context of design activities. Concepts of teaming and team building have been around for many decades and are seen as the means for enhancing organizational and individual performance. It is assumed that through teaming, that is, more social interactions, shared focus and physical proximity, the design process and its outcome will be improved. Virtual teaming, a relatively recent phenomenon, is becoming increasingly attractive to organizations due to developments in communication technologies. The implications of a remote distributed working environment, though, are not illustrated or experienced extensively. This paper explores the evolution of virtual co‐location of product design teams within the context of concurrent engineering. It, thus, attempts to highlight paradoxes and dilemmas in setting up physically and virtually co‐located teams. These issues are illustrated in case studies from ongoing pan‐European projects that depict product design and development activities in certain manufacturing organizations. A survey of some manufacturing firms highlights these dilemmas as perceived by participating firms. The paper closes by examining the extent that teaming, as a performance enhancer, can be diffused to other activities than design, and thus the extent that experiences can be shared within the organization.

This paper aims to explore the influence of collective orientation (CO) on coordination and team performance for interdependently working teams while controlling for person-related and team variables.

A total of 58 two-person-teams participated in a simulation-based firefighting task. The laboratory study took 2 h for each team. The effects of CO in tasks of increasing complexity were investigated under the consideration of control variables, and the relations between CO, coordination and team performance were assessed using a multivariate latent growth curve modeling approach and by estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models.

Team members high on CO performed significantly better than low-scoring members. The effect of CO on team performance was independent from an increasing task complexity, whereas the effect of CO on coordination was not. The effect of CO on team performance was mediated by coordination within the team, and the positive relation between CO and performance persists when including group efficacy into the model.

As CO is a modifiable person-related variable and important for effective team processes, additional research on factors influencing this attitude during work is assumed to be valuable.

CO is especially important for highly interdependently working teams in high-risk-organizations such as the fire service or nuclear power plants, where errors lead to severe consequences for human beings or the environment.

No other studies showed the importance of CO for coordination and team performance while considering teamwork-relevant variables and the interdependence of work.

We advance entrepreneurship research by developing a theoretical model of how founding teams form. Our neo-Carnegie model situates nascent founders in particular network-structural milieus, engaging in aspiration-driven search for and evaluation of prospective co-founders. The formation of co-founding ties between nascent founders can be divided into four theoretical steps, which we label activation, evaluation, approach, and reciprocation. Successful founding team formation is a consequence of mutually favorable evaluations by nascent founders in a multi-sided matching process. Nascent founders with higher and less flexible aspirations are more likely to undertake distant search for co-founders by seeking referrals, forming ties with strangers, and forming new ties to social foci where they might meet potential co-founders. Churn in newly formed founding teams emerges as a consequence of shifting dominant coalition dynamics in the founding team caused by organic venture evolution and intentional changes in strategic direction. Our theoretical model provides new insights on the formation pathways of founding teams, their initial task and relational resource endowments, and initial team dynamics.

This study aims to increase understanding about the co-creation of digital facilities management (FM) services with and for FM during a construction project.

The paper reports a case study on the co-creation of a digital facilities management service during the Mission Bay medical center construction project for the University of California, San Francisco. The sub-contractors and the FM team co-created a quick-response (QR) code system for valves on the project. This digital service is now used by the FM team for training purposes and in emergency situations when information on valves and their service areas is quickly needed. Researchers made on-site observations, conducted 84 interviews and reviewed archival data in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

The findings show that a successful co-creation process consists of three elements: a dialogue between the project parties, the creation of shared context between the project parties and the creation of shared understanding about the FM’s needs and the service providers’ ways of satisfying those needs. The study describes ways to promote these elements.

Previous studies emphasize the need for digital FM but few explain how FM teams can be involved in creating digital services for them. This paper describes how to co-create digital FM services with and for FM in the context of a construction project.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the future of social work can be situated as part of a fundamental shift towards co-located, multi-disciplinary practice and networking. It is argued that social work has a key role to play in co-located, multi-disciplinary child welfare practice, and indeed can be a leading profession in this context. Situating social work in this way involves re-conceptualising social work as a network profession, rather than a silo profession. The paper builds on an earlier study of five multi-professional, co-located teams updated with interviews with social workers currently situated in such co-located teams. An exploration of the role of social work in relation to child sexual exploitation is provided.

The first study was an ESRC-funded study and used a multi-method approach to understanding the work of five multi-disciplinary, co-located teams working with children, young people and families (Frost and Robinson, 2016). Four co-located teams with eight social workers participated in the research. This was followed up by a small scale study involving semi-structured interviews with six social workers situated in co-located, multi-disciplinary teams. The focus of the study was on professional identity and working practices with other related professionals.

The ESRC study explored the complexity of co-located, multi-disciplinary professional teams – exploring how they worked together and analysing the challenges they face. Professionals felt that such working enhanced their learning, their skill base and the process of information sharing. Challenges included structural and organisational issues and differences in ideological and explanatory frameworks. The follow up study of six social workers found that they gained satisfaction from being situated in such co-located, multi-disciplinary teams, but also faced some identified challenges. Child sexual exploitation is explored as an example of the work of co-located, multi-disciplinary teams.

Semi-structured interviews with social workers based in co-located, multi-disciplinary teams have provided valuable insights into the operation of social workers in such settings. It is acknowledged that all the interviews are with social workers in co-located settings and that further work is required on the views of other social workers in reference to their experiences and views in relation to multi-disciplinary working.

The paper brings together theoretical positions and policy contextual material with qualitative research data which situate the social worker in wider multi-disciplinary, co-located settings. Drawing on qualitative, semi-structured interviews with 14 social workers in such teams, the paper aims to contribute to an understanding and development of the future of the social work role in these contexts, arguing that this is fundamental to the future of social work.

Social media has enhanced the ability of fans to interact with each other. Whilst previous research investigates fan co-creation, few studies focus on the interactive effects within the co-creation process. The authors develop a model for synthesizing the interactive concepts related to fan co-creation in social media, which leads to team identification.

Participants (N = 483) were recruited from fans of clubs in the Persian Gulf Pro League of Iran. Structural equation modelling was applied to test the research model.

The results showed that fan knowledge facilitates fan co-creation, which in turn leads to team identification. Additionally, fan engagement had a moderating effect on the mediating role of fan co-creation in the association between fan knowledge and team identification.

The findings suggest that fan knowledge is an important antecedent of fan co-creation and highlight the significance of fan co-creation in promoting team identification in highly engaged fans at football clubs.

The current study contributes to the field of fan co-creation and provides significant implications for sport fan marketers.

Many firms use customer co-creation practices with the aim of benefiting from their customers’ knowledge, skills and resources. This paper aims to explore co-creation processes which involve users with different background characteristics and motivational drivers.

The study builds on an analysis of data from six teams in which users collaborated with in-house professionals for the development of new service concepts. Observations and open-ended questionnaires provided insights into the teams’ development processes. Independent experts rated the generated concepts. The data were analysed using cross-comparison matrices.

The findings suggest that the co-creation process and outcomes can be influenced by numerous intra-team factors, including relationship and task conflicts, participation style, team bonding, team identity and cohesiveness and intra-team collaboration. Their occurrence and influence seem to be linked with a specific team composition. A conceptual co-creation process model and six propositions are used to describe the complex relationships between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

Research that investigates user involvement in teams needs to consider the complexity of intra-team factors affecting the development process and outcomes. The findings are limited to a specific setting, design task and user sample. Future research should replicate this study in different sectors.

Key to customer co-creation is the systematic recruitment of users based on their background characteristics and motivational drivers. For instance, the involvement of users with very specific innovation-related benefit expectations can cause conflict, leading to narrowly focused outcomes. This, however, can be mitigated by the form of facilitation and roles adopted by in-house professionals. Understanding intra-team dynamics can allow the firm to assemble and facilitate customer co-creation so that generated outcomes can align with set innovation targets.

This paper provides original insights into the “black box” of the customer co-creation process and the complex relationship between team composition, intra-team factors and key innovation outcomes.

This chapter reports on the results from several extended qualitative investigations of co-teaching in science and social studies content area classes, on both elementary and secondary levels. In these investigations, co-teaching partners were studied and interviewed over several years, with the view of uncovering attitudes and procedures closely associated with successful collaborative partnerships. In some cases, these investigations took place in the context of implementation of research-based instructional strategies. Analysis of data from these investigations revealed that there was considerable variability in the way co-teaching practices were implemented, the attitudes toward co-teaching expressed by teachers, and the success of the co-teaching partnerships. It was thought that several variables, including content expertise, concerns for high-stakes testing, and the personal compatibility of co-teachers played an important role in the success of the co-teaching relationship.