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The purpose of this study is to explore how gender influences peer assessment in team-building activities in China.

A nine-player Werewolf game was adopted to conduct the experiment. Nine abilities were defined to evaluate players’ performances. Before the game, players filled out a self-assessment questionnaire (five-point Likert scale). After the game, players evaluated other game members’ performances using the same questionnaire. Data were analyzed using linear regression.

The results showed that gender bias clearly existed in team-building activities, with men more likely to receive better peer assessment than women. In addition, when women presented themselves as actively as men did, they received less favorable evaluations than men, whereas their failures were more likely to be exaggerated.

This study may help build harmonious teams for gender equality, and we give practical suggestions respectively from the perspective of female employees, their managers, and their companies.

Given the importance of team-building activities in teamwork, fair evaluations of team-building performances are essential. However, gender influences on peer assessment in team-building activities in China remain unclear. This study adds new and important knowledge to research on gender bias in teams.

Better work can be accomplished through team and organisational activity if people are given an opportunity to develop their own skills and approaches to working together. This report on team‐building in Egypt is offered as one approach to development. The critical need is for managers to build teamwork and share responsibilities to face world problems effectively, management development being the first step in human resource development, which is the essential step in world development.

Describes the design and early implementation of a team‐based quality improvement campaign in progress within the Department of Manufacturing Engineering at City University of Hong Kong to improve the performance of its laboratory services. Midway into a two‐year implementation plan aimed at fostering a worker‐oriented group culture to achieve the quality targets, the “Quality Campaign in Manufacturing Engineering Laboratories (QCIMEL) discusses, via the working committee, the rationale of the programme design and structure, and reports progress at the end of the one‐year mark.

The purpose of this paper is to present The Build and Bond, an experiential exercise which engages student teams while they apply team dynamics, enhance team skills and foster team member interpersonal bonds.

During The Build and Bond, teams design and execute their own team-building activity. Specifically, teams set goals, generate ideas, make decisions, create a team-building activity, develop implementation plans and ultimately execute the activity. Finally, during an all-class debrief discussion, teams describe their team-building activities, connect their experiences to the learning objectives and reflect on how these lessons can be applied in future team experiences. Pretest and posttest surveys were used to determine if participants perceived increases in team performance and cohesion following The Build and Bond.

All teams reported that their activity added value, was preferred over an instructor-assigned team-building activity and improved team states. Findings from t-tests supported an improvement in team performance and cohesion.

The Build and Bond is designed to help students feel more equipped to communicate, have fun and work interdependently with current and future team members.

Teams design the team-building activity themselves, so members are often more interested in participating and engaging during the team-building activity.

The purpose of this study is to understand how hotel managers perceive the benefits that may accrue to employees and hotels through their engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

In-depth interviews with 23 hotel managers, representing various functional responsibilities, were undertaken across four provinces in Thailand. The sample included local and international chain hotels.

Hotel managers from all functional areas and levels acknowledged that CSR substantially enhanced the employer–employee relationship. Five themes depicting the beneficial effects were identified: a relationship unifying process, having fun, feeling pride, developing skills and building teamwork. These themes reflect three core factors of emotional responses, social capital and task-related skills.

The paper illustrates that CSR activities can be customised to elicit specific effects that will engender beneficial outcomes for both hotel management and employees.

This paper provides new insights into how hotel managers perceive the employer-employee relationship is enhanced through CSR engagement. In addition, the paper presents a practical model that will be of interest to both academics and practitioners.

First, presents a new model for developing a learning organization which is well within the grasp of today’s organizations, since many of these already have the main components which provide the platform for this. Second, provides four measures of how an experiential workshop used to develop learning organization components may be evaluated. Despite huge international popularity for experiential workshops, effectiveness measurements are rarely used. Third, presents a case study of how to begin developing a learning organization through developing middle management in a metropolitan ambulance service.

The pressures currently facing US health care organisations, especially hospitals, in a risk environment are analysed. An important route to maximising efficiency is identified as improved collaboration amongst personnel. Team‐building interventions are recommended and the elements essential to effective team building are listed together with the benefits that can accrue from such exercises.

This paper reports a study that compares two different team-building approaches. The first one is the traditional top-down management approach. The second one is a hybrid bottom-up approach based on the consensus model. The aim of this paper is to determine which of the two approaches is the most effective across a number of performance measurements.

A case study is presented using data collected and analysed from a small family-owned vehicle maintenance firm. A mixed methods approach to data collection is utilized, including participant observation, focus groups, survey questionnaires and organizational performance reports. A convenience sample of eight routine maintenance jobs was selected for team performance comparison purposes. The measures used for comparing the two team approaches were lead time, customer satisfaction ratings and employees’ satisfaction ratings.

The teams assembled using the consensus approach performed better than those selected using the traditional top-down approach across all three performance measures, i.e. the jobs were completed faster and both customers and employees were more satisfied.

This is an exploratory case study limited to one small family-owned business and, as such, findings may not be generalizable.

As an alternative to manager selected work teams, managers should involve and empower employees to select their own teams. This has the potential to offer benefits for both customers and employees of faster delivery times and increase satisfaction, as well as increase productivity for the firm.

This is the first field study to compare the performance of a hybrid, bottom-up approach to team building with the performance of a more traditional management, top-down approach to team building. It paves the way for a wider study to be conducted in the future to test the findings’ generalizability.

The purpose of this paper is to establish whether different gender groups develop in similar or dissimilar ways to conventional group formation patterns. Focussing primarily on Tuckman's model of group development, male, female and mixed gender learning networks (groups) of entrepreneurs were observed over a six month period, with the observations recorded and analysed, to establish whether different gender networks of business people adhere to Tuckman's model of group development in terms of early development and cohesion through the forming, storming and norming stages.

A total of 100 entrepreneurs were recruited in Autumn 2009/Spring 2010 and allocated to three different gender networks, male, female and mixed, in Ireland and Wales (six networks in total), as part of the Sustainable Learning Networks Ireland Wales (SLNIW, for detailed information about SLNIW see www.slniw.com) INTERREG 4A funded project. The groups began networking in January 2010, observed by impartial observers who noted group behaviour and dynamics and recorded observations quantitatively (based on adapted Bales criteria) and qualitatively. It is the results of these observations that form the basis of this paper.

This paper analyses the results of the group dynamic witnessed over subsequent network meetings for different gender mixes in Ireland. Whilst the observations are still ongoing, early results indicate that early engagement with group members, team bonding and group dynamics are formed sooner in the single gender groups. The paper explores why this could be the case and considers factors that could then address problems with early group development in mixed gender networks, so that the ultimate “performing” stage of group development and optimal business performance is achieved as early as possible.

This paper will be of considerable value to academics, theorists and practitioners. It will specifically add to the body of knowledge on single gender networks to see if they provide a more effective learning environment.

Working as a consultant in the field of team development, I frequently find myself at odds with people who have different perceptions about the nature of the work. This confusion was actually expressed in print when in 1980, following the publication of my article on team problem diagnosis, another consultant wrote of his “simpler” method. This turned out to be the “LIFO” system. Again, similar misunderstanding arose in 1982, within a large client organisation in the public sector. The client had undergone major reorganisation, and it had been decided to create an internal consultancy role, a central function of which was to be team development. I was engaged to train those appointed to the role, with emphasis on the skills required by internal consultants. It came as some surprise therefore to be told during a seminar with some of the organisation's directors, that “team building” had recently been conducted in the area concerned. I had not yet trained the internal consultants. It emerged of course that their “team building” and my “team development” were entirely different processes. Impatient to “get things moving”, the organisation had initiated a programme of “team‐building” activity based on packaged exercises, mainly concerned with the analysis of management style.