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In this chapter we examine various human resource management (HRM) implications involved in the leadership of fluid teams. Leadership of fluid teams, which are distinguished by their dynamic composition, requires consideration of issues that may not be as pertinent for stable teams. In particular, we focus on the concept of familiarity. Composing and leading teams with members exhibiting varying degrees of familiarity with one another creates obstacles to effective and efficient functioning and may ultimately lead to poor performance. With this in mind, leaders must pay particular attention to issues of coordination, and composition such that a broad range of generalizable teamwork skills exists within the team. Within this chapter, we explain the concepts of fluid teams, team leadership within fluid teams, and other relevant concepts related to the formation of familiarity. Next, we thoroughly review extant empirical and theoretical research within these areas. We identify areas of correspondence among the various concepts and findings of the reviewed studies and generate an integrated model of fluid team leadership. To conclude, we highlight the distinct HRM implications associated with the use, and leadership, of fluid teams.

Incivility is widespread in the workplace and has been shown to have significant affective and behavioral consequences. However, the authors still have a limited understanding as to whether, how and when discrete incivility events impact team performance. Adopting a resource depletion perspective and focusing on the cognitive implications of such events, the authors introduce a multi-level model linking the adverse effects of such events on team members’ working memory – the “workbench” of the cognitive system where most planning, analyses, and management of goals occur – to team effectiveness. The model which the authors develop proposes that that uncivil interpersonal behavior in general, and rudeness – a central manifestation of incivility – in particular, may place a significant drain on individuals’ working memory capacity, affecting team effectiveness via its effects on individual performance and coordination-related team emergent states and action-phase processes. In the context of this model, the authors offer an overarching framework for making sense of disparate findings regarding how, why and when incivility affects performance outcomes at multiple levels. More specifically, the authors use this framework to: (a) suggest how individual-level cognitive impairment and weakened coordinative team processes may mediate these incivility-based effects, and (b) explain how event, context, and individual difference factors moderators may attenuate or exacerbate these cognition-mediated effects.

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.

The necessity for effective multidisciplinary team working within increasingly complex health and social care environments has been emphasised in The NHS Plan. Good teamwork makes a critical contribution to effectiveness and innovation in health‐care delivery and it is through such teams that the agenda of quality improvement through clinical governance can be delivered at local level. The NHS Clinical Governance Support Team’s Team Resource Management Programme supports individuals who work directly with poorly performing NHS teams. A case study example illustrates how a team coach has used her experiences on the Programme to facilitate effective change in a “troubled” team in her health‐care organisation.

The successful management of work teams is a key factor in the effectiveness of any organisation. We have found that managers have different approaches to making their team successful. However, they agree that the end purpose must be to achieve a winning combination in which the individuals work together to achieve the task objectives. The role of the manager in this process is central. Often we can find many highly talented individuals, but they need a skilled manager to bring them together as a team.

Work groups and teams are common across all types of organizations. After providing both practical and scholarly definitions, this chapter examines work team processes common across groups (groupthink and bullying) that largely constrain group work both in and out of meetings. The chapter concludes with attention to work team evaluations (satisfaction with group process and continuity), meeting evaluations, and an overview of relational byproducts of task accomplishment.

Working in interdisciplinary teams is recognised as fundamental to contemporary workplaces in the knowledge economy. Current research across the disciplines clearly shows that working successfully in interdisciplinary teams is associated with increased productivity, improved outcomes, higher levels of creativity and enhanced personal fulfilment. But why is there a perception that it is hard to work in such teams in higher education contexts, and what does it take to work successfully in an interdisciplinary team? In this chapter we use embedded intergroup relations theory as a way of conceptualising the tensions and complexities that exist within interdisciplinary teams in universities. We draw on the constructs of group membership, parallel processes, group boundaries, power differences, affective patterns, cognitive formations and leadership behaviours to deconstruct why working in interdisciplinary teams often challenges academic identities, cultures and contexts. We then consider the core factors that underpin successful interdisciplinary teams, based on a synthesis of the work in the fields of social sciences, organisational behaviour, education, health and psychology. Understanding the complexities of working in interdisciplinary teams within universities provides insights into how to facilitate positive outcomes for all involved in interdisciplinary teamwork.

Previous research suggests that teams pace their change either internally to coincide with the midpoint, deadline, or task phases, or externally by entraining to exogenous pacers. Other research suggests that teams adapt to random environmental shocks. This paper investigates if, how, and when endogenous, exogenous, and random pacers affect the patterns of change in groups. We studied five software development teams during a turbulent two-year period. Our case studies and supporting analyses suggest that teams perform a “dance of entrainment”—simultaneously creating multiple rhythms and choreographing their activities to mesh with different pacers at different times.

Organization development is focused on implementing a planned process of positive humanistic change in organizations through the use of social science theory, action research, and data-based feedback methods. The role of personality in that change process, however, has historically been ignored or relegated to a limited set of interventions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual overview of the linkages between personality and OD, discuss the current state of personality in the field including key trends in talent management, and offer a new multi-level framework for conceptualizing applications of personality for different types of OD efforts. The chapter concludes with implications for research and practice.

Organizational literatures stress the empowering effects of worker participation programs. The case of a Mexican garment factory is used to examine the contradictory location of women in self-managed teams. While self-managed teams require independent and assertive workers, women workers are hired specifically for their docility. I argue that managers provide the tools and mechanisms for workers to be autonomous decision-makers, while at the same time they gender teams in ways that assure continued female disadvantage. Placed in this contradictory location, women workers both reproduce and resist gender subordination by carving out spaces of independent action, using the language of traditional womanhood.