Is there a role for pharmacists in multidisciplinary health-care teams at community outreach events for the homeless?

Homelessness is a significant public health problem. It is well-documented that people experiencing homelessness exhibit more serious illnesses and have poorer health than the general population. The provision of services and interventions by health-care professionals, including pharmacists, may make a simple yet important contribution to improved health outcomes in those experiencing homelessness, but evidence of roles and interventions is limited and variable. In Australia, the Queensland University of Technology Health Clinic connects with the homeless community by taking part in community outreach events. This paper provides details of one such event, as well as the roles, interventions and experiences of pharmacists. Participation and inclusion of pharmacists in a multidisciplinary health-care team approach at homeless outreach events should be supported and encouraged.

The first cut is the deepest: Repeated interactions of co-authorship and academic productivity in Nobel laureate teams

Despite much in-depth investigation of factors influencing the co-authorship evolution in various scientific fields, our knowledge about how efficiency or creativity is linked to the longevity of collaborative relationships remains very limited. We explore what Nobel laureates’ co-authorship patterns reveal about the nature of scientific collaborations looking at the intensity and success of scientific collaborations across fields and across laureates’ collaborative lifecycles in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. We find that more collaboration with the same researcher is actually no better for advancing creativity: publications produced early in a sequence of repeated collaborations with a given coauthor tend to be published better and cited more than papers that come later in the collaboration with the same coauthor. Our results indicate that scientific collaboration involves conceptual complementarities that may erode over a sequence of repeated interactions.

High body mass index is not a barrier to physical activity: Analysis of international rugby players' anthropometric data

Recent data indicate that levels of overweight and obesity are increasing at an alarming rate throughout the world. At a population level (and commonly to assess individual health risk), the prevalence of overweight and obesity is calculated using cut-offs of the Body Mass Index (BMI) derived from height and weight. Similarly, the BMI is also used to classify individuals and to provide a notional indication of potential health risk. It is likely that epidemiologic surveys that are reliant on BMI as a measure of adiposity will overestimate the number of individuals in the overweight (and slightly obese) categories. This tendency to misclassify individuals may be more pronounced in athletic populations or groups in which the proportion of more active individuals is higher. This differential is most pronounced in sports where it is advantageous to have a high BMI (but not necessarily high fatness). To illustrate this point we calculated the BMIs of international professional rugby players from the four teams involved in the semi-finals of the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) cut-offs for BMI, approximately 65% of the players were classified as overweight and approximately 25% as obese. These findings demonstrate that a high BMI is commonplace (and a potentially desirable attribute for sport performance) in professional rugby players. An unanswered question is what proportion of the wider population, classified as overweight (or obese) according to the BMI, is misclassified according to both fatness and health risk? It is evident that being overweight should not be an obstacle to a physically active lifestyle. Similarly, a reliance on BMI alone may misclassify a number of individuals who might otherwise have been automatically considered fat and/or unfit.

Generic skills in design teams : literature review

Recent developments in networked three dimensional (3D) virtual worlds, and the proliferation of high bandwidth communications technology, have the potential to dramatically improve collaboration in the construction industry. This research project focuses on the early stages of a construction project in which the models for the project are developed and revised. The project investigates three aspects of collaboration in virtual environments: 1. The processes that enable effective collaboration using high bandwidth information communication technology (ICT); 2. The models that allow for multiple disciplines to share their views in a synchronous virtual environment; 3. The generic skills used by individuals and teams when engaging with high bandwidth information communication technology. The third aspect of the project, listed above, led by the University of Newcastle, explores the domain of People and the extent to which they contribute to the effectiveness of virtual teams. This report relates, primarily, to this aspect.

Generic skills in design teams

Recent developments in networked three dimensional (3D) virtual worlds and the proliferation of high bandwidth communications technology have the potential to dramatically improve collaboration in the construction industry. This research project focuses on the early stages of a design/construction project in which models for a project are developed and revised. We have investigated three aspects of collaboration in virtual environments: 1. The processes that enable effective collaboration using high bandwidth information communication technology (ICT); 2. The models that allow for multiple disciplines to share their views in a synchronous virtual environment; 3. The generic skills used by individuals and teams when engaging with high bandwidth information communication technology.

Senior management teams in schools : understanding their dynamics, enhancing their effectiveness

Increasingly it has been argued that senior management teams (SMTs), comprising principals, deputy heads and other personnel, play a critical role in the governance of schools. In recent years, many researchers have drawn upon the tools of micropolitics to illuminate the relationships, dynamics and power plays between and amongst members of SMTs. The paper has two foci. Firstly, it overviews some of the seminal literature in the field of SMTs and micropolitics in an attempt to identify the working practices of and challenges facing members of SMTs. Secondly, it discusses an instrument, the TEAM Development Questionnaire, that emerged from a synthesis of this writing and research. The questionnaire presented here was especially devised to use with members of SMTs to help them (i) identify the dynamics amongst team members; and (ii) identify areas for the team to improve. A set of procedures for implementing the TEAM Development Questionnaire is provided to demonstrate its application to the field.

The interrelations among the project team’s conduit networks, knowledge network and its performance

From the perspective of network, a project team’s social capital consists of conduits network, and resource exchange network. Prior research intensively studies the effect of the structure of conduits network on the team’s performance, assuming knowledge transfer is the causal mechanism linking conduits network to performance. This paper attempts to explore the interrelations between conduits network and knowledge network, and further distinguish the different influence between various conduit networks, and hypothesizes that a project team’s knowledge network mediates the effect of various conduit networks on the team’s performance. This research can enrich our knowledge of disparate influence of the various conduit networks on knowledge transfer, and imply some management practices to enhance the organization’s social capital, and hence improve the organization’s performance.

Project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on project performance

The research on project learning has recognised the significance of knowledge transfer in project based organisations (PBOs). Effective knowledge transfer across projects avoids reinventions, enhances knowledge creation and saves lots of time that is crucial in project environment. In order to facilitate knowledge transfer, many PBOs have invested lots of financial and human resources to implement IT-based knowledge repository. However, some empirical studies found that employees would rather turn for knowledge to colleagues despite their ready access to IT-based knowledge repository. Therefore, it is apparent that social networks play a pivotal role in the knowledge transfer across projects. Some scholars attempt to explore the effect of network structure on knowledge transfer and performance, however, focused only on egocentric networks and the groups’ internal social networks. It has been found that the project’s external social network is also critical, in that the team members can not handle critical situations and accomplish the projects on time without the assistance and knowledge from external sources. To date, the influence of the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks on project performance, and the interrelation between both networks are barely known. In order to obtain such knowledge, this paper explores the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks, and their effect on the project team’s performance. Data is gathered through survey questionnaire distributed online to respondents. Collected data is analysed applying social network analysis (SNA) tools and SPSS. The theoretical contribution of this paper is the knowledge of the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on the project team’s performance. The practical contribution lies in the guideline to be proposed for constructing the structure of project team’s internal and external social networks.

Strategic short termism as an issue of top-teams’ temporal orientation

Short-termism among firms, the tendency to excessively discount long-term benefits and favour less valuable short-term benefits, has been a prominent issue in business and public policy debates but research to date has been inconclusive. We study how managers frame, interpret, and resolve problems of intertemporal choice in actual decisions by using computer aided text analysis to measure the frequency of top-team temporal references in 1653 listed Australian firms between 1992-2005. Contrary to short-termism arguments we find evidence of a significant general increase in Future orientation and a significant decrease in Current/Past orientation. We also show top-teams’ temporal orientation is related to their strategic orientation, specifically the extent to which they focus on Innovation-Expansion and Capacity Building.

The relationship between communication and team performance : testing moderators and identifying communication profiles in established work teams

Communication is one team process factor that has received considerable research attention in the team literature. This literature provides equivocal evidence regarding the role of communication in team performance and yet, does not provide any evidence for when communication becomes important for team performance. This research program sought to address this evidence gap by a) testing task complexity and team member diversity (race diversity, gender diversity and work value diversity) as moderators of the team communication — performance relationship; and b) testing a team communication — performance model using established teams across two different task types. The functional perspective was used as the theoretical framework for operationalizing team communication activity. The research program utilised a quasi-experimental research design with participants from a large multi-national information technology company whose Head Office was based in Sydney, Australia. Participants voluntarily completed two team building exercises (a decision making and production task), and completed two online questionnaires. In total, data were collected from 1039 individuals who constituted 203 work teams. Analysis of the data revealed a small number of significant moderation effects, not all in the expected direction. However, an interesting and unexpected finding also emerged from Study One. Large and significant correlations between communication activity ratings were found across tasks, but not within tasks. This finding suggested that teams were displaying very similar profiles of communication on each task, despite the tasks having different communication requirements. Given this finding, Study Two sought to a) determine the relative importance of task versus team effects in explaining variance in team communication measures for established teams; b) determine if established teams had reliable and discernable team communication profiles and if so, c) investigate whether team communication profiles related to task performance. Multi-level modeling and repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that task type did not have an effect on team communication ratings. However, teams accounted for 24% of the total variance in communication measures. Through cluster analysis, five reliable and distinct team communication profiles were identified. Consistent with the findings of the multi-level analysis and repeated measures ANOVA, teams’ profiles were virtually identical across the decision making and production tasks. A relationship between communication profile and performance was identified for the production task, although not for the decision making task. This research responds to calls in the literature for a better understanding of when communication becomes important for team performance. The moderators tested in this research were not found to have a substantive or reliable effect on the relationship between communication and performance. However, the consistency in team communication activity suggests that established teams can be characterized by their communication profiles and further, that these communication profiles may have implications for team performance. The findings of this research provide theoretical support for the functional perspective in terms of the communication – performance relationship and further support the team development literature as an explanation for the stability in team communication profiles. This research can also assist organizations to better understand the specific types of communication activity and profiles of communication that could offer teams a performance advantage.

If teams are so good.. : science teachers' conceptions of teams and teamwork

The focus of this study is the phenomenon of teams and teamwork. Currently the Professional Standards of Queensland’s teachers state that teams are critical to teachers’ work. This study uses a phenomenographic approach to investigate science teachers’ conceptions of teams and teamwork in the science departments of fifteen Queensland State secondary schools. The research identifies eight conceptions of teams and teamwork. The research findings suggest that the team represents a collective of science teachers bounded by the Science Department and their current timetabled subject. Collaboration was found in the study to be an activity that occurred between teachers in the same social space. The research recognises a new category of relationship between teachers, designated as ‘ask-and-receive’. The research identifies a lack of teamwork within the science department and the school. There appears to be no teaming with other subject departments. The research findings highlight the non-supportive team and teamwork policies, procedures and structures in the schools and identify the lack of recognition of the specialised skills of science teachers. The implications for the schools and science teachers are considerable, as the current Professional Standards of Education Queensland and the Queensland College of Teachers provide benchmarks of knowledge and practice of teams and teamwork for teachers. The research suggests that the professional standards relating to teams and teamwork cannot be achieved in the present school environment.

Contribution of cross-functional teams to the improvement in operational performance

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of cross-functional teams in the alignment between system effectiveness and operational effectiveness after the implementation of enterprise information systems (EIS). In addition, it aims to explore the contribution of cross-functional teams to improvement in operational performance. ---------- Design/methodology/approach: The research uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, in a two-stage methodological approach, to investigate the influence of cross-functional teams on the alignment between system effectiveness and operational effectiveness and the impact of the stated alignment on the improvement in operational performance. ---------- Findings: Initial findings suggest that factors stemming from system effectiveness and the performance objectives stemming from operational effectiveness are important and significantly well correlated factors that promote the alignment between the effectiveness of technological implementation and the effectiveness of operations. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis has been used to find the structural relationships and provide explanations for the stated alignment and the contribution of cross-functional teams to the improvement in operational performance. ---------- Research limitations/implications: The principal limitation of this study is its small sample size. ---------- Practical implications: Cross-functional teams have been used by many organisations as a way of involving expertise from different functional areas in the implementation of innovative technologies. An appropriate use of the dimensions that emerged from this research, in the context of cross-functional teams, will assist organisations to properly utilise cross-functional teams with the aim of improving operational performance. ---------- Originality/value: The paper presents a new approach to measure the effectiveness of EIS implementation by adding new dimensions to measure it.