Neither security nor development? Czech and Hungarian identities and interests in the provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan

This article builds on the securitisation and post-development literature and it scrutinises the Czech and Hungarian legitimising discourses of the two countries’ respective Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the Logar and Baghlan provinces of Afghanistan from 2007 to 2013. In spite of the hybrid civil–military character of the PRTs, their security–development nexus was absent and they were respectively securitised and “developmentalised” only indirectly and to a varying extent. The PRTs were mostly justified by the Czech Republic's NATO membership as an identity issue and they were justified as a Hungarian national interest and as both an obligation and an opportunity. Rather than merely importing NATO's arguments as suggested by the previous literature, the depoliticisation and positive connotation of the intervention in Afghanistan was constructed by the domestic NATO-related identities and interests in the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Knowledge processes in virtual teams:consolidating the evidence

This article takes stock of the current state of research on knowledge processes in virtual teams (VTs) and consolidates the extent research findings. Virtual teams, on the one hand, constitute important organisational entities that facilitate the integration of diverse and distributed knowledge resources. On the other hand, collaborating in a virtual environment creates particular challenges for the knowledge processes. The article seeks to consolidate the diverse evidence on knowledge processes in VTs with a specific focus on identifying the factors that influence the effectiveness of these knowledge processes. The article draws on the four basic knowledge processes outlined by Alavi and Leidner (2001) (i.e. creation, transferring, storage/retrieval and application) to frame the investigation and discuss the extent research. The consolidation of the existing research findings allows us to recognise the gaps in the understanding of knowledge processes in VTs and identify the important avenues for future research.

Well-structured teams and the buffering of hospital employees from stress

Membership in well-structured teams, which show clarity in team and individual goals, meet regularly, and recognize diverse skills of their members, is known to reduce stress. This study examined how membership of well-structured teams was associated with lower levels of strain, when testing a work stressors-to-strains relationship model across the three levels of team structure, namely well-structured, poorly structured (do not fulfill all the criteria of well-structured teams) and no team. The work stressors tested, were quantitative overload and hostile environment, whereas strains were measured through job satisfaction and intention to leave job. This investigation was carried out on a random sample of 65,142 respondents in acute/specialist National Health Service hospitals across the UK. Using multivariate analysis of variance, statistically significant differences between means across the three groups of team structure, with mostly moderate effect sizes, were found for the study variables. Those in well-structured teams have the highest levels of job satisfaction and the least intention to leave job. Multigroup structural equation modelling confirmed the model's robustness across the three groups of team structure. Work stressors explained 45%, 50% and 65% of the variance of strains for well-structured, poorly structured and no team membership, respectively. An increase of one standard deviation in work stressors, resulted in an increase in 0.67, 0.70 and 0.81 standard deviations in strains for well-structured, poorly structured and no team membership, respectively. This investigation is an eye-opener for hospitals to work towards achieving well-structured teams, as this study shows weaker stressor-to-strain relationships for members of these teams.

Climate setting in sourcing teams:developing a measurement scale for team creativity climate

Creative sourcing strategies, designed to extract more value from the supply base, have become a competitive, strategic differentiator. To fuel creativity, companies install sourcing teams that can capitalize on the specialized knowledge and expertise of their employees across the company. This article introduces the concept of a team creativity climate (TCC) - team members' shared perceptions of their joint policies, procedures, and practices with respect to developing creative sourcing strategies – as a means to address the unique challenges associated with a collective, cross-functional approach to develop value-enhancing sourcing strategies. Using a systematic scale development process that validates the proposed concept, the authors confirm its ability to predict sourcing team performance, and suggest some research avenues extending from this concept.

Teams leading teams: Examining the role of leadership in multi-team systems

A major challenge of modern teams lies in the coordination of the efforts not just of individuals within a team, but also of teams whose efforts are ultimately entwined with those of other teams. Despite this fact, much of the research on work teams fails to consider the external dependencies that exist in organizational teams and instead focuses on internal or within team processes. Multi-Team Systems Theory is used as a theoretical framework for understanding teams-of-teams organizational forms (Multi-Team Systems; MTS's); and leadership teams are proposed as one remedy that enable MTS members to dedicate needed resources to intra-team activities while ensuring effective synchronization of between-team activities. Two functions of leader teams were identified: strategy development and coordination facilitation; and a model was developed delineating the effects of the two leader roles on multi-team cognitions, processes, and performance.^ Three hundred eighty-four undergraduate psychology and business students participated in a laboratory simulation that modeled an MTS; each MTS was comprised of three, two-member teams each performing distinct but interdependent components of an F-22 battle simulation task. Two roles of leader teams supported in the literature were manipulated through training in a 2 (strategy training vs. control) x 2 (coordination training vs. control) design. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and mediated regression analysis were used to test the study's hypotheses. ^ Results indicate that both training manipulations produced differences in the effectiveness of the intended form of leader behavior. The enhanced leader strategy training resulted in more accurate (but not more similar) MTS mental models, better inter-team coordination, and higher levels of multi-team (but not component team) performance. Moreover, mental model accuracy fully mediated the relationship between leader strategy and inter-team coordination; and inter-team coordination fully mediated the effect of leader strategy on multi-team performance. Leader coordination training led to better inter-team coordination, but not to higher levels of either team or multi-team performance. Mediated Input-Process-Output (I-P-O) relationships were not supported with leader coordination; rather, leader coordination facilitation and inter-team coordination uniquely contributed to component team and multi-team level performance. The implications of these findings and future research directions are also discussed. ^

Adaptation in knowledge-based teams: An examination of team composition, leader sensegiving, and cognitive, behavioral, and motivational mechanisms

Organizations are increasingly relying on teams to do the work that has traditionally been done by individuals. At the same time, the environments in which these organizations and teams operate have been becoming progressively more complex and uncertain. These trends raise important questions about the factors that enable teams to adapt. In response to these questions, the current study sought to identify the cognitive, behavioral, and motivational processes and emergent states that promote a team's adaptation to unforeseen changes and novel events, and the team compositional characteristics and leadership processes that enabled these processes and emergent states. Two hundred twenty two undergraduate students from a large Southeastern University composed 74 3-person teams, and participated in a computerized decision-making simulation where each team formed the governing body (i.e., Mayor's cabinet) for two separate simulated cities, and made strategic decisions about city operations. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles, distributing expertise and creating mutual interdependence. External team leader sensegiving was manipulated through video recorded communications from an external team leader. Results indicate that team cognitive ability, achievement striving, and psychological collectivism, as well as external team leader sensegiving, were all related to the similarity and quality of team members' strategy-focused mental models (cognitive emergent states), and to the amount of information sharing among members (behavioral process). In turn, teams with more similar and higher quality mental models, and who shared greater levels of information, were found to have a greater ability to react and adapt to environmental changes, and to have greater levels of decision-making effectiveness. Results indicate a pattern of relationships consistent with hypotheses, and have important implications for organizations and knowledge-based teams charged with management responsibilities. Organizations should staff teams with the compositional characteristics that enable the development of similar and high quality mental models, and that promote information sharing among teammates. Similarly, organizations which train and develop leaders to engage in sensegiving behaviors enable team adaptability and promote enhanced decision-making effectiveness when faced with unforeseen changes and novel situations.

Teams: Vehicle of Choice for Transporting the Organizational Future

Teamwork is much more than lip service paid to the concept. This article was writ- ten for the executive, the educator and the student to broaden awareness of the vast potential of teams and teamwork.

The relationship between coping strategies and level of depression among spousal caregivers of elders with dementia

Caregivers are often under a great deal of stress while caring for their spouses with dementia. It is when the stress builds up and becomes overwhelming that the caregiver is at risk for developing depression. The primary objective of this study was to determine which cognitive and behavioral coping strategies are associated with lower levels of depression; once these strategies are identified, interventions can be established to educate these caregivers. Thirty-two spousal caregivers participated in this study. They each filled out a questionnaire, which contained three sections. The first section asked them for demographic information about themselves and their spouses; the second section consisted of a coping strategies scale; and, the third section contained a depression scale. Results of this study indicate that problem-focused coping strategies were associated with a lesser degree of depressive symptomatology, whereas most of the emotion-focused strategies were associated with a greater degree of depressive symptomatology among the present sample of spousal caregivers. In addition, no relationship was found between the length of time providing care to their spouses and their level of depression.

Design and implementation of a relative localization system for ground and aerial robotic teams

The main focus of this thesis is to address the relative localization problem of a heterogenous team which comprises of both ground and micro aerial vehicle robots. This team configuration allows to combine the advantages of increased accessibility and better perspective provided by aerial robots with the higher computational and sensory resources provided by the ground agents, to realize a cooperative multi robotic system suitable for hostile autonomous missions. However, in such a scenario, the strict constraints in flight time, sensor pay load, and computational capability of micro aerial vehicles limits the practical applicability of popular map-based localization schemes for GPS denied navigation. Therefore, the resource limited aerial platforms of this team demand simpler localization means for autonomous navigation. Relative localization is the process of estimating the formation of a robot team using the acquired inter-robot relative measurements. This allows the team members to know their relative formation even without a global localization reference, such as GPS or a map. Thus a typical robot team would benefit from a relative localization service since it would allow the team to implement formation control, collision avoidance, and supervisory control tasks, independent of a global localization service. More importantly, a heterogenous team such as ground robots and computationally constrained aerial vehicles would benefit from a relative localization service since it provides the crucial localization information required for autonomous operation of the weaker agents. This enables less capable robots to assume supportive roles and contribute to the more powerful robots executing the mission. Hence this study proposes a relative localization-based approach for ground and micro aerial vehicle cooperation, and develops inter-robot measurement, filtering, and distributed computing modules, necessary to realize the system. The research study results in three significant contributions. First, the work designs and validates a novel inter-robot relative measurement hardware solution which has accuracy, range, and scalability characteristics, necessary for relative localization. Second, the research work performs an analysis and design of a novel nonlinear filtering method, which allows the implementation of relative localization modules and attitude reference filters on low cost devices with optimal tuning parameters. Third, this work designs and validates a novel distributed relative localization approach, which harnesses the distributed computing capability of the team to minimize communication requirements, achieve consistent estimation, and enable efficient data correspondence within the network. The work validates the complete relative localization-based system through multiple indoor experiments and numerical simulations. The relative localization based navigation concept with its sensing, filtering, and distributed computing methods introduced in this thesis complements system limitations of a ground and micro aerial vehicle team, and also targets hostile environmental conditions. Thus the work constitutes an essential step towards realizing autonomous navigation of heterogenous teams in real world applications.

Professional basketball teams, the NY Stars versus the San Francisco Pioneers

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Basketball teams, NY Stars versus Milwaukee Does

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Professional basketball teams: the NY Stars versus the San Francisco Pioneers

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Professional basketball teams, NY Stars versus Milwaukee Does

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Professional Basketball teams, the NY Stars and the Milwaukee Does

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

Relational work in synchronous text-based CMC of virtual teams

Based on close examinations of instant message (IM) interactions, this chapter argues that an interactional sociolinguistic approach to computer-mediated language use could provide explanations for phenomena that previously could not be accounted for in computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA). Drawing on the theoretical framework of relational work (Locher, 2006), the analysis focuses on non-task oriented talk and its function in forming and establishing communication norms in the team, as well as micro-level phenomena, such as hesitation, backchannel signals and emoticons. The conclusions of this preliminary research suggest that the linguistic strategies used for substituting audio-visual signals are strategically used in discursive functions and have an important role in relational work