Teams of people working together for a common purpose have been a centerpiece of human social organization ever since our ancient ancestors first banded together to hunt game, raise families, and defend their communities. Human history is largely a story of people working together in groups to explore, achieve, and conquer. Yet, the modern concept of work in large organizations that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is largely a tale of work as a collection of individual jobs. A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades, however, has pushed organizations worldwide to restructure work around teams, to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses to the unexpected. This shift in the structure of work has made team effectiveness a salient organizational concern. Teams touch our lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of societal functions. There is over 50 years of psychological research-literally thousands of studies-focused on understanding and influencing the processes that underlie team effectiveness. Our goal in this monograph is to sift through this voluminous literature to identify what we know, what we think we know, and what we need to know to improve the effectiveness of work groups and teams. We begin by defining team effectiveness and establishing the conceptual underpinnings of our approach to understanding it. We then turn to our review, which concentrates primarily on topics that have well-developed theoretical and empirical foundations, to ensure that our conclusions and recommendations are on firm footing. Our review begins by focusing on cognitive, motivational/affective, and behavioral team processes-processes that enable team members to combine their resources to resolve task demands and, in so doing, be effective. We then turn our attention to identifying interventions, or "levers," that can shape or align team processes and thereby provide tools and applications that can improve team effectiveness. Topic-specific conclusions and recommendations are given throughout the review. There is a solid foundation for concluding that there is an emerging science of team effectiveness and that findings from this research foundation provide several means to improve team effectiveness. In the concluding section, we summarize our primary findings to highlight specific research, application, and policy recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams.

Although interest in multilevel organizational theory, research, and methods has been on the rise in recent years, vigorous debates in the literature regarding appropriate ways to conceptualize and measure multilevel constructs, justify aggregation, and analyze multilevel models have contributed to confusion. New investigators interested in testing multilevel theory are intrigued, but wary. The goal of this article is to cut through the confusion, identifying the critical choices and issues a researcher may confront as he or she shifts from a single level to a multilevel perspective. The authors address four primary choices—construct and measurement issues, model specification, research design and sampling, and data analyses— describing critical steps in conceptualizing and conducting multilevel research.

Excerpt] Our objective in this chapter is to provide an integrative perspective on work groups and teams in organizations, one that addresses primary foci of theory and research, highlights applied implications, and identifies key issues in need of research attention and resolution. Given the volume of existing reviews, our review is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it uses representative work to characterize key topics, and focuses on recent work that breaks new ground to help move theory and research forward. Although our approach risks trading breadth for depth, we believe that there is much value in taking a more integrative view of the important areas of team research, identifying key research themes, and linking the themes and disparate topics closer together. To the extent that we identify new and necessary areas of theory development and research, the value of this approach will be evident.We would like to acknowledge several colleagues who provided insightful comments on an initial outline or draft of this chapter. Our thanks to

Abstract[Excerpt] Our objective in this chapter is to provide an integrative perspective on work groups and teams in organizations, one that addresses primary foci of theory and research, highlights applied implications, and identifies key issues in need of research attention and resolution. Given the volume of existing reviews, our review is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it uses representative work to characterize key topics, and focuses on recent work that breaks new ground to help move theory and research forward. Although our approach risks trading breadth for depth, we believe that there is much value in taking a more integrative view of the important areas of team research, identifying key research themes, and linking the themes and disparate topics closer together. To the extent that we identify new and necessary areas of theory development and research, the value of this approach will be evident. We would like to acknowledge several colleagues who provided insightful comments on an initial outline or draft of this chapter. Our thanks to Neil Anderson, Murray Barrick, Jan Cannon-Bowers, Paul Goodman, Stan Gully, Cyn D. Fisher, Richard Hackman, John Hollenbeck, Susan Jackson, Michelle Marks, John Mathieu, Susan Mohamed, Greg Stewart, Anne Tsui, Eduardo Salas, Ruth Wageman, Wang Zhong-Ming, and Michael West. Thanks also to Richard Klimoski for his helpful editorial guidance throughout. We would also like to acknowledge the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for support (F49620-98-1-0363 and F49620-01-1-0283, S.W.J. Kozlowski and R.P. DeShon, Principal Investigators) that in part assisted the composition of this chapter. Although many sources provided inputs to this chapter, the views expressed are those of the authors. Work Groups and Teams RESEARCH ISSUES AND RECOMMENDATIONS Research IssuesContext.Task Interdependence. Levels.Time. Research RecommendationsThe Nature of Teams.Composition.Formation, Socialization, and Development.Team Effectiveness, Processes, and Enhancements.Leadership and Motivation.Continuance and Decline. Conclusion Work Groups and Teams 4The last decade and a half has witnessed a remarkable transformation of organizational structures worldwide. Although there are economic, strategic, and technological imperatives driving this transformation, one of its more compelling aspects has been an ongoing shift from work organized around individual jobs to team-based work structures (Lawler, Mohrman, & Ledford, 1995 This ongoing transformation in the basic organization of work has captured the attention of researchers and is reflected by new theories of team functioning, a rapidly growing number of empirical studies, and numerous literature reviews written on the burgeoning research on teams. It is also reflected in a shift in the locus of team research. For most of its history, small group research has been centered in social psychology (McGrath, 1997). Over the last 15 years, however, group and team research has become increasingly centered in the fields of organizational psycho...

This article describes a comprehensive examination of the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes underlying active learning approaches; their effects on learning and transfer; and the core training design elements (exploration, training frame, emotion control) and individual differences (cognitive ability, trait goal orientation, trait anxiety) that shape these processes. Participants (N = 350) were trained to operate a complex, computer-based simulation. Exploratory learning and error-encouragement framing had a positive effect on adaptive transfer performance and interacted with cognitive ability and dispositional goal orientation to influence trainees' metacognition and state goal orientation. Trainees who received the emotion-control strategy had lower levels of state anxiety. Implications for development of an integrated theory of active learning, learner-centered design, and research extensions are discussed.