Team Performance Management: looking into the past and planning for the future

Citation

Curseu, P.L. (2014), "Team Performance Management: looking into the past and planning for the future", Team Performance Management, Vol. 20 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-01-2014-0005

Team Performance Management: looking into the past and planning for the future

Article Type: Editorial From: Team Performance Management, Volume 20, Issue 1/2

Welcome to the first 2014 Team Performance Management issue. The aim of this editorial is to provide a short overview of the research published in Team Performance Management (TPM) and to point towards future developments. I would like first to thank the previous editor-in-chief, Fiona Lettice, for her hard work and commitment to the journal. I would also like to thank the associate and guest editors, members of the editorial advisory board, reviewers and the Emerald editorial office staff members for their continuous support in publishing high quality research in TPM. I am honored to have been appointed as the new editor of TPM and I find it essential that it maintains its international focus, interdisciplinary character, and continues to publish papers with important theoretical and practical contributions.

The journal is truly international (Srivastava et al., 2013), and during 2013 alone, it received submissions with authors from 18 countries (Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ghana, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zeeland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and the US). With the help of the international editorial advisory board, I hope to preserve and further extend the journal’s international orientation. We invite submissions that explore teamwork based organization (and other forms of collaborative work arrangements) in various countries and discuss country-based differences in the use of team based collaboration in different organizational settings.

An important mission of TPM is to bridge the theory-practice divide, often emphasized in management research. The journal also publishes papers reporting evidence-based interventions, and papers with important practical contributions to the management of organizational teams. Under Fiona’s editorship, the journal contributed to the most recent teamwork research advancements as summarized in a recent paper by Tannenbaum et al. (2012). In the last few years, TPM published papers on topics such as: emotions and the emergence of emotional intelligence in teams (Clarke, 2010; Ghuman, 2011; Rozell and Scroggins, 2010), group cognition and learning (Bhat et al., 2012; Cruz et al., 2007, Kim et al., 2011; Savelsbergh et al., 2010; Santos and Passos, 2013), virtual communication (Gressgård, 2011; Pazos, 2012), and group diversity (Agarwal, 2012). It is my intention to further increase the journal’s contribution to teamwork research by publishing high quality research stimulating the debate and innovation in the field of team management. For example, papers addressing the emergence of collective competencies in teams are welcomed, as this particular area of research yields important practical implications on how to improve the synergic potential of organizational teams (Cureu et al., 2013). Moreover, we intend to publish papers exploring the way in which individual team members cope with the teamwork-related demands that are inherent to the current focus on dynamic composition of teams in modern organizations (Tannenbaum et al., 2012). Another area of research that will be supported is the role and implications of virtual communication and group diversity for team dynamics and effectiveness. In terms of unit of analysis, TPM welcomes papers that study individuals in teams (e.g., how multiple-team membership impacts on individual learning and adaptation, how individual performance is influenced by team dynamics), teams as units as well as the inter-team dynamics in larger social systems (e.g., multi-team systems, organizations). By focusing on research topics with important practical implications and by publishing papers that present empirically supported team interventions, the journal will support the performance management needs of organizational managers working with teams or other forms of collaborative work arrangements.

TPM has an interdisciplinary and inclusive character, as it publishes papers that combine theoretical insights from a variety of disciplines and use a variety of research methods and approaches. In the last decade, the journal published papers based on (and extending) theoretical insights stemming from (organizational) psychology, sociology, management and organization studies. Also, the journal is well known for its inclusive policy with respect to methodological approaches and it is balanced as to the qualitative and quantitative studies (Srivastava et al., 2013). A variety of research methods ranging from field studies (Santos and Passos, 2013) to computer and agent-based simulations (Breuer et al., 2013) were used in the papers published in TPM. Field studies secure the ecological validity of the research inferences, while experimental studies make causal claims tractable and computational experiments allow the extensive testing of claims that are impossible to test in real life settings. Therefore, I believe that it is important to further expand the range of research methods used in the papers published in TPM, and we also welcome multi-method papers in order to capitalize on the benefits of each of the research methods. To conclude, the journal invites contributions and publishes papers (literature reviews and conceptual papers, empirical articles, short research and replication notes) authored by academic researchers, consultants and practitioners using a variety of research methods ranging from experimental to action research.

In 2013, TPM published 20 papers with authors from twelve countries. The journal also published two special issues, one on “Team performance in supply chains” edited by Christos Braziotis and another special issue based on a selection of papers presented at IWOT 16 (“Teamwork within the Nordic model”), edited by Monica Rolfsen. In 2014, we plan to organize a special issue with a selection of papers that was presented during the 17th edition of the International Workshop on Teamworking (IWOT). In the meeting of the IWOT International Organizing Committee that took place in Leiden during IWOT 17 (November 28 and 29, 2013) it was decided to establish a close connection between the IWOT community and Team Performance Management. Much like TPM, the IWOT has an international focus, an interdisciplinary character and invites contributions from academic researchers, consultants and practitioners. Each year, we plan to organize in TPM a special issue that presents a selection of papers presented at IWOT annual meetings. We also welcome new participants at the next edition of IWOT 18 in Girona (Spain)!

The first TPM issue of 2014 contains five papers that reflect the journal’s commitment to high quality research, international contributions with practical relevance and its inclusive nature in terms of methodology. The first paper co-authored by Antonino Callea, Flavio Urbini, Paula Benevene, Michela Cortini, Lisa Di Lemma and Michael West presents the Italian adaptation of the Aston Team Performance Inventory, a key evaluation instrument derived from the Input-Process-Output Framework of team effectiveness that can be used by HR managers and team leaders to diagnose their teams and design interventions for improving their effectiveness. The second paper authored by Manuel London reviews the literature on exploration and exploitation processes in teams and builds a theoretical framework that presents the two processes as mediators between team inputs (environmental characteristics, member characteristics, team composition) and cognitive frames on the one hand, and innovation and adaptation on the other hand. The paper has important contributions in guiding further research on team learning and adaptation as well as practical implications for the management of innovation in organizational teams. The third paper co-authored by Plinio Pelegrini Morita and Catherine Marie Burns presents an ethnographic study on the emergence of trust tokens in teams and has important practical implications as it points towards behavioral cues that foster the emergence of trust and describes how the emergence of trust can be fostered in virtual settings. The fourth paper, authored by Johan Berlin, is based on a case study conducted at a university hospital and explores the common incentives as a collective driving force for effective teamwork. As such, the study points towards the relevance of the unspoken contracts for shaping cooperation processes in teams and it has important practical implications for the management of medical teams. The last paper in this first issue of TPM is co-authored by Myungsuk Cha, Jun-Gi Park and Jungwoo Lee and it tests a mediation model in which teamwork quality explains the effects of social, temporal and spatial distance on team performance. As such, the paper tests a model inspired from the Input-Process-Output Framework of team effectiveness and it has important practical implications for the management of collaborative relations in work groups. I hope readers will enjoy the selected papers and will continuously support the journal!

Petru L. Curseu

References

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