Guest Editors' Introduction to the Focused Issue: A New Direction for Global Teams Research

Zusammenfassung

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Research on teams has traditionally been relatively simplistic and linear, looking at observable demographics, generic processes within teams, and outcomes of those processes. Most research on global teams has extended this view to look at the same dynamics in teams in a multinational context. When researchers think of a "team", they tend to assume something relatively stable and contiguous with a specific purpose that requires interdependence. But when today's managers in multinational organizations think of their teams, they see shifting membership and boundaries, embedded in multiple organizational and environmental contexts, with dynamic tasks. A global team is an internationally distributed group of people, identified by its members and the organization as a team unit, with a specific mandate to make or implement decisions that are international in scope. Global teams are designed to reconcile the increasing corporate demands for renewal and adaptability with the need for heightened levels of learning based on inter-unit mutual trust, commitment and co-ordination.

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Guest Editors' Introduction to the Focused Issue: A New Direction for Global Teams Research

We recently asked international managers whether they do a significant proportion of their work in global teams, defined as a group of people with a common purpose, working on interdependent tasks, that functions across boundaries of space, time, and organization. Fully eighty-five per cent said they conduct more than half of their work in this setting, and two-thirds reported that they work on two or more such teams.1 The majority also reported that global teams were relatively new in their organizations, that ten years ago such teams did not generally exist but now, with global business divisions, supply chains, and product development, global teams are the norm rather than the exception (see also Kanawattanachai/Yoo 2002). These managers felt overwhelmed by the situation. What they had learned about teams from training, business schools, and articles helped them somewhat, but fell far short of providing guidance on how to manage these complex situations. While academic research on teams has begun to explore some of these complexities, we believe a real shift in direction on team research is overdue.

Research on teams has traditionally been relatively simplistic and linear, looking at observable demographics, generic processes within teams, and outcomes of those processes. Most research on global teams has extended this view to look at the same dynamics in teams in a multinational context. However, the environment that global teams operate in and the configuration of dynamics they experience require that we understand much more complex influences on these teams and their relationship to organizational effectiveness.

We believe the concept of "team" as traditionally defined is outdated, especially for today's global teams. When researchers think of...

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