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This document is an editorial titled "Fluid teams" published in Frontiers in Psychology. The editorial discusses the concept of fluid teams, which are rapidly assembled teams that address immediate problems and disband after completing the task. The article highlights the advantages and disadvantages of fluid teams and explores their application in various contexts such as healthcare, innovation teams, and the military. It also presents research topics and gaps in understanding fluid team performance. The editorial provides a comprehensive overview of the topic and offers practical recommendations based on the research presented. [Extracted from the article]

Background: The probability of undergoing treatment with curative intent for esophagogastric cancer has been shown to vary considerately between hospitals of diagnosis. Little is known about the factors that attribute to this variation. Since clinical decision making (CDM) partially takes place during an MDTM, the aim of this qualitative study was to assess clinician's perspectives regarding facilitators and barriers associated with CDM during MDTM, and second, to identify factors associated with CDM during an MDTM thatmay potentially explain differences in hospital practice. Methods: A multiple case study design was conducted. The thematic content analysis of this qualitative study, focused on 16 MDTM observations, 30 semistructured interviews with clinicians and seven focus groups with clinicians to complement the collected data. Interviews were transcribed ad verbatim and coded. Results: Factors regarding team dynamics that were raised as aspects attributing to CDM were clinician's personal characteristics such as ambition and the intention to be innovative. Clinician's convictions regarding a certain treatment and its outcomes and previous experiences with treatment outcomes, and team dynamics within the MDTM influenced CDM. In addition, a continuum was illustrated. At one end of the continuum, teams tended to be more conservative, following the guidelines more strictly, versus the opposite in which hospitals tended towards a more invasive approach maximizing the probability of curation. Conclusion: This study contributes to the awareness that variation in team dynamics influences CDM during an MDTM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BackgroundThe probability of undergoing treatment with curative intent for esophagogastric cancer has been shown to vary considerately between hospitals of diagnosis. Little is known about the factors that attribute to this variation. Since clinical decision making (CDM) partially takes place during an MDTM, the aim of this qualitative study was to assess clinician’s perspectives regarding facilitators and barriers associated with CDM during MDTM, and second, to identify factors associated with CDM during an MDTM that may potentially explain differences in hospital practice.MethodsA multiple case study design was conducted. The thematic content analysis of this qualitative study, focused on 16 MDTM observations, 30 semi-structured interviews with clinicians and seven focus groups with clinicians to complement the collected data. Interviews were transcribed ad verbatim and coded.ResultsFactors regarding team dynamics that were raised as aspects attributing to CDM were clinician’s personal characteristics such as ambition and the intention to be innovative. Clinician’s convictions regarding a certain treatment and its outcomes and previous experiences with treatment outcomes, and team dynamics within the MDTM influenced CDM. In addition, a continuum was illustrated. At one end of the continuum, teams tended to be more conservative, following the guidelines more strictly, versus the opposite in which hospitals tended towards a more invasive approach maximizing the probability of curation.ConclusionThis study contributes to the awareness that variation in team dynamics influences CDM during an MDTM.

The construct of “choking under pressure” is concerned with the phenomenon of unexpected, sudden, and significant declines in individual athletes’ performances in important situations and has received empirical attention in the field of sport psychology. Although a number of theories about the reasons for the occurrence of choking under pressure exist and several intervention approaches have been developed, underlying mechanisms of choking are still under debate and the effectiveness of existing interventions remains contested. These sudden performance declines also occur in team sport. “Collective sport team collapse,” which describes the situation when an entire sport team underperforms significantly within an important competitive situation, has received less empirical attention, in comparison to individual choking research. While there are a few studies that have investigated causes of collective team collapse, understandably, there has been limited empirical investigation of preventative and intervention strategies. Although the two constructs appear to share several similar characteristics and mechanisms, research has not yet examined the conceptual, theoretical, empirical, and practical links between choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse. In this review article, we seek to examine these similarities and differences and identify new ways of thinking about future interventions. Furthermore, current empirical understandings in the field of choking under pressure and collective sport team collapse are presented and the most effective intervention approaches for both constructs are introduced. On the basis of this examination, we modestly make some initial recommendations for sport psychological practitioners and future research.

Multidisciplinary neuro-oncology clinics allow collaboration between various specialties and training levels. Building a tenable clinical research program based in the longitudinal dialogue and practice of collaborative clinicians and trainees can bridge clinical observations to research execution. However, forming a research team around a multidisciplinary clinic's activities is constrained by a lack of literature or guidelines. As well, challenges in sustaining team logistics, communication, and productivity can persist without a standardized team framework. This perspective discusses the state of research teams in clinical oncology, and uses experiences from the McMaster Pediatric Brain Tumour Study Group to guide those seeking to form a research team based on the collective activities and observations of a multidisciplinary clinic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multidisciplinary neuro-oncology clinics allow collaboration between various specialties and training levels. Building a tenable clinical research program based in the longitudinal dialogue and practice of collaborative clinicians and trainees can bridge clinical observations to research execution. However, forming a research team around a multidisciplinary clinic’s activities is constrained by a lack of literature or guidelines. As well, challenges in sustaining team logistics, communication, and productivity can persist without a standardized team framework. This perspective discusses the state of research teams in clinical oncology, and uses experiences from the McMaster Pediatric Brain Tumour Study Group to guide those seeking to form a research team based on the collective activities and observations of a multidisciplinary clinic.

The focus of this current research is 2-fold: (1) to understand how team interaction in human-autonomy teams (HAT)s evolve in the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) task context, and (2) to understand how HATs respond to three types of failures (automation, autonomy, and cyber-attack) over time. We summarize the findings from three of our recent experiments regarding the team interaction within HAT over time in the dynamic context of RPAS. For the first and the second experiments, we summarize general findings related to team member interaction of a three-member team over time, by comparison of HATs with all-human teams. In the third experiment, which extends beyond the first two experiments, we investigate HAT evolution when HATs are faced with three types of failures during the task. For all three of these experiments, measures focus on team interactions and temporal dynamics consistent with the theory of interactive team cognition. We applied Joint Recurrence Quantification Analysis, to communication flow in the three experiments. One of the most interesting and significant findings from our experiments regarding team evolution is the idea of entrainment, that one team member (the pilot in our study, either agent or human) can change the communication behaviors of the other teammates over time, including coordination, and affect team performance. In the first and second studies, behavioral passiveness of the synthetic teams resulted in very stable and rigid coordination in comparison to the all-human teams that were less stable. Experimenter teams demonstrated metastable coordination (not rigid nor unstable) and performed better than rigid and unstable teams during the dynamic task. In the third experiment, metastable behavior helped teams overcome all three types of failures. These summarized findings address three potential future needs for ensuring effective HAT: (1) training of autonomous agents on the principles of teamwork, specifically understanding tasks and roles of teammates, (2) human-centered machine learning design of the synthetic agent so the agents can better understand human behavior and ultimately human needs, and (3) training of human members to communicate and coordinate with agents due to current limitations of Natural Language Processing of the agents.

In this paper, we consider how the four key team emergent states for team learning identified by Bell et al. (2012), namely psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy, operate as a system that produces the team’s learning climate (TLC). Using the language of systems dynamics, we conceptualize TLC as a stock that rises and falls as a joint function of the psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy that exists in the team. The systems approach highlights aspects of TLC management that are traditionally overlooked, such as the simultaneous influence of and feedback between the four team emergent states and the inertia that TLC can have as a result. The management of TLC becomes an issue of controlling the system rather than each state as an independent force, especially because changing one part of the system will also affect other parts in sometimes unintended and undesirable ways. Thus the value is to offer a systems view on the leadership function of team monitoring with regards to team emergent states, which we term team state monitoring. This view offers promising avenues for future research as well as practical wisdom. It can help leaders remember that TLC represents an equilibrium that needs balance, in addition to pointing to the various ways in which they can influence such equilibrium.

In this manuscript we discuss the consequences of methodological choices when studying team processes “in the wild.” We chose teams in healthcare as the application because teamwork cannot only save lives but the processes constituting effective teamwork in healthcare are prototypical for teamwork as they range from decision-making (e.g., in multidisciplinary decision-making boards in cancer care) to leadership and coordination (e.g., in fast-paced, acute-care settings in trauma, surgery and anesthesia) to reflection and learning (e.g., in post-event clinical debriefings). We draw upon recently emphasized critique that much empirical team research has focused on describing team states rather than investigating how team processes dynamically unfurl over time and how these dynamics predict team outcomes. This focus on statics instead of dynamics limits the gain of applicable knowledge on team functioning in organizations. We first describe three examples from healthcare that reflect the importance, scope, and challenges of teamwork: multidisciplinary decision-making boards, fast-paced, acute care settings, and post-event clinical team debriefings. Second, we put the methodological approaches of how teamwork in these representative examples has mostly been studied centerstage (i.e., using mainly surveys, database reviews, and rating tools) and highlight how the resulting findings provide only limited insights into the actual team processes and the quality thereof, leaving little room for identifying and targeting success factors. Third, we discuss how methodical approaches that take dynamics into account (i.e., event- and time-based behavior observation and micro-level coding, social sensor-based measurement) would contribute to the science of teams by providing actionable knowledge about interaction processes of successful teamwork.

Teams have been a ubiquitous structure for conducting work and business for most of human history. However, today’s organizations are markedly different than those of previous generations. The explosion of innovative ideas and novel technologies mandate changes in job descriptions, roles, responsibilities, and how employees interact and collaborate. These advances have heralded a new era for teams and teamwork in which previous teams research and practice may not be fully appropriate for meeting current requirements and demands. In this article, we describe how teams have been historically defined, unpacking five important characteristics of teams, including membership, interdependence, shared goals, dynamics, and an organizationally bounded context, and relating how these characteristics have been addressed in the past and how they are changing in the present. We then articulate the implications these changes have on how we study teams moving forward by offering specific research questions.

In this paper, we consider how the four key team emergent states for team learning identified by Bell et al. (2012), namely psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy, operate as a system that produces the team's learning climate (TLC). Using the language of systems dynamics, we conceptualize TLC as a stock that rises and falls as a joint function of the psychological safety, goal orientation, cohesion, and efficacy that exists in the team. The systems approach highlights aspects of TLC management that are traditionally overlooked, such as the simultaneous influence of and feedback between the four team emergent states and the inertia that TLC can have as a result. The management of TLC becomes an issue of controlling the system rather than each state as an independent force, especially because changing one part of the system will also affect other parts in sometimes unintended and undesirable ways. Thus the value is to offer a systems view on the leadership function of team monitoring with regards to team emergent states, which we term team state monitoring. This view offers promising avenues for future research as well as practical wisdom. It can help leaders remember that TLC represents an equilibrium that needs balance, in addition to pointing to the various ways in which they can influence such equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this manuscript we discuss the consequences of methodological choices when studying team processes "in the wild." We chose teams in healthcare as the application because teamwork cannot only save lives but the processes constituting effective teamwork in healthcare are prototypical for teamwork as they range from decision-making (e.g., in multidisciplinary decision-making boards in cancer care) to leadership and coordination (e.g., in fast-paced, acute-care settings in trauma, surgery and anesthesia) to reflection and learning (e.g., in post-event clinical debriefings). We draw upon recently emphasized critique that much empirical team research has focused on describing team states rather than investigating how team processes dynamically unfurl over time and how these dynamics predict team outcomes. This focus on statics instead of dynamics limits the gain of applicable knowledge on team functioning in organizations. We first describe three examples from healthcare that reflect the importance, scope, and challenges of teamwork: multidisciplinary decision-making boards, fast-paced, acute care settings, and post-event clinical team debriefings. Second, we put the methodological approaches of how teamwork in these representative examples has mostly been studied centerstage (i.e., using mainly surveys, database reviews, and rating tools) and highlight how the resulting findings provide only limited insights into the actual team processes and the quality thereof, leaving little room for identifying and targeting success factors. Third, we discuss how methodical approaches that take dynamics into account (i.e., event- and time-based behavior observation and micro-level coding, social sensor-based measurement) would contribute to the science of teams by providing actionable knowledge about interaction processes of successful teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teams have been a ubiquitous structure for conducting work and business for most of human history. However, today's organizations are markedly different than those of previous generations. The explosion of innovative ideas and novel technologies mandate changes in job descriptions, roles, responsibilities, and how employees interact and collaborate. These advances have heralded a new era for teams and teamwork in which previous teams research and practice may not be fully appropriate for meeting current requirements and demands. In this article, we describe how teams have been historically defined, unpacking five important characteristics of teams, including membership, interdependence, shared goals, dynamics, and an organizationally bounded context, and relating how these characteristics have been addressed in the past and how they are changing in the present. We then articulate the implications these changes have on how we study teams moving forward by offering specific research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past studies have found that the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) is associated with a range of traits and behaviors that are possibly important to dyadic negotiations. However, it is unknown whether the FWHR would have an impact on intergroup negotiations, which happen frequently and often have higher stakes in the real world. To examine this question, in the current study, we randomly assigned 1,337 Chinese business executives into 288 groups and they completed a multi-issue negotiation exercise against each other. Results showed that groups with larger maximum individual FWHRs achieved objectively better negotiation outcomes. We conclude that groups containing individuals with relatively large FWHRs can claim more value in negotiations between groups.

Past studies have found that the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) is associated with a range of traits and behaviors that are possibly important to dyadic negotiations. However, it is unknown whether the FWHR would have an impact on intergroup negotiations, which happen frequently and often have higher stakes in the real world. To examine this question, in the current study, we randomly assigned 1,337 Chinese business executives into 288 groups and they completed a multi-issue negotiation exercise against each other. Results showed that groups with larger maximum individual FWHRs achieved objectively better negotiation outcomes. We conclude that groups containing individuals with relatively large FWHRs can claim more value in negotiations between groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]