ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider the multiteam system (MTS) as part of a larger ecology of networked groups and individuals that the MTS acts within and that, in turn, shapes the MTS itself. The original description of the multiteam system by Mathieu, Marks, and Zaccaro (2001) treated the MTS largely as a self-contained entity composed of several interacting teams, such as firefighters, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and the surgical and recovery teams at the hospital. According to them, the MTS has a hierarchy of goals, stretching from the overall goal of the MTS (e.g., patient survival) down to the subgoals of each of the constituent teams (e.g., extract the victim from the wreck, or transport the victim to the hospital). Task and goal interdependencies lend the MTS its coherence as a system and provide a degree of closure for the system. Mathieu et al. noted that the MTS is situated within two types of environments, the embedding organization and the external environment, both of which include other groups that the MTS must relate to. This implies the existence of a group ecology for the MTS, though Mathieu et al. did not develop this idea much further.
