ABSTRACT
Over the last 40 years, there has a been a growing trend toward the utilization of teams for accomplishing work in organizations in private, public, and military sectors of the workplace (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; Sundstrom, McIntyre, Halfhill, & Richards, 2000). Project teams, self-managed work teams, and top-management teams, among others, have become a regular element in the corporate lexicon. Within the military, there has been a parallel trend emphasizing teams and teamwork-recently codified in the formal Army doctrine on leadership (Department of the Army, 2006). Relatively concurrent with this trend has been an increasing focus of organizational research on the development of methods and theories for understanding team effectiveness (e.g., Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Cannon-Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995; Cooke, Salas, Kiekel, & Bell, 2004; Fleishman & Zaccaro, 1992; Fowlkes, Lane, Salas, Franz, & Oser, 1994; Ilgen et al., 2005; Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro, 2001). This volume is intended to provide an overview of the current state of the art in research on team effectiveness. In doing so, points of potential integration, gaps, and areas in need of further exploration are identified. It is hoped that this integration may provide some inspiration for researchers to explore beyond our self-set boundaries and give impetus to engage in a broader set of challenges with a wider range of multidisciplinary approaches.
