The influence of personality and ability on undergraduate teamwork and team performance

The ability to work effectively on a team is highly valued by employers, and collaboration among students can lead to intrinsic motivation, increased persistence, and greater transferability of skills. Moreover, innovation often arises from multidisciplinary teamwork. The influence of personality and ability on undergraduate teamwork and performance is not comprehensively understood. An investigation was undertaken to explore correlations between team outcomes, personality measures and ability in an undergraduate population. Team outcomes included various self-, peer- and instructor ratings of skills, performance, and experience. Personality measures and ability involved the Five-Factor Model personality traits and GPA. Personality, GPA, and teamwork survey data, as well as instructor evaluations were collected from upper division team project courses in engineering, business, political science, and industrial design at a large public university. Characteristics of a multidisciplinary student team project were briefly examined. Personality, in terms of extraversion scores, was positively correlated with instructors’ assessment of team performance in terms of oral and written presentation scores, which is consistent with prior research. Other correlations to instructor-, students’ self- and peer-ratings were revealed and merit further study. The findings in this study can be used to understand important influences on successful teamwork, teamwork instruction and intervention and to understand the design of effective curricula in this area moving forward

Time management behavior as a moderator for the job demand-control interaction

The interaction effects of time management, work demands, and autonomy on burnout were investigated in a survey study of 123 elementary teachers. A 3-way interaction between time management, work demands, and autonomy was hypothesized: The combination of high work demands and low autonomy was predicted to lead to burnout for teachers low in time management and not, or to a lesser extent, for those high in time management. This hypothesis is confirmed for emotional exhaustion, the most predictive dimension of teacher burnout, and partly confirmed for the personal accomplishment dimension. Generalizability to other contactual occupations is discussed

A pleasure working together? : the effects of dissimilarity in team member conscientiousness on team temporal processes and individual satisfaction

In this study of 43 student project teams, we tested a multi-level mediation model of the relationship between dissimilarity in conscientiousness, team temporal processes, and team member satisfaction. We distinguished between individual-level dissimilarity in conscientiousness (i.e., the distance between an individual member and his or her team mates), and team-level dissimilarity in conscientiousness (i.e., the overall dissimilarity within the team). Individual-level dissimilarity in conscientiousness had a direct negative effect on team members' satisfaction with the team, but did not affect their satisfaction with the team's performance. Team-level dissimilarity in conscientiousness indirectly affected both types of satisfaction negatively as it impeded early agreement about the temporal aspects of task execution, which, in turn, hindered coordinated action in later stages of team task execution

The development of a design behaviour questionnaire for multidisciplinary teams

The relationship between design behaviours and successful design task completion is studied for multidisciplinary design teams. In this research, no observational methods such as audio–visual recordings or ethnographic fieldwork were used, as often the case in design research, but a questionnaire tapping critical behaviours was developed and statistically validated in two separate studies. In addition, this study presents a comprehensive view on the behaviour of design team members. The resulting Design Behaviour Questionnaire for Teams consists of 55 items divided into three main categories (‘design creation’, ‘design planning’, and ’design cooperation’) and 12 scales

Impact of cognitive style on group decision and negotiation

Numerous studies on group decision and negotiation have focused on the influence of the cognitive style of decision makers. Using number of instruments such as Kirton Adaption Innovation (KAI), Cognitive Style Index (CSI), Kolb Learning Style Inventory (KLS), Belbin team role self‐perception inventory, or the well-known Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), studies explore relationships between different dimensions of the personality traits of the individuals and the performance of group decisions. The results are very heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory, depending in particular on the decision contexts explored (strategic decision or not, etc.) and the type of measurement and proxy used to identify the cognitive style. When cognitive diversity is the variable used in these researches, it is no longer the influence of an individual cognitive style on the decision that becomes the object of study but the fact that several styles are represented among the members of a group of decision makers. Looking for an integrative group of decision makers, as it is finally proposed in this chapter through a cognitive mapping-based method, is then a way to increase group decision performance

Human Resource Allocation and Scheduling for Software Project Management

Software project management consists of a number of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling activities. Human resources feature prominently in all of these activities and, as a consequence, they can affect and determine project management decisions. Therefore, in order to help guarantee the success of a software project, managers must take into consideration this type of resource when performing the aforementioned activities. This chapter specifically investigates human resources from a planning perspective and, in particular, focuses on the responsibilities of allocating developers and teams to project tasks, scheduling developers and teams, as well as forming development teams. These responsibilities are often challenging to undertake because they are accompanied by time, budget and quality constraints, which software project managers find difficult to balance correctly. The purpose of the chapter is to explore the most recent research work in the field of human resource allocation and scheduling, and to specifically examine the motivation behind each approach and the goals and benefits to real-world practitioners. In addition, the chapter investigates development team formation, which can be considered as an indirect method of allocating human resources to a software project. This perspective, in particular, sheds light on current and future trends, which lean towards incorporating human-centric aspects of software development in planning activities