An article on team dynamics by Steve W. J. Kozlowski and Daniel R. Ilgen appears in the Scientific American Mind issue for June 2007. Points include:

Organizations reward individuals based on individual performance rather than team performance.

If teamwork skills were ubiquitous, there would be enormous benefits to students and society.

My interest stems from the perspective of creating systems to support geographically distributed research projects. What is a critical mass for such a community? Are there tools we can build, interactions we can support to make these environments more productive?

Bibliography:

A Multiple-Goal, Multilevel Model of Feedback Effects on the Regulation of Individual and Team Performance. Richard P. DeShon, Steve W. J. Koz-lowski, Aaron M. Schmidt, Karen A. Milner and Darin Wiechmann in Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 89, No. 6, pages 1035-1056; December 2004.

An Evaluation of Generic Teamwork Skills Training with Action Teams: Effects on Cognitive and Skill-based Outcomes. Aleksander P. J. Ellis, Bradford S. Bell, Robert E. Ployhart, John R. Hollenbeck and Daniel R. Ilgen in Personnel Psychology, Vol. 58, No. 3, pages 641-672; Autumn 2005.

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams. Steve W. J. Koz-lowski and Daniel R. Ilgen in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol. 7, No. 3, pages 77-124; December 2006.