Conference: Advancing Team Effectiveness in a Globalized World; Michigan State University, October 8-10, 2015

重要性和重要性的非技术描述在过去二十年中，各种全球力量的发展推动了世界各地的组织重组围绕团队的工作，以利用多样化的专业知识进行创新，并实现更快速、灵活和适应性更强的响应。创新和适应性的双重需求使团队成为技能发展、知识共享和行动的焦点。此外，协作和团队合作的推动是全球性的，因为关键专业知识无论在哪里都会被寻求。在技术的帮助下，虚拟团队无处不在。这增加了团队成员的多样性及其文化和种族背景的异质性。这主要强调融合多样性，最大限度地减少分裂、亚群形成和分裂团队的断层线的可能性。现代工作团队日益全球化、跨文化和虚拟。鉴于多文化团队的日益突出，人们预计会有强大的科学基础和专门讨论这一主题的会议，但事实并非如此。有关于文化和多样性的文献，但它们不是以团队为中心的。关于团队的组成、培训和发展、领导和管理的文献已经很成熟，但对跨文化问题及其对团队有效性理论和研究的影响的关注却很少。这代表了文献中的一个重大差距。会议的目的是揭示关键的概念差距，综合不同的观点，并提出一个理论发展和研究的议程，以提高多元文化团队的有效性。多文化团队有效性包括重要的实质性主题，如文化、多样性和团队有效性。将这些主题结合起来也促进了更广泛的科学和社会关切。最近的研究表明，科学和工程的协作性和跨学科程度越来越高，而协作性科学的影响力更大。协作科学需要多文化团队。提高关于如何确保多文化团队成功的知识也将促进科学和技术的多样性。技术描述显然需要对文化和多样性的影响在与组建、发展和领导有效团队有关的一系列主题中形成更全面的理解。零散的文献需要理论整合、新的研究来弥合知识差距，以及开发创新的应用程序来帮助在多文化背景下的团队合作。会议旨在通过以下方式促进这种融合：(A)将核心主题领域(即文化、多样性、团队培训、团队领导力和团队有效性)的关键专家作为目标；(B)让他们分享他们对核心主题新发展的知识和见解；以及(C)让他们和不同的会议参与者参与互动的、有重点的讨论，以整合想法、找出差距，并为综合、理论发展和新研究提出有希望的方向。这种方法将有助于整合这些零散的文献，并为概念进展、研究进展和实际应用组织一个连贯的框架，以提高多元文化团队的效率。此外，会议的产品将向公众开放。演讲材料和经同意的演讲视频将可从密歇根州立大学心理学系多元文化心理学研究联盟(CMPR)网站下载。

Nontechnical Description of Significance and Importance A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades have pushed organizations world-wide to restructure work around teams to harness diverse expertise for innovation and to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses. The dual needs of innovation and adaptability make teams the focus for skill development, knowledge sharing, and action. Moreover, the push toward collaboration and teamwork is global, as critical expertise is sought wherever it is located. Aided by technology, virtual teaming is ubiquitous. This has increased the diversity of team members and the heterogeneity of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. This places primary emphasis on melding diversity and minimizing the potential for fragmentation, subgroup formation, and faultlines that fracture teams. Modern work teams are increasingly global, multicultural, and virtual. Given the increasing prominence of multicultural teams, one would expect that there would be a strong scientific foundation and conferences devoted to this topic, but that is not the case. There are literatures on culture and diversity, but they are not team centric. There are well-developed literatures on composing, training and developing, leading, and managing teams, but a focus on multicultural issues and their implications for team effectiveness theory and research is diffuse. This represents a significant gap in the literature. The purpose of the conference is to surface key conceptual gaps, synthesize differing perspectives, and advance an agenda for theory development and research to enhance multicultural team effectiveness. Multicultural team effectiveness encompasses important substantive topics of culture, diversity, and team effectiveness. Integrating these topics advances broader scientific and societal concerns as well. Recent research shows that science and engineering are increasingly collaborative and cross-disciplinary, and that collaborative science has more impact. Collaborative science entails multicultural teams. Advancing knowledge of how to ensure the success of multicultural teams will also advance diversity in science and technology.Technical Description There is a clear need to develop a more integrated understanding of the effects of culture and diversity across the spectrum of topics relevant to forming, developing, and leading effective teams. The fragmented literature necessitates theoretical integration, new research to close knowledge gaps, and the development of innovative applications to aid teamwork in multicultural contexts. The conference is designed to advance this integration by (a) targeting key experts across core topic areas (i.e., culture, diversity, team training, team leadership, and team effectiveness); (b) having them share their knowledge and insights on new developments across core topics; and (c) engaging them and diverse conference participants in interactive, focused discussion sessions to integrate ideas, identify gaps, and propose promising directions for synthesis, theory development, and new research. This approach will help to integrate this fragmented literature and to organize a coherent framework for conceptual progress, research advancement, and practical applications to improve multicultural team effectiveness. In addition, products from the conference will be publically available. Presentation materials and consented videos of presentations will be available for downloading from the Consortium for Multicultural Psychology Research (CMPR) website at the Department of Psychology, Michigan State University.