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

在过去的二十年里，各种全球性的力量正在推动世界各地的组织围绕团队重组工作，以利用各种专业知识进行创新，并实现更快速，灵活和适应性的反应。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，对协作和团队合作的推动是全球性的，因为无论位于何处，都需要关键的专业知识。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和尽量减少分裂的可能性，子群体的形成，以及分裂团队的断层线。现代工作团队越来越全球化、多元文化和虚拟化。鉴于多文化团队的日益突出，人们会期望有一个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。关于组成、培训和发展、领导和管理团队的文献已经很发达，但对多元文化问题及其对团队有效性理论和研究的影响的关注还很分散。这是文献中的一个重大空白。会议的目的是表面关键的概念差距，综合不同的观点，并推进理论发展和研究的议程，以提高多元文化团队的有效性。多元文化团队有效性包括文化，多样性和团队有效性的重要实质性主题。整合这些主题也会促进更广泛的科学和社会问题。最近的研究表明，科学和工程越来越具有协作性和跨学科性，协作科学具有更大的影响力。合作科学需要多文化团队。提高对如何确保多元文化团队成功的认识也将促进科学技术的多样性。技术说明在与形成、发展和领导有效团队相关的主题范围内，显然需要对文化和多样性的影响有更全面的理解。支离破碎的文献需要理论整合，新的研究，以缩小知识差距，并开发创新的应用程序，以帮助在多元文化背景下的团队合作。会议旨在通过以下方式推进这种整合：（a）针对核心主题领域的关键专家（即，文化、多样性、团队培训、团队领导力和团队效率）;（B）让他们分享他们对核心主题新发展的知识和见解;（c）让他们和不同的与会者参与互动的、有重点的讨论会，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，并为概念进步、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，会议的产品将以电子方式提供。演讲材料和经同意的演讲视频可从密歇根州立大学心理学系的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.