Exceeding the Ordinary: A Framework for Examining Teams Across the Extremeness Continuum and Its Impact on Future Research

Abstract

Work teams increasingly face unprecedented challenges in volatile, uncertain, complex, and often ambiguous environments. In response, team researchers have begun to focus more on teams whose work revolves around mitigating risks in these dynamic environments. Some highly insightful contributions to team research and organizational studies have originated from investigating teams that face unconventional or extreme events. Despite this increased attention to extreme teams, however, a comprehensive theoretical framework is missing. We introduce such a framework that envisions team extremeness as a continuous, multidimensional variable consisting of environmental extremeness (i.e., external team context) and task extremeness (i.e., internal team context). The proposed framework allows every team to be placed on the team extremeness continuum, bridging the gap between literature on extreme and more traditional teams. Furthermore, we present six propositions addressing how team extremeness may interact with team processes, emergent states, and outcomes using core variables for team effectiveness and the well-established input–mediator–output–input model to structure our theorizing. Finally, we outline some potential directions for future research by elaborating on temporal considerations (i.e., patterns and trajectories), measurement approaches, and consideration of multilevel relationships involving team extremeness. We hope that our theoretical framework and theorizing can create a path forward, stimulating future research within the organizational team literature to further examine the impact of team extremeness on team dynamics and effectiveness.

Enhancing Interoperability Team Training: Insights from the UK Emergency Services

“…This study evaluated the perceived effectiveness of team training for emergency response teams in the UK, focusing on the implementation and outcomes of JESIP. The research is grounded in the understanding that teams are crucial for achieving goals in complex task environments (Schmutz et al, 2023), and that team training is essential for enhancing team performance through improved skills, shared sense making and knowledge (Salas et al, 2007). Despite an initial investment and a broad training program that improved taskwork around interoperability, subsequent budget reductions raised concerns about the sustainability and ongoing adaptation of these training efforts (Power et al, 2023).…”

“…If team training lacks realism, immersion and the contextual factors that make that team unique, it does not prepare team members to perform under the exceptional extreme conditions that they are about to face. Furthering this argument, Schmutz et al (2023) have developed a team extremeness framework, whereby they conceptualise extreme teamwork as a continuous, multidimensional construct that is situated around two contextual dimensions -environmental extremeness (i.e., the extremeness of the environment in which the team is operating) and task extremeness (i.e., the extremeness of the task that the team are performing). For example, a hospital team operating in a typical hospital setting might have low environmental extremeness with high task extremeness but place them into a warzone and extremeness RUNNING TITLE: Enhancing Interoperability Team Training 6 becomes high along both dimensions.…”

“…Emergency response teams are a type of extreme team as they must operate in environments that are complex, dynamic, high-stakes and faced paced, where teamwork is essential to successfully resolve the emergency (James, 2011;Power, 2018). Emergencies include major disasters, such as climate disasters and terror attacks, or more "routine" emergencies such as road traffic collisions, and so the extremeness of tasks can range from high to low (e.g., Schmutz, et al, 2023). The successful resolution of any emergency is that it is contingent upon effective teamwork between different emergency services (e.g., Police, Fire, Ambulance).…”

Theorizing as Mode of Engagement in and through Extreme Contexts Research

“…In other examples, comparing extreme contexts which vary in unpredictability, degree of harm, and natural or human sources – such as mega events and natural disasters (Tilcsik & Marquis, 2013) or the Spanish influenza and spring frost (Rao & Greve, 2018) – extends the boundaries of institutional theories related to field formation and change and institutional legacies. Second, the researcher can elaborate theory to better understand the distinctions between extreme and mundane settings (Bamberger & Pratt, 2010; Johns, 2017; Schmutz et al, 2023). Wright and co-authors, for example, probed the dynamics and boundaries of evidence-based management in traditional organizations by theorizing its underlying mechanisms in an emergency context (Wright et al, 2016).…”

Virtuelle Flurgespräche und Status-Updates: Zusammenarbeit in avatar-basierten Arbeitsumgebungen

“… 2012 ; Hill und Villamor 2022 ; Schmutz et al. 2023 ). Das Modell nimmt dabei folgende drei Dimensionen virtueller Arbeit in den Blick: (1) die Art und Menge an Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT), (2) die Art und Menge an Informationen, die über diese IKT ausgetauscht werden (d. h. den Informationsgehalt) und (3) die räumliche und zeitliche Synchronität der Arbeitsprozesse.…”