**2. Teams**

Cohen and Bailey [9] defined teams in the following manner:

*A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share a responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems (for example, business unit or the corporation), and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries.*

Cohen and Bailey [9] used the terms team and group interchangeably, noting that the field of management typically refers to teams, whereas academic literature typically uses the term group. We will consider teams and small groups as being synonymous to one another for this book chapter.

Kozlowski and Ilgen [10] defined teams as: "Complex dynamic systems that exist in a context, develop as members interact over time, and evolve and adapt as situational demands unfold". Gibson [11] described a group as a social aggregation with meaning, with a limited number of interacting people, and with shared objectives. Relating to the shared objectives, Cohen and Bailey [9] noted that some groups have different degrees of *groupness* (or sharedness), where teams with high degrees of groupness are more independent compared to groups with lower degrees of groupness.

Teams are composed of individuals working on interdependent tasks which contribute to the overall task objective of the collective. The first identifier of a team is the interdependency of individual members working toward a common goal. Second, team members are required to interact to combine each team member's interdependent portion of the overall task. In combining each individual effort into a composite representative of the team's output, team members must interact with one another. This interaction involves shared responsibilities in which authentic communication [12] is a requirement. Finally, a team must also be adaptive as indicated by Cohen and Bailey [9]. Today's knowledge economy presents complex dynamic problems to which teams need to adapt. Although adaptability may not be an initial requirement for a team, if a team is to remain successful in a "dynamic, shifting, and complex environment" [10], it must learn to be adaptive.
