Today's participatory work cultures are moving power down through organizations. Many of them empower self-directed work teams (SDTs) with the responsibility for managing themselves and their work. Key issues in building successful SDTs include selecting team players, training for success, and rewarding team performance. (JOW)

Describes a turnaround principal's efforts to hire new teachers, revamp the educational program, and increase parent involvement in an Oklahoma City elementary school that had been closed because of substandard achievement test performance. Donna H. Lueker's sidebar describes Project Phoenix, the program that vastly improved city schools the year…

Discusses problems that arise when employees are asked to cooperate with each other to improve the company but are rewarded for individual performance. Offers solutions such as rewarding behaviors and offering a combination of salary plans. (JOW)

When faced with conflict, people respond in one of three styles: dominating, appeasing, or cooperating. Teaching students to recognize styles and choose appropriate responses can help them deal with conflict in the workplace. (SK)

Presents tips for effective meetings in the following categories: premeeting preparation, group process, presenting views with impact, accentuating the positive, dealing with politics, and bringing closure. (SK)

Describes a collaboration between 10 private companies and 10 professors from 4 universities in an effort to keep researchers on the cutting edge of both the science that underlies future generations of electronic devices and the accompanying fabrication techniques. (ZWH)

Makes suggestions for editing technical proposals. Discusses the marketeers, the hierarchy of hype, how to save days, managing story boards, expediting a laborious process, teaching engineers to write, writing incrementally, the art group, and the editing task. Argues that the best proposals come from starting to write early. (SR)

Leadership has been so overemphasized that good followers can feel inadequate and unappreciated. One negative effect has been increased competition among school personnel, caused by evaluation systems that reward achievement and performance but neglect teamwork, interpersonal skills, and collegiality. Leaders can learn much from good followers,…

Undergraduate business students did assignments and tests either individually (n=42) or as teams (n=55). Teams enhanced students' sense of meaningfulness and community. Individual differences influenced students' response to teams. Those with high global meaningfulness were more likely to be favorable. (SK)

Describes steps in establishing crisis intervention team in schools: determining goals, performing needs assessment, finding model programs, developing membership pool, developing training program, preparing and maintaining list of resources and plans for support services, establishing communication network, designating base of operations,…

Any organized activity centered on human development could legitimately be seen as human resource development (HRD). A more holistic view defines HRD as a wide range of integrating processes aimed at developing greater purpose and meaning, higher performance, and greater capacity to respond to change, leading to more effective individuals, teams,…

A recent study of school improvement planning teams in central New York State attempted to capture practicing team members' perspectives and identify and elaborate factors helping or hindering team development or effectiveness. Skill development, adequate time, and strong administrative support are critical to successful team development. (20…

As the staff and students of Littleton (Colorado) High School have found, talking about restructured educational programs is easier than implementing them. Participants redesigning graduation requirements encountered seven realities, namely the need for sacrifice, adequate funding, discussion time, outside perspectives, ways to dispel fear and…

Social and academic values emphasizing individualism, competition, and unidisciplinary thinking affect the development of interdisciplinary programs. Interdisciplinary health care teams must be concerned with interprofessional and professional-client relationships and shared team values, which should be addressed in gerontological and geriatric…

Describes how the Prep Editor can be used to support online collaborative editing. Discusses and illustrates how the Prep Editor interface allows student teams to extract the claimed and unclaimed work of each member and how this information can support a team's further decision making. (RS)