Work Teams in Organizational Contexts: Dynamics of Change, Adaptation and Learning in Flexible Environments

work have already been a way of life in organizations since the eighties of the last century. In a wide variety of activity areas, their use and effectiveness constituted a key element in the achievement of objectives, quality and organizational excellence. Thus, the structures -work teams -and processes -the modalities of team workbecame the cornerstones of organizations. The working experience of an increasing number of people was inseparable from team membership, and team work had surpassed individual work as first choice in every type of organization. However, adapting to all of this was not going to be the last challenge. The first decade of the 21st century has been characterized by significant and rapid changes in work and organizational contexts worldwide: increase in interdependencies (globalization), the use of widely varied technologies, the complex and distributed character of work, and, in general, the uncertainty and unpredictability of the economic, political, financial and business scenarios. This has led to dynamic contexts that bring with them the need to cope with new demands –in knowledge and skills, both technical and socialand challenges in our activity. Consequently, it has been necessary to reformulate and reinterpret the ways and forms of team functioning in these new contexts, both in public and private organizations (Goodwin, Burke, Wildman and Salas, 2009). The current tendencies in organizational design consider the different team modalities as cornerstones of organizational architectures (Cordery, Morrison, Wright and Wall, 2010; Grant, Fried, Parker and Frese, 2010). Teams are used when errors lead to severe consequences; when the complexity of tasks exceeds individual capacity; when the context of the task is ill-defined, ambiguous or very stressful; when multiple, quick decisions are required; or when the lives of other people depend on the collective insight of experts (Salas, Cooke and Rosen, 2008). Now more than ever, teams and team work become essential for the creation of dynamic configurations WORK TEAMS IN ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS: DYNAMICS OF CHANGE, ADAPTATION AND LEARNING IN FLEXIBLE ENVIRONMENTS