A report on research into the teamwork in Antarctic has recently been published, following a project coordinated by Pedro Marques-Quinteiro of ISPA- Instituto Universitário, Portugal.

Antarctica is the harshest continent on the planet and presents unique challenges to human collaboration. Since 2016, a team of researchers has applied diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives to learn how Antarctica science teams engage in various forms of teamwork to achieve performance goals.

They found that Antarctica science teams face daily challenges that threaten mission success and one of the most important predictors of good performance is team adaptation. Team adaptation is defined as the adjustments teams make when faced with emergent contextual changes (e.g. weather change). While most of the data collected comes from Antarctica science teams,  findings suggest that we also need to consider other teams with whom these teams interact in order to understand the full picture of team adaptation in Antarctica.

Thus, additional data concerning the views and experience of managers and logistic team members, who (a) support Antarctica science teams, (b) connect to multiple science teams and (c) provide key resources that these teams need. We have several aims: to gain insights into the unique perspectives of Antarctica teams; to clarify the dynamics of science teams as well as logistic team adaptation in Antarctica, and to present practical recommendations that can assist in the design and implementation of
effective teamwork under extreme conditions.

The full report is available for download here.