Event Characteristics and Team Adaptation in Extreme Contexts: Evidence from an Antarctic Summer Campaign

Team adaptation is particularly impactful within extreme and isolated environments, where sudden and abrupt events drastically challenge effective teamwork. To advance the team adaptation literature, we examined how event characteristics influence the relationship between team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance. To do so, we conducted an on-site, multi-study research using sequential explanatory mixed methods and a retrospective event history approach. The first study (based on a quantitative multilevel methodology) was designed to understand how the characteristics of the events influenced team adaptation processes and team adaptive performance (we collected data of 86 events described by 56 informants nested within 21 teams) during one Antarctic Summer Campaign at the South Shetland Islands Archipelago, Antarctica. The second study, based on qualitative methodology focused on thematic analysis, was designed to obtain a detailed description of the relationship between adaptation triggers and team adaptation (we collected data from 20 semi-structured interviews). Overall, our findings highlight that different team processes are significant in shaping perceptions of team adaptive performance, making the modification of transition and interpersonal processes the most critical. We additionally show how these relationships are moderated by the characteristics of adaptation triggers. We discuss the implications of these findings for teams within extreme environments and beyond.