The academic international research team

Abstract

The number of academic international research teams (AIRTs) is rapidly increasing. While AIRTs are essential to addressing complex international research issues they can also often involve a large number of challenging issues. Like corporate international teams, AIRTs must face the challenge of cross‐national differences including large distances, multiple languages, and numerous cultural values. In addition, they must deal with a number of unique issues involving the abstract nature of an intellectual endeavor, differences in academic career motivations and discipline fields, and the necessity of often completing projects on scarce resources. This manuscript reviews five articles which tackle the complexity of AIRTs. In doing so we seek to bring out the most interesting observations as well as the most important recommendations for how to tackle these challenges in future AIRTs.