The European Challenge: An Evaluation of the Consistency of Belbin Team Role Types and Assessment Criteria in a Pan European Project

"Following on from the paper presented at the 2004 ERES conference by Nick Nunnington and HenriÎt Eilander, the authors examine two new aspect of the ""European Challenge"" project. Bringing together around 70 students and 9 tutors from 9 countries it provides one of the most complex case studies and action research vehicles of multi disciplinary and multi-national student projects in Europe. An ambitious and unique project it simulates the re-location of the European Headquarters of a US based corporation of 303 employees. In this paper the authors examine the impact of cultural norms, social backgrounds and expectations upon multi national team working and assessment. With increased globalisation the real estate profession and its students are moving towards European wide integration and becoming used to the reality of working in multinational project teams. However, little research exists which examines the effectiveness of such teams and whether established team working models, such as that developed by Meredith Belbin with its nine team role types holds true in a Pan European or multi-national approach. This paper draws upon theories of psychology, psychometric assessment and team work analysis and utilises observation and analysis of two years of pan European student team working to examine both the team operations and assessment issues. The authors propose that models of team role types developed in the UK/US might not be appropriate for pan European working and suggest recalibration may be required. In addition the authors examine the assessment of the project by a multi-national team of assessors and provide fascinating in-sight into the wide deviation of expectations and the problems inherent in the application of objective assessment criteria in a pan European context. The initial results show interesting findings in terms of how Belbin team role types might not translate completely across Europe and how (wide) variations exist between the perceptions of academics from a variety of European backgrounds as to the interpretation of assessment criteria for a student team presentation. "