Teamwork in Organizations Lecture Flashcards
Teams: A definition
There is…
Katzenbach and Smith 1993: 113 definition
- There is no generally accepted definition of ‘teamwork’.
- ‘A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach, for which they hold themselves mutually accountable’ (Katzenbach and Smith 1993: 113).
Groups vs Teams
What is a social group?
What is a group?
What is a team?
A social group is any collection of people who interact with each other and identify with one another
A group can interact for non-work related tasks, such as friendship groups or religious groups
A team is sub-type of social group that is formally assembled to work together to achieve a collective outcome or goal
e.g. sports team, project team, work team
Why does teamwork matter?
Teamwork is seen as vital … (7)
But it is hard …(6)
Teamwork is seen as vital …
- Key requirement for most jobs
- Seen as central to organizational success
- Core skill
- Brings benefits
- Creativity
- Problem solving
- Sense of belonging
But it is hard …
- Genuine teamwork hard to achieve
- Personality clashes
- Dysfunctional teams
- Free-riding
- Conflict
- Counter-productive
Teamwork and Synergy
Organisations create teams when…
Organisations aim to benefit…
Organisations create teams when they think teams will outperform individuals working alone (with their tasks allocated and outputs coordinated by a manager)
Organisations aim to benefit from the synergy teams can sometimes generate, when the output of the team is greater than the combination of individual outputs (i.e. “2 + 2 = 5”)
Katzenbach & Smith (1993) teamwork is an effective way to… (10)
- Improve performance
- Reduce production costs
- Speed up innovations
- Introduce new technologies
- Improve product quality
- Increase (functional) flexibility
- Increase employee participation
- Achieve better industrial relations
- Identify and solve work-related problems
- Meet the challenge of global competition
Types of Teams (4)
A self-managed team is a group of workers who manage their own daily duties under little to no supervision.
A cross-functional team is a group of workers from different units with various areas of expertise to work on certain projects.
A problem-solving team consists of a small group of workers who come together for a set amount of time to discuss and resolve specific issues.
A virtual team is a group of members who are in different locations and work together through email, video-conferencing, instant messaging, and other electronic media.
Teams across Cultures
Teams differ according to the degree of…
Japanese teamworking is based on…?
They can form…?
Western approaches tend to emphasise…?
What all teamwork types share in common is..?
- Teams differ according to the degree of autonomy they are given and the degree to which they are empowered to make decisions
- Japanese teamworking is based on Taylorised and Fordist systems of work design, except workers are trained on more than one machine so they can multi-task. Japanese teams can form quality control circles, where selected workers meet away from the production line to discuss and solve quality issues
- Western approaches to teamwork tend to emphasise empowerment and autonomy and comprise highly-skilled employees from across different functions or units (cross-functional teams)
- What all teamwork types share in common is that the team is held collectively responsible for the team’s outputs
The Five Stages of Team Development (Tuckman and Jensen 1965; 1997)
- Forming
How do I fit into the group? What are other people’s attitudes? Who will lead?
- Storming
These are my goals, how are they different from yours? How shall we organise ourselves? Here the group conflicts and relationships formed earlier may be disrupted. - Norming
Let’s develop ways to work more closely. Here a sense of group identity is formed and roles are allocated. - Performing
Lets collaborate, or compete in a friendly manner. The group now has an effective structure, and focuses on achieving the tasks. - Adjourning
Here the group disbands and members reflect on how the group performed.
Group stages (4 rules)
- The sequence of stages can vary
- groups can pass through stages quickly or slowly
- Some groups never enter the ‘performing’ stage
- Groups can get ‘stuck’ at one stage
Tuckman and Jensen’s theory assessed (3s, 4w)
Strengths:
- Understand the process by which teams are formed
- Understand team development not always a smooth process
- Based on some empirical research
Weaknesses:
- Assumes a linear process to team development
- Boundaries between stages often blurred
- Do teams have to go through these stages?
Cultural assumptions
Belbin’s team role theory
How does she define a team role as?
Based on a nine‐year study of management teams taking part in an executive management exercise, Meredith Belbin (1993) proposed that: (5)
Belbin defines a ‘team role’ as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.”
Based on a nine‐year study of management teams taking part in an executive management exercise, Meredith Belbin (1993) proposed that:
- People have personalities that make them predisposed to adopt particular team roles (patterns of behaving) when they work in groups
- The roles that people prefer can be ascertained using personality profiles and team role questionnaires
- A high-functioning team is ‘balanced’ in the sense that all roles are filled and all complement each other
- Even small teams can function effectively if individuals can perform more than one role
- Effective managers are those who know employee role types and can compose balanced teams
Criticisms of Belbin’s team role theory (7)
- Broucek & Randell (1996) criticise the measure Belbin used for team performance as based on anecdotal rather than systematically tested and verified evidence
- Furnham, Steele & Pendleton (1993) cast doubt on the validity of the personality questionnaire method used to map individuals on to team roles, questioning:
- Reliability (whether people give consistent answers at different times)
- Validity (whether it really measures what it claims to measure, i.e. personality types)
- Commensurability (whether the measure of personality actually ‘maps on to’ team roles)
- Assumes that people have fixed personalities and cannot adapt to different situations or develop over time (e.g. a ‘plant’ in a sporting team could be a ‘shaper’ in a work team)
- Cannot explain why some teams are high-performing teams despite having some roles apparently not filled
Teamwork Dysfunctions (6)
- Some teams fail to deliver – get stuck in ‘Forming’ and ‘Storming’.
- Interpersonal problems- trust & conflict
- Leadership problems
- Some team ‘norms’ can be negative- Groupthink
- Free riders/social loafing
- Fake empowerment - teamwork = more control and overwork.
Teams in name only?
Teams require a degree of autonomy over what they do and how they do it. If teams are instructed on (a) what each member should do, (b) how it should be done and (c) how it should be recombined, they are a team only in name.
Organisations sometimes use the term ‘team’ without adopting teamwork principles (e.g. workers in McDonalds being referred to as “team members” but actually working under Tayloristic work conditions)
Interpersonal Dynamics: Trust
Teams that lack trust (4)
Teams that lack trust
- Conceal their weaknesses from one another
- Hesitate to ask for help or provide constructive feedback
- Don’t readily offer help to others
Waste time and energy managing their behaviours for effect - Hold grudges
