W8 - work groups and teams in organisations Flashcards
Self-managing teams
(also called self-directed teams) are groups of interdependent individuals that can self-regulate their behaviour on relatively whole tasks (Cohen & Ledford, 1994)
Virtual teams
refer to a group of interdependent members who work together on a common task while they are geographically separated.
Cross-functional teams
are groups of people who apply different skills, with a high degree of interdependence, to ensure the effective delivery of a common organisational objective (Holland, Gaston, & Gomes, 2000, p. 233)
Functional teams
are groups of people with a common functional expertise working towards shared objectives
Working groups (versus teams)
- prevalent and effective in large organisations where individual accountability is most important.
- come together to share information, perspectives, and insights; to make decisions that help each person do his or her job better; and to reinforce individual performance standards.
- focus is always on individual goals and accountabilities.
- members don’t take responsibility for results other than their own.
- don’t develop incremental performance contributions requiring the combined work of two or more members
Teams (versus working groups)
- Teams differ fundamentally from working groups because they require both individual and mutual accountability.
- Teams rely on more than group discussion, debate, and decision, on more than sharing information and best-practice performance standards.
- Teams produce discrete work products through the joint contributions of their members.
- > This is what makes possible performance levels greater than the sum of all the individual bests of team members. Simply stated, a team is more than the sum of its parts
The benefits of teams
- lower costs and higher productivity
- reduced absenteeism
- quality improvements
- efficiency
- innovation
Lower costs and higher productivity team benefit
In business contexts, teams can save on staffing costs because there is a reduced need for supervisors and middle managers
Reduced absenteeism team benefit
- Membership in a team gives a person a sense of belonging, regular interactions with others, and recognition of achievements.
- All of these help to eliminate a sense of isolation within a larger organisation.
- Members of a team often identify with and feel pride in the work they are doing and come to rely on one another
Quality improvements team benefit
When members of diverse teams apply different skills to the same problem, they are able to generate more effective solutions
Efficiency team benefit
- A well-functioning team can accomplish more than individuals can do alone.
- During the 1980s, Ford was able to reduce the time it took to produce a new car by implementing “Team Taurus.” By establishing teams of employees from planning, designing, engineering, and manufacturing, the company avoided bottlenecks that had delayed the design process in the past.
- > The involvement of suppliers and assembly workers also helped to lower production costs by decreasing the number of parts involved. Reducing the time from design to manufacture helped Ford to be more responsive to market changes and increase its market share in the 1980s and 1990s
Innovation team benefit
- Creativity thrives when people work together on a team.
- > Multinational manufacturing company W. L. Gore & Associates is an example of a firm that utilises teams to inspire innovation. The company is structured around the concept of small plants (no more than 250 employees) where everyone works in teams.
- > Everyone is allowed to experiment with the products and develop new uses. The result is that Gore has a continuous stream of patent applications and has been successful in developing new products in areas as a diverse as clothing, surgical supplies, and coatings for industrial use
Team effectiveness
- First, effective teams deliver results on time
- In effective teams, the satisfaction and wellbeing of its members are enhanced.
- The third component is the creation of new capacity among team members to work interdependently with each other.
- > This model of team effectiveness predicts that managing team processes efficiently will result in high levels of team performance, and high levels of wellbeing and satisfaction of team members
Teamwork processes
Defining processes
- mission analysis, strategy formulation and planning, goal specification
Monitoring team processes
- monitoring amount of effort expended, performance strategies, level of knowledge and skill applied
Interpersonal processes
- conflict management, motivation management, affect management
- look up image
Interdepedence means team members
- rely on one another for information and resources
- have unique, often complementary, KSAOs
- hold unique roles and responsibilities, which can be stable or change through the project
- engage in boundary-spanning activities within and outside the organisation to gather needed team resources
