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
Interpersonal Dynamics: Conflict
Person-based conflict (2)
Issue-based conflict (2)
Person-Based Conflict
- Rooted in anger, personal friction, personality clashes and tension
- Interferes with effort and attention to the task by creating preoccupation with reducing threats, increasing power and building cohesion
Issue-Based Conflict
- Depersonalized; focused on merits of ideas, plans and projects
- Stimulates creativity and enhances decision quality through constructive criticism, consideration of different perspectives and stimulation of discussion
Social loafing in Teams
Definition?
Tends to occur in…?
- Reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively compared with when they work individually or coactively.
- Tends to occur in larger teams
Social loafing is more likely to occur when: (6)
- Individuals assume (correctly or incorrectly) that others (a) will not notice they are slacking, or (b) are unable to measure individual contributions. This makes social loafing more likely in larger groups and groups with more complex and ambiguous tasks.
- Individuals believe that others are also ‘loafing’ without experiencing any consequences.
- Individuals believe (rightly or wrongly) that their contribution is not very important.
- Individuals care less about achieving the group’s goals and/or care less about group acceptance than other members.
- Individuals think they are less competent than others at their allocated tasks or find their tasks intrinsically unmotivating.
- Individuals perceive themselves to have superior abilities to the group but feel unable to influence group outcomes.
Free Riding
The term ‘free rider’ refers to the extreme cases where someone contributes nothing but still gets the benefits of the team’s work.
Teams and Groupthink
Groupthink definition
Groupthink occurs when: (5)
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon in which people in a cohesive group go along with the group consensus rather than offering their own opinions.
Groupthink occurs when:
- Norms for conforming in a homogeneous group become very strong
- Members are highly concerned about maintaining unanimity
- Groups fail to critically evaluate their options
- Make poorly reasoned decisions
- An example of groupthink that is often cited is that of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.
Ways to Minimize Groupthink
How can you ensure that Groupthink is avoided? (4)
Avoid isolating the group
Bring in outside experts
Critical evaluators / Devil’s advocate
Role is to question assumptions and uncontested information
Open climate
Leader invites and accepts divergent thinking
Avoid being directive
Strong leaders speak last or sometimes not at all
Teamwork: Critical Perspectives
Teams are not a neutral technology of work design but a practice that creates, reproduces and maintains unequal social relations.
The mainstream view creates an ‘idealised picture’ of teamwork by ignoring and dismissing behaviours and practices that ‘do not fit’.
Organisations are pluralist systems where social relations and self-identities (ex. as ‘manager’ or ‘team member’) are constantly negotiated.
Critical Perspectives : Teamwork as Surveillance and Control (1+4)
Teamwork maintains the basic logic of worker exploitation at the root of liberal capitalism:
- Shareholders and managers are concerned with profit maximisation (reduce costs)
- By participating in teamwork workers actively consent to certain levels of effort and cost (a form of control)
- By participating in teamwork workers discipline themselves and one another (surveillance)
- Teamwork is a mechanism that enhances control, self-discipline and consent (Pollert 1996;McCabe and Black 1996)
