INTRODUCTION TO TEAMS AND TEAM MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION

Teamwork has been recommended as an organizational design feature for many years, as a way to improve productivity, quality, and employee satisfaction (Lawler and Mohrman 1987). This is espe- cially true in today’s organizational environment, with increased global competition and a more demanding workforce (Katzenbach and Smith 1993). The increased attention to teams has become widespread particularly in the context of total quality management (TQM) or quality improvement (QI), which relies heavily on teamwork (Dean and Bowen 1994; Deming 1986).

Teamwork represents one form of work organization that can have large positive and / or negative effects on the different elements of the work system and on human outcomes, such as performance, attitudes, well being, and health. Conceiving work as a social system and advocating the necessity of both technical and social performance optimizations as necessary for organizational effectiveness, the sociotechnical theory provides several arguments and examples supporting teamwork. The ger- minal study, which gave the essential evidence for the development of the sociotechnical field, was a team experience observed in the English mining industry during the 1950s. In this new form of work organization, a set of relatively autonomous work groups performed a complete collection of tasks interchanging roles and shifts and regulating their affairs with a minimum of supervision. This experience was considered a way of recovering the group cohesion and self-regulation concomitantly with higher level of mechanization (Trist 1981). The group had the power to participate in decisions concerning work arrangements, and these changes resulted in increased cooperation between task groups, personal commitment from the participants, and reduction in absenteeism and the number of accidents.

A GM assembly plant located in Fremont, California was considered until 1982, the year it ended operations, the worst plant in the GM system and in the auto industry as whole. For years, the plant presented dismay levels of quality, low productivity, and prevalent problems of absenteeism and turnover. The plant was reopened two years later under a new joint venture with Toyota. Changes focusing primarily on the relationship between workers and management, the organizational structure, and the widespread use of teamwork transformed the plant in one of the most productive ones of the GM system, with high levels of employee satisfaction and very low levels of absenteeism (Levine, 1995).

Examples like those above illustrate the advantages of using teams to perform a variety of or- ganizational assignments and tasks. Supporters of teamwork have promoted teamwork on many grounds, highlighting its potential for increased productivity, quality, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and increased acceptance of change, among others. Teamwork is the preferred strategy to increase employee involvement in the workplace. Indeed, terms such as participatory management, employee involvement, and participation are frequently equated with teamwork. According to Lawler (1986), employee involvement affects five major determinants of organizational effectiveness: moti- vation, satisfaction, acceptance of change, problem solving, and communication. Lawler states that employee involvement can create a connection between a particular level of performance and the perception of a favorable consequence. Involvement in teams can provide rewards beyond those allocated by the organization, such as money and promotion: it can supply intrinsic rewards, that is, accomplishment, personal growth, and so on. Similarly, Lawler argues that allowing people to par- ticipate in the definition of the procedures and methods utilized in their daily activities is an effective way to improve those methods and can motivate employees to produce a better-quality job. Teams also can ease the process of implementation of organizational changes and avoid the ‘‘not-invented- here’’ perception and create commitment with the implementation of change.

It has been argued that in many circumstances the effort of a group of people generates effective solutions that would not be produced by the same individuals working independently. This superior outcome would result not only from the greater pooled knowledge available to the group members, but also from the interaction process among them, from the mutual influence on each other’s thinking. This process has been termed collective intelligence (Wechsler 1971) and refers to a mode of co- operative thinking that goes beyond simple collective behavior. Finally, system reliability is also assumed to improve through employee participation since it increases the human knowledge variety and enables the workers to understand their role in making the system more efficient and safer.

While there are a number of positive elements associated with teamwork in general, there are also some potential negative elements. Furthermore, these elements are not constant but rather depend on the type of team as well as the organizational environment in which teams operate. In the next section, we propose a typology of teams, review key characteristics of teams, and address the issue of designing teams.