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Chapter 10 Understanding Work Teams Page
Chapter 10
Understanding Work Teams
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
10-1. Analyze the continued popularity of teams in organizations.
10-2. Contrast groups and teams.
10-3. Contrast the five types of teams.
10-4. Identify the characteristics of effective teams.
10-5. Explain how organizations can create team players.
10-6. Decide when to use individuals instead of teams.
INSTRUCTOR’S RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter.
Text Exercises
An Ethical Choice: The Size of Your Meeting’s Carbon Footprint
Myth or Science?: “Team Members Who Are ‘Hot’ Should Make the Play”
Career OBjectives: Is It Wrong That I’d Rather Have Guys On My Team?
MyLab Management
oPersonal Inventory Assessments: Team Development Behaviors
oTry It!: Teams
oTry It!: Simulation: Virtual Teams
oTry It! Simulation: Innovation and Teams
oWatch It!: Teams (TWZ Role Play)
Point/Counterpoint: To Get the Most Out of Teams, Empower Them
Questions for Review
Experiential Exercise: Whether to Use Self-Managed Teams
Ethical Dilemma: Is It Worth Hiring a Star Instead of a Team Player
Text Cases
Case Incident 1: Trusting Someone You Can’t See
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Case Incident 2: Smart Teams and Dumb Teams
Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s
Choice reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s
Choice activities are centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student
experiences. Some can be used in class in their entirety, while others require some
additional work on the student’s part. The course instructor may choose to use these at
any time throughout the class—some may be more effective as icebreakers, while some
may be used to pull together various concepts covered in the chapter.
Web Exercises
and ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics
on the Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to
your class, and make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as
an out-of-class activity or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
Few trends have influenced jobs as much as the massive movement to introduce
teams into the workplace. Working on teams requires employees to cooperate with
others, share information, confront differences, and sublimate personal interests
for the greater good of the team. Understanding the distinctions between problem
solving, self-managed, cross-functional, and virtual teams as well as multiteam
systems helps determine the appropriate applications for team-based work.
Concepts such as reflexivity, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion, and
mental models bring to light important issues relating to team context,
composition, and processes. For teams to function optimally, careful attention
must be given to hiring, creating, and rewarding team players. Still, effective
organizations recognize that teams are not always the best method for getting the
work done efficiently. Careful discernment and an understanding of organizational
behavior are needed. Specific implications for mangers follow:
Effective teams have adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust,
and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions.
These teams have individuals with technical expertise, and the right traits and
skills.
Effective teams tend to be small. They have members who fill role demands and
who prefer to be part of a group.
Effective teams have members who believe in the team’s capabilities, are
committed to a common plan and purpose, and have an accurate shared mental
model of what is to be accomplished.
Select individuals who have the interpersonal skills to be effective team players,
provide training to develop teamwork skills, and reward individuals for
cooperative efforts.
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Do not assume that teams are always needed. When tasks will not benefit from
interdependency, individuals may be the better choice.
This chapter begins with a vignette describing how one rapidly growing company restructured to recapture
the advantages of having a smaller team. Are cross-functional teams the best, as Aytekin Tank’s story
suggests? There are many different ways to build a successful team. In this chapter, we will consider
different types of teams, and how a team’s composition, context, and team processes lead to success or
failure.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Why Have Teams Become So Popular?
A. Why are teams popular? In short, because we believe they are effective.
1. Teams can sometimes achieve feats an individual could never accomplish.
departments or other forms of permanent groupings.
3. They can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband.
employee involvement.
5. And finally, research indicates that our involvement in teams positively shapes
even our personal decision making.
B. The fact that organizations have embraced teamwork doesn’t necessarily mean
teams are always effective.
1. Team members, as humans, can be swayed by fads and herd mentality that can
lead them astray from the best decisions.
II. Differences Between Groups and Teams
each member perform within his/her area of responsibility.
D. A work team generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. Individual
individual inputs.
III. Types of Teams (Exhibit 10-2)
A. Problem-Solving Teams
1. In the past, teams were typically composed of 5–12 hourly employees from
the same department who met for a few hours each week to discuss ways of
improving quality, efficiency, and the work environment.
2. These problem solving teams rarely have the authority to unilaterally
implement their suggested actions.
B. Self-Managed Work Teams
1. Problem-solving teams only make recommendations.
but also to implement solutions.
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3. Self-managed teams are groups of employees (typically 10–15 in number)
responsibilities of their former supervisors.
4. This includes planning and scheduling of work, assigning tasks to members,
taking action on problems.
5. Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members and have the
become less important.
6. But research on the effectiveness of self-managed work teams has not been
uniformly positive.
C. Cross-Functional Teams
1. Cross-functional teams are teams made up of employees from about the
same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to
accomplish a task.
2. Many organizations have used horizontal, boundary-spanning groups for
years.
3. Cross-functional teams are challenging to manage.
D. Virtual Teams
1. Virtual teams use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed
members in order to achieve a common goal.
2. Despite their ubiquity, virtual teams face special challenges.
a. They may suffer because there is less social rapport and direct interaction
among members.
b. As a result, low levels of virtuality in teams results in higher levels of
information sharing, but high levels of virtuality hinder it.
c. For virtual teams to be effective, management should ensure that:
i. Trust is established among members (one inflammatory remark in a
team member e-mail can severely undermine team trust).
ii. Team progress is monitored closely (so the team doesn’t lose sight of
its goals and no team member “disappears”).
iii. The efforts and products of the team are publicized throughout the
organization (so the team does not become invisible).
E. Multiteam Systems
1. The types of teams we’ve described so far are typically smaller, standalone
teams, though their activities relate to the broader objectives of the
organization.
a. As tasks become more complex, teams are often made bigger.
b. However, increases in team size are accompanied by higher coordination
demands, creating a tipping point at which the addition of another member
does more harm than good.
2. To solve this problem, organizations are employing multiteam systems,
collections of two or more interdependent teams that share a superordinate
goal. In other words, multiteam systems are a “team of teams.”
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performance.
IV. Creating Effective Teams
A. Introduction
1. Factors for creating effective teams have been summarized in the model found
in Exhibit 10-3.
2. Two caveats:
teamwork is preferable over individual work.
B. Team Context: What Factors Determine Whether Teams Are Successful?
1. Four contextual factors most significant to team performance are the
following:
a. Adequate resources
perform its job effectively.
b. Leadership and structure
i. Teams can’t function if they can’t agree on who is to do what and
ensure all members share the workload.
ii. Leadership is especially important in multiteam systems.
c. Climate of trust
leaders.
ii. When members trust each other they are more willing to take risks.
iii. When members trust their leadership, they are more willing to commit
to their leader’s goals and decisions.
d. Performance evaluation and reward systems
exceptional contributions and reward the entire group for positive
outcomes.
iii. Management should consider group-based appraisals, profit sharing,
gainsharing, small-group incentives, and other system modifications
that will reinforce team effort and commitment.
C. Team Composition
1. Abilities of members
abilities of its individual members.
2. Research reveals some insights into team composition and performance.
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3. Personality of Members
a. Some of the dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model have
shown to be relevant to team effectiveness.
b. Research has also provided us with a good idea about why these
personality traits are important to teams.
organization, cognitive structuring, achievement orientation, and
endurance were all related to higher levels of team performance.
iii. Open team members communicate better with one another and throw
out more ideas, which makes teams composed of open people more
creative and innovative.
4. Allocation of Roles
work assignments accordingly.
i. Put your most able, experienced, and conscientious workers in the
most central roles in a team.
5. Diversity of Members
a. How does team diversity affect team performance?
subject of organizational demography.
ii. Organizational demography suggests that attributes such as age or
the date of joining should help us predict turnover.
(a) The logic goes like this: turnover will be greater among those with
dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult
and conflict is more likely.
are more likely to quit.
(c) Similarly, the losers in a power struggle are more apt to leave
voluntarily or be forced out.
b. Many of us hold the optimistic view that diversity should be a good thing
—diverse teams should benefit from differing perspectives and do better.
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performance overall.
ii. One qualifier is that gender and ethnic diversity have more negative
effects in occupations, or when attitudes towards diversity are more
positive, diversity is less of a problem.
iii. Diversity in function, education, and expertise are positively related to
between members is already low.
c. Proper leadership can also improve the performance of diverse teams.
i. When leaders provide an inspirational common goal for members with
varying types of education and knowledge, teams are very creative.
ii. When leaders don’t provide such goals, diverse teams fail to take
teams with homogeneous skills.
6. Cultural Differences
a. We have discussed research on team diversity in race or gender. But what
about diversity created by national differences?
i. Like the earlier research, evidence here indicates these elements of
variety of viewpoints.
(b) But culturally heterogeneous teams have more difficulty learning
to work with each other and solving problems.
(c) The good news is that these difficulties seem to dissipate with
time.
disappear after about 3 months.
7. Size of teams
a. Most experts agree, keeping teams small is a key to improving group
effectiveness.
members.
ii. Experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the
task.
exponentially as team members are added.
(b) When teams have excess members, cohesiveness and mutual
accountability decline, social loafing increases, and more people
communicate less.
another, especially under time pressure.
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breaking the group into subteams.
8. Member preferences
a. Not every employee is a team player.
b. Given the option, many employees will select themselves out of team
participation.
c. High performing teams are likely to be composed of people who prefer
working as part of a group.
D. Team Processes
1. Introduction
a. The final category related to team effectiveness is process variables such
as member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific
team goals, team efficacy, a managed level of conflict, and minimized
social loafing.
b. These will be especially important in larger teams, and in teams that are
highly interdependent.
c. Why are processes important to team effectiveness?
i. When each member’s contribution is not clearly visible, individuals
tend to decrease their effort.
ii. Social loafing, in other words, illustrates a process loss from using
teams.
d. Exhibit 10-5 illustrates how group processes can have an impact on a
group’s actual effectiveness.
e. Teams are often used in research laboratories because they can draw on
the diverse skills of various individuals to produce more meaningful
research than could be generated by all the researchers working
independently—that is, they produce positive synergy, and their process
gains exceed their process losses.
2. Common Plan and Purpose
a. Effective teams begin by analyzing the team’s mission, developing goals
to achieve that mission, and creating strategies for achieving the goals.
b. Teams that establish a clear sense of what needs to be done and how
consistently perform better.
collectively and individually.
d. Effective teams also show reflexivity, meaning they reflect on and adjust
their master plan when necessary.
3. Specific goals
a. Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific,
4. Team efficacy
a. Effective teams have confidence in themselves and believe they can
succeed—this is team efficacy.
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opinions and advice from their teammates.
i. What can management do to increase team efficacy?
(a) Two options are helping the team achieve small successes that
build confidence and providing training to improve members’
technical and interpersonal skills.
confidence.
5. Team Identity
a. When people connect emotionally with the groups they’re in, they are
more likely to invest in their relationship with those groups. It’s the same
with teams.
towards team goals rather than individual goals.
iii. Therefore, by recognizing individuals’ specific skills and abilities, as
well as creating a climate of respect and inclusion, leaders and
members can foster positive team identity and improved team
outcomes.
effort in virtual team members.
c. Organizational identity is important, too.
i. Rarely do teams operate in a vacuum—more often teams interact with
other teams, requiring interteam coordination.
ii. Individuals with a positive team identity but without a positive
6. Team Cohesion
a. The term team cohesion means members are emotionally attached to one
another and motivated toward the team because of their attachment.
b. Team cohesion is a useful tool to predict team outcomes.
i. For example, a large study in China recently indicated that if team
team creativity.
c. Teams with low cohesion and simple tasks, on the other hand, are not
likely to respond to incentives with greater creativity.
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high-quality interpersonal interactions.
i. Team cohesion is higher in teams with female team leaders when
teams are larger and more functionally diverse. Team cohesion is also
higher in teams with shared leadership, or when leaders are fair.
7. Mental models
members share.
b. If team members have the wrong mental models, which are particularly
likely with teams under acute stress, their performance suffers.
c. If team members have different ideas about how to do things, the team
will fight over how to do things rather than focus on what needs to be
done.
8. Conflict levels
assessment of problems and options, and can lead to better team decisions,
though it may not lead to more innovative products.
i. The positive (and negative) effects of conflict on performance may be
smaller or larger depending on many factors, such as the task type,
setting, and how performance is measured.
emotionally stable.
iii. Task conflict may also be beneficial when some team members
perceive high task conflict while other team members perceive low
task conflict.
e. A study conducted in China found that moderate levels of task conflict
were negatively related to team performance.
f. The way conflicts are resolved can also make the difference between
effective and ineffective teams.
9. Social loafing
a. Individuals can hide inside a group.
what they are jointly responsible for on the team.
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