Groups, Teams and

Organizational Effectiveness

• Team
– A group whose members work intensely
with each other to achieve a specific,
common goal or objective.
– All teams are groups but not all groups are
teams.
• Teams often are difficult to form.
• It takes time for members to learn how to
work together.

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 Groups, Teams and
Organizational Effectiveness

• Characteristics distinguish teams from

groups
– Intensity with which team members work
together
– Presence of a specific, overriding team goal
or objective
– Mutual accountability

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 Teams as
Performance Enhancers

• Advantage of synergy

– People working in a team are able to

produce more outputs than would have
been produced if each person had worked
separately

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 Types of teams

• Cross-functional teams
– composed of members from different departments
(Planning, quality, HR, designing, finance; of same
level)
• Cross-cultural teams
– composed of members from different cultures or
countries

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 Self-Managed Work Teams

Supervise their own activities and monitor the

quality of the goods and services they provide
(10 to 15)
Keys to effective self managed teams:
– Give the team enough autonomy to be self-
managing.
– The team’s task should be complex enough to
include many different steps.
– Select members carefully for their diversity, skills,
and enthusiasm.
– Managers should guide and coach, not supervise.
– Determine training needs and be sure it is provided.
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 Virtual Teams

• A team whose members rarely meet face-to-face

• Interact by using various forms of information
technology
• Email, computer networks, telephone, fax, and
videoconferences
• More task oriented

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Problem-solving teams

 Typically composed of 5-12

employees from the same
department

 Discuss ways of improving

quality, efficiency, and work
environment for a few hours

 Rarely have the authority to

implement any of their
suggested actions
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Key Components of Effective Teams

•Context

•Composition

•Work Design

•Process
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 Context

• Adequate resource
• Leadership and structure (multi-teams)
• Climate of trust
– Reduces the need to monitor each other’s behavior
– Allows a team to be willing to commit to its leader’s
decisions
• Performance evaluation and reward
systems
– Individual evaluation and reward system
(Incentives)
– Group-basedpRiNcE
appraisals, profit sharing
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 Composition

• Abilities of members (KSA)

– Technical expertise
– Problem-solving and decision-making
(identify problems, generate alternatives, evaluate
alternatives, competent solution)
– Interpersonal (good listening, feedback, conflict
resolution)

• Personality of members
– extravert
– Openness
– agreeable
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•Diversity of members
Member believe others have more
expertise, they will work to support them,
leading to more effectiveness
•Size of teams
The most effective teams have 5-9
members
Excess members cohesiveness and
mutual accountability decline  social
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 Work design

• Skill variety (opportunities to use different skills

and talents)

• Task identity

• Task significance (task which has substantial

impact on others)
• i.e. to work together and to take collective
accountability of the outcome
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 Process

• Common plan and purpose

– Successful team put more time into discussing, shaping, and agreeing on a
propose
• Specific goals
– Difficult goals have been found to raise team performance for which
they’re set (SMART)
• Team efficacy (Confidence for success)

• Conflict level
– Task conflicts
– Relationship conflicts
• Social loafing
– Need to hold members accountable at both the individual and team
level
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