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Work Teams
Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP
Lesson Objectives
At the end of this lecture, you should:
Know what constitutes a work team, and be familiar with different types of work teams. Know why the use of work teams in organizations is on the rise. Understand the most common reasons for work team failure. Understand how I/O psychologists are helping to make work teams more effective.
There is a long history of psychologists studying groups. For example, topics studied include:
Intimacy
among group members. Group composition. Group compatibility. Group motives & goals. Group process & productivity.
control circles. Task forces. Safety committees. Sales teams. R&D groups.
living on the same dorm floor. Students taking the same psychology class. Students working on a team research paper. Students on a committee charged with making recommendations to curb binge drinking.
During the past decade, the use of teams in organizations has increased dramatically.
In
todays hyper-competitive environment, old organizational structures can be too slow, too unresponsive and too expensive to be competitive. Work teams can yield quality, productivity and cost improvements. Workers can benefit from increased autonomy and empowerment.
Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP
The short answer - no! Many organizations are jumping on the teams bandwagon. Organizations should ask themselves:
Do
people need to work together to get the task done effectively? Is expertise limited to a few people?
team effectiveness: 1) Quality/Quantity/Timeliness 2) The ability to work together again. 3) Personal growth & well-being. The relative weights that should be applied to these dimensions will vary according to the teams circumstances.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that teams work only about half the time. Why?
Inappropriate
use of teams. Lack of support from organizational leaders. Lack of good information. Lack of team member skills.
Work team effectiveness study. A work teams success can be impacted as much by what is happening outside the team as it is by what is happening inside.
Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP
In the wired, knowledge-based economy, well see less neighborhood teams and more virtual teams. Virtual teams can provide the organization with the same benefits (as well as some unique ones) as neighborhood teams, but the challenges that they face are magnified.
Which decision-making method did you use, and why? What were some of the benefits of the method that you chose? What challenges did your team encounter, and how did you overcome them? How effective was the decision that you reached? (and how did your team define effectiveness?)
Prepared by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - SIOP
Instructor Resources
The following books, book chapters and articles were used in preparation of the Work Teams module - you may find them useful for your own preparation. 1) Fisher, K. (1994) Diagnostic issues for work teams. In A. Howard (Ed.), Diagnosis for organizational change: Methods and models. (pp. 239-264). New York: Guilford Press. 2) Mohrman, S.A, Cohen, S.G. & Mohrman, Jr., A.M. (1995) Designing teambased organizations: New forms for knowledge work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 3) Hackman, J.R. (Ed.) (1990) Groups that work (and those that dont): Creating effective conditions for teamwork. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4) Shaw, M.E. & Costanzo, P.R. (1982) Theories of Social Psychology (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. (Note: Chapter 13 on theories of group processes is especially helpful) 5) Campion, M.A., Medsker, G.J. & Higgs, A.C. (1993). Relations between work group characteristics and effectiveness: Implications for designing effective work groups. Personnel Psychology, 46, 823-850.