Robbins: Organizational Behavior

Chapter Nine

UNDERSTANDING WORK TEAMS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this chapter, students should be able to: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Explain the growing popularity of teams in organizations. Contrast teams with groups. Identify four types of teams. Describe conditions when teams are preferred over individuals. Specify the characteristics of effective teams. Explain how organizations can create team players. Describe the advantages and disadvantages of diversity to work teams. Explain how management can keep teams from becoming stagnant and rigid.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW Few trends have influenced employee jobs as much as the massive movement to introduce teams into the workplace. The shift from working alone to working on teams requires employees to cooperate with others, share information, confront differences, and sublimate personal interests for the greater good of the team. Effective teams have been found to have common characteristics. The work that the members do should provide freedom and autonomy, the opportunity to utilize different skills and talents, the ability to complete a whole and identifiable task or product, and doing work that has a substantial impact on others. The team requires individuals with technical expertise, as well as problem-solving, decision-making, and interpersonal skills; and high scores on the personality characteristics of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Effective teams are neither too large or too small; typically, they range in size from 512 people. They have members who fill role demands, are flexible, and who prefer to be part of a group. They also have adequate resources, effective leadership, and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions. Finally, effective teams have members committed to a common purpose, specific team goals, members who believe in the teams capabilities, a manageable level of conflict, and a minimal degree of social loafing. Because individualistic organizations and societies attract and reward individual accomplishment, it is more difficult to create team players in these environments. To make the conversion, management should try to select individuals with the interpersonal skills to be effective team players, provide training to develop teamwork skills, and reward individuals for cooperative efforts. Once teams are mature and performing effectively, managements job is not over. This is because mature teams can become stagnant and complacent. Managers need to support mature teams with advice, guidance, and training if these teams are to continue to improve. WEB EXERCISES At the end of each chapter of this instructors manual you will find suggested exercises and ideas for researching the WWW on OB topics. 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. Within the lecture notes the graphic will note that there is a WWW activity to support this material. The chapter opens introducing Steve Blake of Wes-Tex Printing. Frustration at having a seven day turnaround time on new business card orders lead Steve to turn over the problem to his 130 employees. Using teams workers redesigned the process from start to finish. Orders now go out four days, and repeat orders in just two. Because of the success they enjoyed on this project, workers from different, but related, departments are working together to learn each others jobs and jointly solve problems allowing work to be completed sooner. Blake is sold on teams. 192

Robbins: Organizational Behavior CHAPTER OUTLINE: Why Have Teams Become So Popular? 1. Twenty years ago, it made news because no one else was doing it. Today, it is the organization that does not use teams that has become newsworthy. 2. The current popularity of teams seems based on the evidence that teams typically outperform individuals when the tasks being done require multiple skills, judgment, and experience. 3. As organizations have restructured, they have turned to teams to better utilize employee talents. 4. The motivational properties of teams is a huge factor. The role of employee involvement as a motivatorteams facilitate employee participation in operating decisions. Notes:

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Teams vs. Groups: Whats the Difference? 1. Groups and Teams are not the same thing. (See Exhibit 9-2). 2. In the last chapter, we defined a group as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. 3. A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of responsibility.

Notes:

Work groups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective work that requires joint effort. Their performance is the summation of each group members individual contribution. There is no positive synergy.

4. A work team generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. Individual efforts result in a level of performance that is greater than the sum of those individual inputs. 5. Management is looking for that positive synergy that will allow their organizations to increase performance. 6. The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an organization to generate greater outputs with no increase in inputs. Merely calling a group a team doesnt automatically increase its performance.

Types of Teams 1. Problem-Solving Teams:

Notes:

Twenty years ago, teams were just beginning to grow in popularity and most took similar form. They are typically composed of 512 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.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior Types of Teams (cont.) Notes:

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Members share ideas or offer suggestions on how work processes and methods can be improved. Rarely are they given the authority to unilaterally implement their suggested actions. One of the most widely practiced applications during the 1980s was quality circles.

2. Self-Managed Work Teams:

Problem-solving teams did not go far enough in getting employees involved in work-related decisions and processes. This led to experimentation with truly autonomous teams. These groups of employees (typically 1015 in number) perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors. This includes planning and scheduling of work, assigning tasks to members, collective control over the pace of work, making operating decisions, and taking action on problems. Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members and have the members evaluate each others performance. As a result supervisory roles become less important. Business periodicals documented successful applications of self-managed teams. In spite of these impressive stories, a word of caution: a. Some organizations have been disappointed with the results from selfmanaged teams. b. Teams do not seem to work well during organizational downsizing. c. The overall research on the effectiveness of self-managed work teams has not been uniformly positive. d. Moreover, while individuals on teams do tend to report higher levels of job satisfaction, they also sometimes have higher absenteeism and turnover rates. e. The effectiveness of self-managed teams is situationally dependent.

3. Cross-Functional Teams:

These are teams made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. a. Many organizations have used horizontal, boundary-spanning groups for years. b. IBM created a large task force in the 1960smade up of employees from across departments in the companyto develop the highly successful System 360. c. A task force is really nothing other than a temporary cross-functional team. d. The popularity of cross-discipline work teams exploded in the late 1980s.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior Types of Teams (cont.) 4. Virtual Teams: Notes:

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The previous types of teams do their work face to face. Virtual teams use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. a. They allow people to collaborate online. b. Virtual teams can do all the things that other teams do. c. They can include members from the same organization or link an organizations members with employees from other organizations. d. They can convene for a few days to solve a problem, a few months to complete a project, or exist permanently.

The three primary factors that differentiate virtual teams a. The absence of paraverbal and nonverbal cues. These help clarify communication by providing increased meaning, but arent available in online interactions. b. Limited social context. Virtual teams often suffer from less social rapport and less direct interaction among members. c. The ability to overcome time and space constraints. Virtual teams allow people to work together who might otherwise never be able to collaborate.

Instructor Note: At this point in the lecture you may want to introduce the CASE INCIDENT: A Virtual Team at T.A. Stearns found in the text and at the end of these chapter notes.. A suggestion for a class exercise follows the introduction of the material. Beware! Teams Are Not Always the Answer 1. Teamwork takes more time and often more resources than individual work. 2. Teams increase communication demands, conflicts to be managed, and meetings to be run. 3. Some managers have introduced them into situations where the work is better done by individuals. 4. Three Tests: Notes:

First, can the work be done better by more than one person? Second, does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that is more than the aggregate of individual goals? The final test to assess whether teams fit the situation is: Are the members of the group interdependent?

Instructor Note: At this point in the lecture you may want to introduce the OB IN THE NEWS: Teams Help Boeing Save Its 717 Program found in the text and below. A suggestion for a class exercise follows the introduction of the material.

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OB IN THE NEWS --Teams Help Boeing Save Its 717 Program The Boeing 717 is a 100-seat, short-range jet designed basically for the commuter market. It is one of four planes manufactured at Boeings Long Beach, California, facility. In 1996, Boeing was at a crossroads. The company saw a growing market for a short-range plane like the 717, but orders were slow to come in and the project was losing money at a high rate. The choice was either to kill the project or drastically improve efficiencies in producing the plane. Management chose the latter. Management decided that to make the plane profitable, they would focus on three areas: implement a team-based organization, provide employees with improved training, and introduce lean manufacturing techniques. Employee training included learning labor savings techniques and financial concepts like internal return-on-investment and shareholder value. Lean-manufacturing efforts emphasized ways to improve work flow and cut costs. For instance, more than five million square feet of space at the facility was sold and personnel working on the 717 were moved into a single spacea 600,000 square foot factory. To open lines of communication and eliminate waste, functionally aligned, self-managing work teams were created, grouping employees according to their function, not their titles. For example, instead of housing all the engineers in a separate building, they grouped them in teams around specific tasks. Members in all functionsfrom finance and labor unions to engineering and product supportwere grouped together according to specific tasks such as interior design, final assembly, propulsion, and product delivery. The workflow process was redesigned so employees work side by side on a full-moving production linea first for a commercial airplane. As described by a Boeing executive, In this environment the person who designs the seat is next to the person who builds them, and he is the next to the person who installs them. Support teams are located within a few feet of the assembly positions. They are equipped with everything they need to help keep airplanes moving, including specialists who inspect work while it is being done. These changes helped turn the 717 project from a money-loser to a major success. Although the company expected to sell fewer than 200 of the planes during its lifetime, Boeing now has orders for more than 300. The time required to manufacture a 717 plane has been cut from six days to four. Other costs have been significantly cut. The plane is now trouncing its competition. In the year 2000, for instance, Boeing sold 19 of the 717s, while Airbus Industries sold only three of its comparably-sized A318s.
Source: Based on S. F. Gale, The Little Airplane That Could, Training, December 2000, pp. 6067.

Class Exercise: Boeing used training as part of its strategy to turn the 717 project around. Give students an opportunity to experience a team based training exercise by choosing one of the free games to choose from at http://www.businessballs.com/teambuilding.htm . There is a variety of games to choose from in regards to purpose and time frames.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior Creating Effective Teams 1. Factors for creating effective teams have been summarized in the model found in Exhibit 9-3. Notes:

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2. Two caveats:
First, teams differ in form and structurebe careful not to rigidly apply the models predictions to all teams. Second, the model assumes that it is already been determined that teamwork is preferable over individual work.

3. Four key components:

Work design Teams composition The resources and other contextual influences that make teams effective Process variables reflects that things that go on in the team that influence effectiveness.

A. Work Design 1. Effective teams need to work together and take collective responsibility to complete significant tasks. 2. The work-design category includes variables like freedom and autonomy, the opportunity to utilize different skills and talents, the ability to complete a whole and identifiable task or product, and working on a task or project that has a substantial impact on others. B. The evidence indicates that these characteristics enhance member motivation and increase team effectiveness. B. Composition 1. Abilities of members:

Teams require three different types of skills: a. Technical expertise b. Problem-solving and decision-making skills c. Good listening, feedback, conflict resolution, and other interpersonal skills The right mix is crucial. It is not uncommon for one or more members to take responsibility to learn the skills in which the group is deficient, thereby allowing the team to reach its full potential.

B. Personality:

Many of the dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model have shown to be relevant to team effectiveness. Teams that rate higher in mean levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability tend to receive higher managerial ratings for team performance. The variance in personality characteristics may be more important than the mean. A single team member who lacks a minimal level of, say, 197

Robbins: Organizational Behavior agreeableness can negatively affect the whole teams performance. B. Composition (cont.) 3. Allocating roles and diversity: Notes:

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Teams have different needs, and people should be selected for a team to ensure that there is diversity and that all various roles are filled. Managers need to understand the individual strengths that each person can bring to a team, select members with their strengths in mind, and allocate work assignments accordingly.

4. Size of teams:

The most effective teams are neither very small (under four or five) nor very large (over a dozen). Effective teamsmanagers should keep them in the range of 512 people.

a. Very small teams are likely to lack for diversity of views. b. Large teams have difficulty getting much done.
5. Member flexibility:

This is an obvious plus because it greatly improves its adaptability and makes it less reliant on any single member.

6. 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. Context 1. The contextual factors that appear to be most significantly are related to team performance:

Adequate resources: a. All work teams rely on resources outside the group to sustain it. b. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of the team to perform its job effectively. c. As one set of researchers concluded, perhaps one of the most important characteristics of an effective work group is the support the group receives from the organization.

2. Leadership and structure: a. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires team leadership and structure. b. Leadership is not always needed. Self-managed work teams often perform better than teams with formally appointed leaders. c. On traditionally managed teams, we find that two factors seem influence team performance: 1. The leaders expectations and his or her mood. 2. Leaders who expect good things from their team are more likely to get them! 198

Robbins: Organizational Behavior C. Context (cont.) Notes:

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Climate of Trust: a. Members of effective teams trust each other and exhibit trust in their leaders. b. When members trust each other they are more willing to take risks. c. When members trust their leadership they are more willing to commit to their leaders goals and decisions.

Performance evaluation and reward systems: a. How do you get team members to be both individually and jointly accountable? The traditional, individually oriented evaluation and reward system must be modified to reflect team performance. b. Individual performance evaluations, fixed hourly wages, individual incentives are not consistent with the development of highperformance teams. c. Management should consider group-based appraisals, profit sharing, gainsharing, small-group incentives, and other system modifications that will reinforce team effort and commitment.

D. Process 1. A Common Purpose: a. Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum, and commitment for members. b. This purpose is a vision. It is broader than specific goals.

Specific goals: a. Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. They energize the team. b. Specific goals facilitate clear communication and help teams maintain their focus on results. Team goals should be challenging.

Team efficacy: a. Effective teams have confidence in themselves and believe they can succeedthis is team efficacy. Success breeds success. b. Management can increase team efficacy by helping the team to achieve small successes and skill training. 1. Small successes build team confidence. 2. The greater the abilities of team members, the greater the likelihood that the team will develop confidence and the capability to deliver that confidence.

Conflict levels: a. Conflict on a team is not necessarily bad. Teams that are completely void of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior D. Process (cont.) b. Relationship conflictsthose based on interpersonal incompatibilities, tension, and animosity toward othersare almost always dysfunctional. c. On teams performing non-routine activities, disagreements among members about task content (called task conflicts) is not detrimental. It is often beneficial because it lessens the likelihood of groupthink. Notes:

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Social loafing: a. Individuals can hide inside a group. Effective teams undermine this tendency by holding themselves accountable at both the individual and team level.

Instructor Note: At this point in the lecture you may want to introduce the POINTCOUNTERPOINT: Sports Teams Are Good Models For Workplace Teams found in the text and at the end of these chapter notes. A suggestion for a class exercise follows the introduction of the material. Turning Individuals into Team Players 1. Many people are not inherently team players. They are loners or want to be recognized for their own accomplishments. 2. There are also a great many organizations that have historically nurtured individual accomplishments. How do we introduce teams in highly individualistic environments? A. The Challenge 1. An employees success is no longer defined in terms of individual performance. 2. To perform well as team members, individuals must be able to communicate openly and honestly, to confront differences and resolve conflicts, and to sublimate personal goals for the good of the team. 3. The challenge of creating team players will be greatest where: a. The national culture is highly individualistic b. The teams are being introduced into an established organization that has historically valued individual achievement. 4. On the other hand, the challenge for management is less demanding when teams are introduced where employees have strong collectivist values or in new organizations that use teams initially for organizing work. For example, Saturn Corp. employees were hired knowing they would be working in teams. Notes:

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior B. Shaping Team Players 1. Selection:

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Some people already possess the interpersonal skills to be effective team players. Care should be taken to ensure that candidates could fulfill their team roles as well as technical requirements. Many job candidates do not have team skills: a. This is especially true for those socialized around individual contributions. b. The candidates can undergo training to make them into team players. c. In established organizations that decide to redesign jobs around teams, it should be expected that some employees will resist being team players and may be untrainable.

2. Training:

A large proportion of people raised on the importance of individual accomplishment can be trained to become team players. a. Workshops help employees improve their problem-solving, communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and coaching skills. b. Employees also learn the five-stage group development model.

3. Rewards:

The reward system needs to encourage cooperative efforts rather than competitive ones. Promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recognition should be given to individuals for how effective they are as a collaborative team member. This does not mean individual contribution is ignored; rather, it is balanced with selfless contributions to the team. There are other intrinsic rewards to being on a team. One example is that teams provide camaraderie: a. It is exciting and satisfying to be an integral part of a successful team. b. The opportunity to engage in personal development

Contemporary Issues in Managing Teams 1. Three issues:

Notes:

How do teams facilitate the adoption of total quality management? What are the implications of workforce diversity on team performance? How does management reenergize stagnant teams?

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior A. Teams and Total Quality Management 1. Why are teams an essential part of TQM? Notes:

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The essence of TQM is process improvement, and employee involvement is the linchpin of process improvement. All such techniques and processes require high levels of communication and contact, response and adaptation, and coordination and sequencing. They require the environment that can be supplied only by superior work teams. Teams provide the natural vehicle for employees to share ideas and to implement improvements.

2. For example, when designing its quality problem-solving teams, Fords management identified five goals: a. The teams should be small enough to be efficient and effective. b. The teams should be properly trained in the skills their members will need. c. The teams should be allocated enough time to work on the problems they plan to address. d. The teams should be given the authority to resolve the problems and implement corrective action. e. The teams should each have a designated champion whose job it is to help the team get around roadblocks that arise. A. Teams and Workforce Diversity 1. Managing diversity on teams is a balancing act. Diversity typically provides fresh perspectives on issues but it makes it more difficult to unify the team and reach agreements. 2. The strongest case for diversity on work teams is when these teams are engaged in problem-solving and decision-making tasks. The reasons:

Heterogeneous teams bring multiple perspectives to the discussion, thus increasing the likelihood that the team will identify creative or unique solutions. Additionally, the lack of a common perspective usually means diverse teams spend more time discussing issues, which decreases the chances that a weak alternative will be chosen.

3. Expect the value-added component of diverse teams to increase as members become more familiar with each other and the team becomes more cohesive: a. Studies tell us that members of cohesive teams have greater satisfaction, lower absenteeism, and lower attrition from the group. b. Cohesiveness is likely to be lower on diverse teams. Diversity is detrimental to group cohesiveness. c. We suggest that if the norms of the team are supportive of diversity, then a team can maximize the value of heterogeneity while, at the same time, achieving the benefits of high cohesiveness. This makes a strong case for team members to participate in diversity training.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior C. Reinvigorating Mature Teams 1. Just because a team is performing well is no assurance that it will continue to do so. Effective teams can become stagnant. 2. In terms of the five-stage development model, teams dont automatically stay at the performing stage. a. Familiarity breeds apathy. b. Success can lead to complacency. c. Maturity brings less openness to novel ideas and innovation and makes one susceptible to groupthink. 3. Another problems is that teams tend to take on easy problems they can solve leading to early successes. They become reluctant to change what they believe the perfect system they have already worked out. 4. Suggestions for reinvigorating teams: a. Prepare members to deal with the problems of maturity. b. Offer refresher training. c. Offer advanced training. c. Encourage teams to treat their own development as a constant learning experience.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

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1. Contrast self-managed and cross-functional teams. Answer Problem-solving teams did not go far enough in getting employees involved in work-related decisions and processes. These groups of employees (typically 1015 in number) perform highly related or interdependent jobs and take on many of the responsibilities of their former supervisors. This includes planning and scheduling of work, assigning tasks to members, collective control over the pace of work, making operating decisions, and taking action on problems. Fully self-managed work teams even select their own members and have the members evaluate each others performance. 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. Many organizations have used horizontal, boundary-spanning groups for years. A task force is really nothing other than a temporary cross-functional team. The popularity of cross-discipline work teams exploded in the late 1980s. All the major automobile manufacturers have turned to these forms of teams in order to coordinate complex projects. 2. Contrast virtual and face-to-face teams. Answer Virtual teams use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. The three primary factors that differentiate virtual teams are: The absence of paraverbal and nonverbal cues. These help clarify communication by providing increased meaning, but are not available in online interactions. Limited social context. Virtual teams often suffer from less social rapport and less direct interaction among members. The ability to overcome time and space constraints. Virtual teams allow people to work together who might otherwise never be able to collaborate. 3. List and describe nine team roles. Answer Nine potential team roles. See Exhibit 9-5. 4. How do effective teams minimize social loafing? Answer Effective teams undermine this tendency by holding themselves accountable at both the individual and team level. 5. How do effective teams minimize groupthink? Answer Conflict on a team is not necessarily bad. Teams that are completely void of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant. It is often beneficial because it lessens the likelihood of groupthink. Effective teams will be characterized by an appropriate level of conflict. 6. List and describe the process variables associated with effective team performance. Answer These include member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, a managed level of conflict, and minimizing social loafing. A common purpose Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum, and commitment for members. This purpose is a vision. It is broader than specific goals. Specific goals Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. Specific goals facilitate clear communication and help teams maintain their focus on results. Team goals should be challenging. Team efficacy Effective teams have confidence in themselves and believe they can succeedthis is team efficacy. Success breeds success. Management can increase team efficacy by helping the team to achieve small successes and skill training. Small successes build team confidence. The greater the abilities of team members, the greater the likelihood that the team will develop confidence and the capability to deliver on that confidence. Conflict levels Conflict on a team is not necessarily bad. Teams that are completely void of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant. Relationship conflictsthose based on interpersonal incompatibilities, tension, 204

Robbins: Organizational Behavior Chapter Nine and animosity toward othersare almost always dysfunctional. On teams performing nonroutine activities, disagreements among members about task content (called task conflicts) is not detrimental. It is often beneficial because it lessens the likelihood of groupthink. Effective teams will be characterized by an appropriate level of conflict. Social loafing Individuals can hide inside a group. Effective teams undermine this tendency by holding themselves accountable at both the individual and team level. 7. Under what conditions will the challenge of creating team players be greatest? Answer An employees success is no longer defined in terms of individual performance. To perform well as team members, individuals must be able to communicate openly and honestly, to confront differences and resolve conflicts, and to sublimate personal goals for the good of the team. The challenge of creating team players will be greatest where: The national culture is highly individualistic. The teams are being introduced into an established organization that has historically valued individual achievement. On the other hand, the challenge for management is less demanding when teams are introduced where employees have strong collectivist values. 8. What role do teams play in quality management? Answer The essence of TQM is process improvement, and employee involvement is the linchpin of process improvement. All such techniques and processes require high levels of communication and contact, response and adaptation, and coordination and sequencing. They require the environment that can be supplied only by superior work teams. Teams provide the natural vehicle for employees to share ideas and to implement improvements. 9. Contrast the pros and cons of having diverse teams. Answer Managing diversity on teams is a balancing act. See Exhibit 9-6. Diversity typically provides fresh perspectives on issues but it makes it more difficult to unify the team and reach agreements. The strongest case for diversity on work teams is when these teams are engaged in problem-solving and decision-making tasks. Heterogeneous teams bring multiple perspectives to the discussion, thus increasing the likelihood that the team will identify creative or unique solutions. Cohesiveness is likely to be lower on diverse teams. Diversity is detrimental to group cohesiveness. We suggest that if the norms of the team are supportive of diversity, then a team can maximize the value of heterogeneity while, at the same time, achieving the benefits of high cohesiveness. This makes a strong case for team members to participate in diversity training. 10. How can management invigorate stagnant teams? Answer Just because a team is performing well is no assurance that it will continue to do so. Effective teams can become stagnant. The text offers several suggestions for reinvigorating mature teams. Prepare members to deal with the problems of maturity. Offer refresher training. Offer advanced training. Encourage teams to treat their own development as a constant learning experience.

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Robbins: Organizational Behavior QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING

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1. Dont teams create conflict? Isnt conflict bad? Why, then, would management support the concept of teams? Answer Conflict on a team is not necessarily bad. Teams that are completely void of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant. Relationship conflictsthose based on interpersonal incompatibilities, tension, and animosity toward others-are almost always dysfunctional. On teams performing nonroutine activities, disagreements among members about task content (called task conflicts) is not detrimental. It is often beneficial because it lessens the likelihood of groupthink. Effective teams will be characterized by an appropriate level of conflict. Management can use selection, as some people already possess the interpersonal skills to be effective team players. Also, workshops help employees improve their problemsolving, communication, negotiation, conflict-management, and coaching skills. The reward system needs to encourage cooperative efforts rather than competitive ones. Promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recognition should be given to individuals for how effective they are as a collaborative team member. 2. Are there factors in the Japanese society that make teams more acceptable in the workplace than in the United States or Canada? Explain. Answer Japan is a more collectivist cultureteams have been in place for years. The United States and Canada are individualistic cultures. Social pressure is a major influence on all of life in Japan. It is not as much in the United States and Canada. 3. What problems might surface in teams at each stage in the five-stage group development model? Answer This question refers students back to the content in Chapter 8. See Exhibit 8-2 for the five-stage group-development model. The first stage is formingCharacterized by a great deal of uncertainty about the groups purpose, structure, and leadership. 1. The storming stageOne of intragroup conflict. Conflict over who will control the group. 2. The third stage is normingThere is now a strong sense of group identity and camaraderie. Groupthink. 3. The fourth stage is performingThe structure at this point is fully functional and accepted. 4. For temporary committees, an adjourning stageAttention is directed toward wrapping up activities. Some may be depressed over the loss of camaraderie and friendships. 4. How do you think member expectation might affect team performance? Answer Since team performance is the sum or synergy of all members efforts, what each member expects of him/herself and his/her teammates will heavily influence output and cooperation. 5. Would you prefer to work alone or as part of a team? Why? How do you think your answer compares with others in your class? Answer This is an individual question, more of a discussion question. The key here is for the students to be honest with themselves and to become self-aware. It is not bad to want to be an individual contributor; it may mean that the student needs to pay particular attention to the culture of the company he/she goes to work for.

POINTCOUNTERPOINT POINT Studies from football, soccer, basketball, hockey, and baseball have found a number of elements that successful sports teams have that can be extrapolated to successful work teams. Successful teams integrate cooperation and competition. Effective team coaches get athletes to help one another but also push one another to perform at their best. Sports teams with the best winloss record had coaches who promoted a strong spirit of cooperation and a high level of healthy competition among their players. Successful teams score early wins. Early successes build teammates faith in themselves and their capacity as a team. For instance, research on hockey teams of relatively equal ability found that 72 percent of the time the team that was ahead at the end of the first period went on to win the game. Managers should provide teams with early tasks that are simple and provide easy wins. Successful teams avoid losing streaks. Losing can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A couple of failures can lead to a downward spiral if a team becomes demoralized and believes it is helpless to end its losing streak. 206

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Managers need to instill confidence in team members that they can turn things around when they encounter setbacks. Practice makes perfect. Successful sport teams execute on game day but learn from their mistakes in practice. Practice should be used to try new things and fail. A wise manager carves out time and space in which work teams can experiment and learn. Successful teams use half-time breaks. The best coaches in basketball and football use half-time during a game to reassess what is working and what is not. Managers of work teams should similarly build in assessments at the approximate halfway point in a team project to evaluate what it can do to improve. Winning teams have a stable membership. Stability improves performance. For instance, studies of professional basketball teams have found that the more stable a teams membership, the more likely the team is to win. The more time teammates have together, the more able they are to anticipate one anothers moves and the clearer they are about one anothers roles. Successful teams debrief after failures and successes. The best sports teams study the game video. Similarly, work teams need to take time to routinely reflect on both their successes and failures and to learn from them. COUNTER POINT There are flaws in using sports as a model for developing effective work teams. Here are just four caveats. All sport teams are not alike. In baseball, for instance, there is little interaction among teammates. Rarely are more than two or three players directly involved in a play. The performance of the team is largely the sum of the performance of its individual players. In contrast, basketball has much more interdependence among players. Geographic distribution is dense. Usually all players are involved in every play, team members have to be able to switch from offense to defense at a moments notice, and there is continuous movement by all, not just the player with the ball. The performance of the team is more than the sum of its individual players. When using sports teams as a model for work teams, you have to make sure you are making the correct comparison. Work teams are more varied and complex. In an athletic league, the design of the task, the design of the team, and the teams context vary relatively little from team to team. These variables can vary tremendously between work teams. As a result, coaching plays a much more significant part of a sports teams performance than a work team. Performance of work teams is more a function of getting the teams structural and design variables right. So, in contrast to sports, managers of work teams should focus more on getting the team set up for success than coaching. A lot of employees cannot relate to sports metaphors. Not everyone on work teams is conversant in sports. Women, for instance, often are not as interested in sports as men and are not as savvy about sports terminology. Team members from different cultures may not know the sports metaphors you are using. Most Americans, for instance, are unfamiliar with the rules and terminology of Australian Rules football. Work team outcomes are not easily defined in terms of wins and losses. Sports teams typically measure success in terms of wins and losses. Such measures of success are rarely as clear for work teams. When managers try to define success in wins and losses it tends to infer that the workplace is ethically no more complex than the playing field, which is rarely true.
Source: Both of these arguments are based on N. Katz, Sports Teams as a Model for Workplace Teams: Lessons and Liabilities, Academy of Management Executive, August 2001, pp. 5667.

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Class Exercise: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. This is another good topic for a class debate. You can use the format for the debate from Chapter 1, or use a more formal format. Before this debate, assign students to research this topic in greater depth. Divide the class in half, each half researching their side of the team debate. An informal debate structure is to read Point-Counter Point as a starting point, and then have the two halves of the class debate the topic.

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Purpose: This exercise is designed to allow class members to (a) experience working together as a team on a specific task and (b) analyze this experience. Time: Teams will have 90 minutes to engage in steps 2 and 3 that follow. Another 4560 minutes will be used in class to critique and evaluate the exercise. Instructions: 1. Class members are assigned to teams of about six people. 2. Each team is required to: a. Determine a team name b. Compose a team song 3. Each team is to try to find the following items on its scavenger hunt: a. A picture of a team b. A newspaper article about a group or team c. A piece of apparel with the college name or logo d. A set of chopsticks e. A ball of cotton f. A piece of stationery from a college department g. A bottle of Liquid Paper h. A floppy disk i. A cup from McDonalds j. A dog leash k. A utility bill l. A calendar from last year m. A book by Ernest Hemingway n. An ad brochure for a Ford product o. A test tube p. A pack of gum q. An ear of corn A Garth Brooks tape or CD 4. After 90 minutes, all teams are to be back in the classroom. (A penalty, determined by the instructor, will be imposed on late teams.) The team with the most items on the list will be declared the winner. The class and instructor will determine whether or not the items meet the requirements of the exercise. 5. Debriefing of the exercise will begin by having each team meet on their own to engage in self-evaluation. Specifically, it should answer the following: a. What was the teams strategy? b. What roles did individual members perform? c. How effective was the team? d. What could the team have done to be more effective? 6. Full class discussion will focus on issues such as: a. What differentiated the more effective teams from the less effective teams? b. What did you learn from this experience that is relevant to the design of effective teams? Teaching notes: 1. As this exercise takes more time than a single class period, you may have to conduct this as an evening or weekend exercise. Consider combining two to three class sessions into one afternoon session and giving students the rest of the week off. 2. The key here is the discussion of strategies. This exercise demonstrates the value of functioning as a team and the drawbacks of being a group of individuals. 3. Decide ahead of time if you want to set any boundaries on the hunt in terms of geography or strategies. (Confine the search to campus: teams cant steal or buy stuff, i.e., the gum, the CD, etc.)

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4. Be careful to equalize the groups in terms of members who belong to fraternities, sororities, or other campusbased social groups. Students who are members of the above may have a significant advantage over commuter students and non-socially oriented students.
Source: Adapted from M.R. Manning and P.J. Schmidt, Building Effective Work Teams: A Quick Exercise Based on a Scavenger Hunt, Journal of Management Education, August 1995, pp. 392398. With permission.

CASE INCIDENT A Virtual Team at T.A. Stearns T.A. Stearns is a national tax accounting firm whose main business is tax preparation services for individuals. Stearns superior reputation is based on the high quality of its advice and the excellence of its service. Key to the achievement of its reputation is the state-o the-art computer databases and analysis tools that its people use when counseling clients. These programs were developed by highly trained individuals. The programs that these individuals produce are highly technical, both in terms of the tax laws they cover and the code in which they are written. Perfecting them requires high levels of programming skill as well as the ability to understand the law. New laws and interpretations of existing laws have to be integrated quickly and flawlessly into the existing regulations and analysis tools. The creation of these programs is carried out in a virtual environment by four programmers in the greater Boston area. The four work at home and are connected to each other and to the company by email, telephone, and conference software. Formal, onsite meetings among all of the programmers take place only a few times a year, although the workers sometimes meet informally outside of these scheduled occasions. Here is some background on the four: Tom Andrews is a tax lawyer, a graduate of the University of Maine and a former hockey player there. At 35, Tom has worked on the programs for six years and is the longest-standing member of the team. Along with his design responsibilities, Tom is the primary liaison with Stearns. He is also responsible for training new team members. Single, Tom works out of his farm in Southern New Hampshire where, in his spare time, he enjoys hunting and fishing. Cy Crane, a tax accountant and computer science graduate of the University of Massachusetts, is 32 years old, married, with two children ages four and six. His wife works full time in a law firm in downtown Boston. In his spare time, Cy enjoys biking and fishing. Marge Dector, a tax lawyer, graduated from Penn State University, is 38 years old, married, with two children ages eight and ten. Her husband works full time as an electrical engineer at a local defense contractor. Marges hobbies include golf and skiing. Megan Harris, tax accountant and graduate of Indiana University, is 26 years old and single. She recently relocated to Boston and works out of her apartment in the Back Bay area. These four people exchange e-mail messages many times every day. In fact, it is not unusual for them to step away from guests or family to log on and check in with the others. Often their e-mails are amusing as well as work-related. Sometimes, for instance, when they were facing a deadline and one of Marges kids is home sick, they help each other with the work. Tom has occasionally invited the others to visit his farm, and Marge and Cy have gotten their families together several times for dinner. About once a month the whole group gets together for lunch. All four of these Stearns employees are on salary, which, consistent with company custom, is negotiated separately and secretly with management. Although each is required to check in regularly during every workday, they were told when they were hired they could work wherever they wanted. Clearly, flexibility is one of the pluses of these jobs. When the four get together, they often joke about the managers and workers who are tied to the office, referring to them as face timers and to themselves as free agents. When the programmers were asked to make a major program change, they often developed programming tools called macros that would help them to do their work more efficiently. These macros greatly enhanced the speed at which a change could be written into the programs. Cy, in particular, really enjoyed hacking around with macros. On one recent project, for instance, he became obsessed with the prospect of creating a shortcut that could save him a huge amount of time. One week after he turned in his code and his release notes to the company, Cy bragged to Tom that he created a new macro that had saved him eight hours of work that week. Tom was skeptical of the shortcut, but after trying it out, he found that it actually saved him many hours too. Stearns has an employee suggestion program that rewards employees for innovations that save the company money. The program gives an employee five percent of the savings generated by their innovation over a period of three months. The company also has a profit sharing plan. Tom and Cy felt that the small amount of 209

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money that would be generated by a company reward would not offset the free time that they gained using their new macro. They wanted the time for leisure or consulting work. They also feared their group might suffer if management learned about the innovation. It would allow three people to do the work of four, which could mean one might lose their job, so they did not share their innovative macro with management. Although Tom and Cy would not share the innovation with management, they were concerned that they were entering their busy season and knew everyone on the team would be stressed by the heavy workload. They decided to distribute the macro to the other members of their team and swore them to secrecy. Over lunch one day, the team set for itself a level of production that it felt would not arouse managements suspicion. Several months passed and they used some of their extra time to push the quality of their work even higher. But they also now had more time to pursue their own personal interests. Dave Regan, the in-house manager of the work team, picked up on the innovation several weeks after it was first implemented. He had wondered why production time had gone down a bit, while quality had shot up, and he got his first inkling of an answer when he saw an e-mail from Marge to Cy thanking him for saving her so much time with his brilliant mind. Not wanting to embarrass his group of employees, the manager hinted to Tom that he wanted to know what was happening, but he got nowhere. He did not tell his own manager about his suspicions, reasoning that since both quality and productivity were up he did not really need to pursue the matter further. Dave has just learned that Cy has boasted about his trick to a member of another virtual work team in the company. Suddenly, the situation seems to have gotten out of control. Dave decided to take Cy to lunch. During the meal, Dave asked Cy to explain what was happening. Cy told him about the innovation, but he insisted the teams actions had been justified to protect itself. Dave knew that his own boss would soon hear of the situation and that he would be looking for answers from him. Questions: Student responses will vary. The responses below are suggestions of possible answers. 1. Why is this group a team? This group is a team because they have generated a positive synergy through a coordinated effort resulting in a level of performance. 2. Has anyone in this case acted unethically? Yes, the entire group has. Not sharing the innovation with the company could be considered a gray area, however, at the point they used time saved on the job to pursue their own consulting or other interests they were stealing time from the company which is theft. 3. What, if any, characteristics of groupthink are manifested in the work team? Groupthink is a situation in which group pressure for conformity deter the group from critically appraising unusual, minority, or unpopular views. The swearing to secrecy is form of pressure applied in this circumstance. The other group members may not have resisted overtly to the use of the macro and how they would spend their extra time because they stood to gain from it. If they had thought about the consequences in effect they were stealing time, or more correctly, the salary for that timefrom the company, they may not have been so quick to accept the secrecy strategy. 4. Has Dave been an effective team leader? Explain your position. Daves leadership seems to have been effective up to this pointhe could not have foreseen this specific instance and was aware there had been a change. He also did not want to believe anything negative about his group members which speaks to his level of trust with them. When he obtained additional information, he scheduled a meeting to confront the issue. 5. What should Dave do now? These folks have clearly broken a company policy. The level of trust he will have with them in the future has been eroded. Disciplinary action is warranted and probably the break up of the team. At the very least, a restructuring of the team to include new members would be beneficial.
Source: Adapted from The Virtual Environment Work Team, a case prepared by R. Andre, professor, Northeastern University. With permission.

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Exploring OB Topics on the World Wide Web

Search Engines are our navigational tool to explore the WWW. Some commonly used search engines are: www.goto.com www.google.com www.yahoo.com www.lycos.com www.hotbot.com www.looksmart.com
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Moving from a traditional hierarchical structure to teams requires thought and planning. How teams will be applied within the organization and their goals can be one of the most challenging aspects of the process. Go to the web site http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/tbbasic.htm to learn more about team building. What is the difference between a self managed team and a self directed team? The following web site http://www.mapnp.org/library/grp_skll/slf_drct/slf_drct.htm has a series of links on team topics where you can find the answer to the above questions and many other questions. Write a short reaction paper on one of the topics from this site. Virtual teams require tools to support their effectiveness. For example, how do they hold meetings? We often assume the technology is there (e.g. the telephone), but most technology supports only one-on-one communication. When a meeting is held on the phone there must be technology to support all members being on the line at once. Learn more about virtual team tools at http://www.objs.com/survey/groupwar.htm . Write five facts you learned about groupware and collaboration support and bring to class for further discussion. When teams experience conflict effectiveness can diminish. There are teams skills which can be learned and applied to get a team through a difficult period and possibly stronger and more effective as a result. For a learning module on developing skills to confront team conflict go to: http://www.vta.spcomm.uiuc.edu/TCT/tct-ov.html . Write a one page summary paper on what you learned. Problem solving in teams is another module from Teamworks: Skills for Collaborative Work. Go to http://www.vta.spcomm.uiuc.edu/PSG/psg-ov.html . Write a one page summary paper on what you learned. For a brief overview of the characteristics of effective teams go to http://www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/effective.html . After reviewing this list, think of a team or group you have worked with in the past. Do not name names, but take each characteristic listed and apply your experience to it. For example, characteristic number one is, There is a clear unity of purpose. Did your group have that unity? Why or why not? How did you knowwas there a mission statement (or lack of one), were there goals (or no goals), etc. Bring your completed analysis to class for group discussion. What can be learned from a WebMonkey? Eight ways to find and keep web team players. Go to: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/22/index0a_page3.html . How does WebMonkeys recommendations compare to what we have learned in class? Write a paragraph or two as to why you agree or disagree with these recommendations and what you would change if necessary. Bring to class for further discussion.
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