Peter Nielsen
Aalborg University
Team learning and
wellbeing in Danish
workplaces
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for Research, Technological
Development and Demonstration under Grant Agreement No 312691
Aim of study
• Teams seem to have survived among new
organization forms and new emerging sectors
• Focus on team work from the employee angle
• Does team configuration and work conditions
matter for economic and social performance?
– How has teamwork developed and spread in private and
public workplaces?
– Are team configuration together with work conditions
driver of collective learning and innovative behavior?
– Does team configuration together with work conditions,
learning and innovation have influence on individual
wellbeing?
• Data: The Danish Meadow survey – Employee
data (n=3362)
www.inclusivegrowth.be
Analytical approach
• Analytical perspective on team configuration approached
as dimensions seen from employee angle:
– Extension of work time in team
– Autonomy of decisions in team
– Cross-discipline in teamwork
• How are the team configuration dimensions related to
work conditions such as perceived:
– performance pressure
– collegial support
• What are the effects of team configuration and work
condition on collective learning and innovative behavior
(economic performance)?
• What are the effects of team configuration, work
condition and economic performance on wellbeing
(social performance)?
www.inclusivegrowth.be
Framework
Team configuration
- Extension
- Autonomy
- Cross discipline
Work conditions
- Performance pressure
- Collegial support
Employee economic performance
- Learning
- Innovative behavior
Employee social performance
- Well being
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4
Extension of teamwork
- work
time spend in teams
• Increasing shares of employees work in
teams more than 50% of the work time, but
also teamwork up to 50% of work time is
increasing
• Change between teamwork and individual
work enhances organizational flexibility
• For the employee change between teamwork
and individual work demands both
independent and collaborative competences
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Autonomy of teamwork
- influence on coordination and allocation of tasks
• Influence varies from self management to
operational decision-making
• Less than 20% can elect their team leader.
86% can decide how work is carried out
• Setting work goals and allocating work
among team members are frequently part of
the autonomy
• Autonomy challenges external coordination
and internal psychodynamics
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Cross discipline in teamwork
- members from other professions or from own and other professions
• Cross discipline facilitate new ways of
thinking and innovative solutions
• It also challenges agreement of common
denominator of different professional
paradigms
• More than half of the team members work in
cross disciplinary patterns, most common
with own and other professions in the team
• Cross discipline in teams is slightly
educational biased: Further educated has the
highest proportion, unskilled the lowest
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Work conditions: performance
pressure and collegial support
• How are configuration dimensions (extension, autonomy
and cross-discipline) related to performance pressure?
– Teamwork mean slightly higher chances of tight deadlines
– Autonomy in teamwork mean lower chances of tight deadlines
– Cross discipline are most exposed to management deadlines
• How are team members able to cope with challenges of
performance pressure?
– Strong relation between extension of teamwork and collegial
support
– Team autonomy have a positive relation to collegial support
– Cross-discipline with other professions mean lower chances of
collegial support
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Team learning and innovative behavior
• What are the effects of configuration and work condition
dimensions on economic performance:
– Collective learning
• Levels of autonomy have positive increasing effects on learning
• Cross discipline with own and other professions has positive effects
on learning
• Tight deadlines have strongest positive effects on learning
– Innovative behavior
• Levels of autonomy have positive increasing effects on innovative
behavior
• Cross discipline has positive effects – strongest with other
professions
• Collegial support have moderate negative effect
• Collective learning have by far the strongest effect on innovative
behavior
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Team configuration, work conditions
and individual wellbeing
• What are the effects of team configuration and work
condition dimensions together with collective learning and
innovative behavior on wellbeing?
• Wellbeing: scale developed at Institute of Work and
Psychology (Warr & Parker 2008)
– Highest level of team autonomy has positive effects on
wellbeing
– Cross discipline with other professions has negative
effects on wellbeing
– External performance pressure has negative effect on
wellbeing
– Collegial support has the strongest effect on wellbeing
– Collegial learning and innovative behavior have no
significant effect on wellbeing
www.inclusivegrowth.be
Danish Meadow employee survey
Co-ordinator
Guy Van Gyes
Monique Ramioul
InGRID
Partners
TÁRKI Social Research Institute Inc. (HU)
Amsterdam Institute for Advanced labour Studies, Universiteit van Amsterdam (NL)
The Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholms Universitet (SE)
Fachbereich IV, Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistik, Universität Trier (DE)
Centre d’Etudis Demogràfics, Campus de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ES)
Centre d’Etudes de Population, de Pauvreté et de Politiques Socio-Economiques (LU)
Centre for Social Policy, Universiteit Antwerpen (BE)
Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of Essex (UK)
Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Universität Bremen (DE)
Department of Dynamics of Organisations of Work, Centre d’Etudes de l’Emploi (FR)
The Centre for European Policy Studies (BE)
Dipartimento di Economica e Menagement, Università di Pisa (IT)
Social Statistics Division, University of Southampton (UK)
Luxembourg Income Study, asbl (LU)
WageIndicator Foundation (NL)
School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester (UK)
Inclusive Growth Research
Infrastructure Diffusion
Contract No 312691
For further information about the
InGRID project, please contact
inclusive.growth@kuleuven.be
www.inclusivegrowth.be
p/a HIVA – Research Institute
for Work and Society
Parkstraat 47 box 5300
3000 Leuven
Belgium