Mgt 4310
Teamwork
Teams?
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What if we:
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Select
Train
Compensate
Promote
Fire
All at the team level?
Benefits of Work Teams
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Meet our social needs
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They enhance employee commitment
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They can be better problem solvers and make
better decisions and
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They enhance quick adaptability (creativity and
speed) of the organization to the environment and
to customer demands
Benefits of Work Teams
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They are strong control systems of
behaviour (norms)
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They create productivity gains due to
worker flexibility
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They increase gains by reducing the need
for managers
Boeing New Development Group
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777 employees in cross-functional teams
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Would no longer think of developing a new
airplane without the use of teams
Costs of Work Teams
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Can’t meet production demands and
organizational goals due to:
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Difficulty of consensus
Effort and time for coordination
Effort and time for training
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Can create intergroup hostilities
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Don’t deal well with inconsistent performers
Saturn Car Company
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GM’s experiment in cutting costs and using
teamwork (1990)
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Self-managed work teams assemble cars, maintain
equipment, order supplies, set work schedules, select
team members.
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Workers are salaried and have a profit sharing plan
Although the company started to make a
profit after the first three years the company
has been unprofitable most years and is still
not creating steady profits
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Last chance to make good
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When would you use teams?
When would you use teams?
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When the work is more than one person can do
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When the tasks are highly interrelated
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When there is a high level of creativity required by
the task
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Where a unique decision must be made that requires
the knowledge or expertise of more than one person.
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Do not use teams just because everyone else is.
How do you compensate teams?
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Only as individuals, as group or as a
combination of individual and group
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Issues:
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Types of teams – full-time, part-time, full-time
temporary
Complexity of the plan
How do you compensate teams?
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Positives of group level rewards:
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Sends the message that the team is important
Reduces within group conflict
Increases information sharing
Reduces some problems of evaluation
How do you compensate teams?
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Negatives of group level rewards
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Less successful teams earn less – may not be
able to hire members
Higher level performers may not feel adequately
compensated – resulting in their reduced
performance
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Individual competencies are critical for team
functioning
Individuals still want their contributions recognized
(individualistic)
How do you compensate teams?
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Issues:
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Team member control of conditions
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What proportion of team versus individual
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There is agreement that there must be team
level compensation
Disagreement comes over the degree of
individual compensation.
Conditions that support teams
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Design of the groups
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Tasks must have autonomy
use high level skills to perform meaningful tasks
Have regular feedback
Have norms that encourage strategy development
Have the correct composition of talent
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Size
Diversity
Interpersonal skills
Conditions that support teams
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Organizational Context
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Have group goals (groups to set proximal goals)
Reward at the group level
Have in-house training and ensure required
expertise
Have adequate information systems from and to
the group
Have resource requirements available
Conditions that support teams
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Group Synergy
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Reduce process losses (coordination costs)
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Reduce social loafing
Weight the contribution and importance of
contribution appropriately
Learn from each other (cross-training)
Selecting to Teams
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What qualities would you select for when
creating teams??
Selecting to Teams
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Conflict Resolution Skills - Encouraging
desirable conflict but discouraging
undesirable conflict; and, employing
integrative (win-win) negotiation strategies
rather than distributive (win-lose) strategies.
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Collaborative Problem Solving Skills identifying situations requiring participative
group problem solving and utilizing the
proper degree of participation.
Selecting to Teams
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Communication Skills - Utilizing
decentralized networks where possible;
recognizing open and supportive
communication methods;
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Goal Setting Skills- Establishing specific,
challenging, and accepted team goals; and
monitoring, evaluating, and providing
feedback on both overall team performance
and individual team member performance.
Selecting to Teams
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Planning and Task Coordination Skills Coordinating and synchronizing activities,
information, and tasks between team
members, establishing individual task and
role assignments which ensure the proper
balance of workload between team
members.
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Collectivism
Group norms
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Unwritten rules that guide group behavior and define
what is good behavior and what is bad behavior
Norms of self-managed teams will control member
behavior more than organizational rules
Team norms have more impact on the ethical
behavior of its members than does a supervisor
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Norms will determine whether the group is effective/ineffective
and whether member behavior supports or does not support
organizational goals
Creating the right norms
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Select individuals who hold organizationally
consistent standards.
Training to reinforce the organizational values
should be considered at the inception of
teams and updates should occur during the
course of a team's life.
Close monitoring of the early development
period of the group - the time when norms
develop - to ensure the inception of
organizationally responsible norms.