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 5–12 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 team’s 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, management’s 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 instructor’s 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 other’s jobs and jointly solve problems allowing work to be completed sooner.
Blake is sold on teams.
192
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
CHAPTER OUTLINE:
Why Have Teams Become So Popular?
Notes:
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 motivator—teams facilitate employee participation in
operating decisions.
Teams vs. Groups: What’s the Difference?
Notes:
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.

Work groups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective work that
requires joint effort. Their performance is the summation of each group
member’s 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 doesn’t automatically increase its performance.
Types of Teams
Notes:
1. Problem-Solving Teams:

Twenty years ago, teams were just beginning to grow in popularity and
most took similar form. They are typically composed of 5–12 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.
193
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
Types of Teams (cont.)
Notes:

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 10–15 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 other’s 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 1960s—made up of employees
from across departments in the company—to 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.
194
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
Types of Teams (cont.)
Notes:
4. Virtual Teams:

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
organization’s 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 aren’t 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
Notes:
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:

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.
195
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
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 Boeing’s 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 space—a 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
functions—from finance and labor unions to engineering and product support—were grouped together according
to specific tasks such as interior design, final assembly, propulsion, and product delivery. The work-flow process
was redesigned so employees work side by side on a full-moving production line—a 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. 60–67.
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.
196
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
Creating Effective Teams
Notes:
1. Factors for creating effective teams have been summarized in the model found
in Exhibit 9-3.
2. Two caveats:

First, teams differ in form and structure—be careful not to rigidly apply the
model’s 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
Team’s 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 team’s performance.
B. Composition (cont.)
Notes:
3. Allocating roles and diversity:

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 teams—managers should keep them in
the range of 5–12 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:

Chapter Nine
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 leader’s 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
Chapter Nine
C. Context (cont.)

Notes:
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 leader’s 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
succeed—this 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.
199
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
D. Process (cont.)
Notes:
b. Relationship conflicts—those based on interpersonal incompatibilities,
tension, and animosity toward others—are 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.
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 POINT—COUNTERPOINT: 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
Notes:
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 employee’s 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.
200
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
B. Shaping Team Players
1. Selection:

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
Notes:
1. Three issues:

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?
201
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
A. Teams and Total Quality Management
Notes:
1. Why are teams an essential part of TQM?

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, Ford’s
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.
B. 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.
202
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
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 don’t 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.
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.yahoo.com
www.hotbot.com
www.google.com
www.lycos.com
www.looksmart.com
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
203
Robbins: Organizational Behavior
Chapter Nine
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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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 know—was there a mission statement (or lack of one), were there goals (or no goals), etc.
Bring your completed analysis to class for group discussion.
7. 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 WebMonkey’s
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.
204