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Samenvatting Teamwork
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Samenvatting Teamwork- Theories, Design and DynamicsWeek 1
- Courtright, S. H., Thurgood, G. R., Stewart, G. L., & Pierotti, A. J. (2015).
- Hackman, J. R. (2002). Why teams don’t work. In Theory and research on small groups.
- Ilgen, D. R., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M., & Jundt, D. (2005). Teams in organizations: From
Input-Process-Output Models to IMOI Models.
Definition of work teams: independent collection of individuals who share responsibility for specific
outcomes for their organization.
So you have a group of people working in an organization, working towards a common goal, that
people share, and they are interdependent. Interdependence is key in teams. You can have many
different groups that are not teams because they are not interdependent. Interdependence is what
defines the team.
Why are teams so popular?
Teams are everywhere. Organizations are eager to utilize teams because:
- They bring more resources (more people, more resources): man power, expertise,
differences, knowledge.
- Teams bring in more levels of diversity in expertise, background.
- Flexibility, keep the work going. You can have projects that could be done by one person, by
letting multiple people work on it, you have flexibility because no one is available 100% of
the time. Working in a group means you can always keep the project going.
Interdependence is everywhere.
Dictionary definition: The dependence of two or more people or things on eachother.
Interdependence can be lower or it can be higher. Interdependence is a defining feature of the team,
but it can be low. You can have a group of people that are team, but not super dependent on each
other to achieve a common goal. In the literature they make a distinction between three different
types of interdependence. One is lower, intermediate and high in terms of interdependence.
Interdependence in work teams is determined by features of the team that define
interconnectedness of team members.
Pooled: low interdependence. They pool their efforts. Youre put in a group, you have to work on
something, if you just both do your part, and in the end you hand it in and your task is done. There is
interdependence, because you both work towards a common goal together, you have to do a good
,job, but it is low interdependence because there is not a lot of interaction going on, we don’t share
ideas, there is little coordination.
Sequential interdependence: related but slightly different. The first person works on something. Than
this person hands it over to the second person, the second person writes further and improve the
piece. Than the second person hands it in. You can have a long sequence. It is quite common. The
second person is dependent on the second person to do a good job and continue the efforts of the
other.
Reciprocal: high interdependence, this is what you should see in a high tech group, when you create
a complex product. You constantly have to change information and ideas about what you are doing.
The two arrows in the figure are called coordination, because you are coordinating your efforts
together. At some point you combine what you did in one end product. You constantly work
together.
Picture explanation:
- Low: example redundant individual resources and expertise: when you as a group work on
the same thing, are able to do the same thing, that’s called redundant. Without one person,
the other person could still be able to finish the job.
- High: you approach it from different directions because you have different expertise. A
resource can be everything, it could be knowledge or access to fysical resources. This may
differ between team members.
There are two different types of interdependence: task interdependence and output
interdependence.
Task interdependence: degree to which team members depend on each other for resource accesses,
and the extent to which they create workflows that require coordinated action. Over time, as the
team goes on and exists how often do you create workflows that require coordinated action. If
you’re constantly working on something, producing something, where you need the other persons
output on before and if that frequently happens, you have high task interdependence. You are
working on the task as a team member, but the extent to which you can do that successfully, you
need input from other people in the team. Example: medical teams. On the IC with covid, the task
interdependence is low. Simple tasks, turning over the patients. There are different shifts, but an
entire team is responsible for the unit. In complex cancer treatment, the task interdependence is
high. People are coordinating, looking at pictures and checking how the treatment progresses. They
need each other for the patient to get better.
,Outcome interdependence: The degree to which goals are formulated and outcomes are rewarded in
terms of collective rather than individual contributions. The outcome of the entire group gets the
same reward (grade). Example: red bull racing team. It is a team and there is outcome
interdependence, if Max wins, his teammate profits of it somehow (the team gets more money), but
having said that, they are individual racers and sometimes competing with each other. This can lead
to a lot of tension in the team, caused by rewards for individual contributions. Low outcome
interdependence. The outcome interdependence is much higher when you are evaluated as a team,
for example FC Groningen. Overall they get one trophee, the entire team wins something and get the
same reward.
Why teams don’t work?
Hackman is critical about teams. Teams don’t always work. “Research evidence about team
performance shows that teams usually do less well—not better—than the sum of their members’
individual contributions”. Evidence suggests that very often, teams do not as good, there is no
synergy. It would be better often to just let individual people do their part and not let them
collaborate as a team. The implication of the article is that you really have to work hard to make
teams work. You have to set teams up for success and not just let people work in groups and expect
that it will work. Hackman gives reasons to why teams don’t work. What do teams need to be
effective?
1. Task: What is the wished output and do you really need a team to achieve it?
- You should not use a team for work that is better done by individuals. Examples: writing a
book. Disrupts the thinking activity.
- Some projects turn out better when performed by one talented individual on behalf of a
group than by the group as a whole working in lockstep. The argument is that you can put
people in a group, but make interdependence very low, so that they are not interrupting
each other and basically not function as a team.
2. Structure:
- To reach the benefits of teamwork, you must build the team and set them up in such a way
that it is completely clear: who does what? Who has what task and what do you need from
other team members to do your task. It can be tempting to let teams determine their own
things. That does not always work because teams need structure.
- Set boundaries, define relationships, divide tasks, form relationships with stakeholders etc.
Who should coordinate with whom, what do they need from each other. The team can be
structured internally, but also externally. How does a team relate to other aspects outside
the organization. It is very important to determine the entire structure of the team, to make
it function well.
3. Leadership and support:
- Leaders need to give direction to avoid ambiguity. Think about the role of the leader and
how the leader can help the team to succeed. Again, fitting in with the task and fitting in with
the overall structure.
- The organizational context needs to provides support that is specifically tuned to the needs
of work teams. Very often organizations don’t think about this. Is the organization set up in
such a way that it supports team work, for example do team building activities or emphasize
collaboration.
- It is important to reward collective outcomes. This ties in with what we said before.
Hackman argues that teams work best when collective output is emphasized and
interdependence is higher rather than lower.
, IMOI models article
It is not good to have to many to good players in the team. The top talents are the players that play
for elite clubs. At a certain point, less talent is better. Why is this the case? Coordination is lower is
you have to many good people in the team because they want to go for their own success. The best
players are not always the best team players. This effect does not occur when interdependence is
lower and coordination is less important (example: soccer vs American baseball).
The model:
Because you have to many star players, coordination suffers. People go for their own success.
Therefore performance suffers. In general:
IMOI model:
You have input for example team composition, you have a mediator, for example coordination, and
you have output. The idea of the mediator is that this explains why this input factor has this effect on
the output. Because it is IMOI and not IMO (after the output you go back to input), it allows for a
feedback loop.
Input:
- Team design:
Composition: who is in the team? Knowledge, skills, resources and abilities, how big is
the team? How stable is the team? You can select the right people for your team.
Interdependence: you can create interdependencies in the team.
Leadership and authority: you can select the right authority structure for your team.
- Task factors:
What kind of task is the team performing? Complexity, requirements.
- Context:
In what kind of context does the team function? Organizational culture, resources in the
environment that are needed for the team to succeed.
Steiner: has his ideas of potential performance. Potential performance is not actual performance of
the team, but what it can potentially achieve. He argues that potential performance is given by what
a team can achieve, but it depends on what is the task and what kind of team do I have. What
resources are available? Potential performance is a function of resources of the team and the task
that needs these resources.
How do contributions of members relate to potential performance of the team? Steiner distinguishes
between four different task types.
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