How Teams Are Used by Organizations

Teams are used to serve a variety of functions for organizations. The day-to-day operations of organizations can be shifted to teams (e.g., factory production teams, airline crews). Teams can be formed to provide advice and deal with special problems. For instance, teams might be created to suggest improvements in work processes. Teams can help manage coordination problems by linking different parts of organizations. Budget or planning committees might be composed of members from several departments, for example. Finally, teams can be used to change organizations by planning for the future or managing transitions.

Obviously, a teams’ configuration can be very mixed. Concurrent engineering teams are teams composed of members of an organization whose task is to oversee the design, manufacturing, and marketing of new products. Affiliation in a concurrent engineering team is normally part of the day-to-day activity of people working in research and development. However, other members of the team may be there on a part-time, temporary basis to deal with coordination, special problems, and implementation of change. Research and development staff may define the characteristics of a new product, while representatives from other departments may comment on issues related to production and marketing.

Sundstrom (1999) identifies six types of work teams on the basis of the functions they perform:

Production teams, such as factory teams, manufacture or assemble products on a repetitive basis.

Service teams, such as maintenance crews and food services, conduct repeated transactions with customers.

Management teams, composed of managers, work together, plan, develop policy, or coordinate the activities of an organization.

Project teams, such as research and engineering teams, bring experts together

to perform a specific task within a defined period. 5. Action or performing teams, such as sports teams, entertainment groups, and

surgery teams, engage in brief performances that are repeated under new conditions and that require specialized skills and extensive training or preparation.

Finally, parallel teams are temporary teams that operate outside normal work, such as employee involvement groups and advisory committees that provide suggestions or recommendations for changing an organization.

Classifying Teams

Teams can be classified by ways other than the types of activities they perform (Devine, Clayton, Philips, Dunford, & Melner, 1999). Researchers have suggested classifying teams by whether they are permanent or temporary, how much internal specialization and interdependence they require, and how much integration and coordination with other parts of the organization are needed (Mohrman, 1993; Sundstrom, DeMeuse, & Futrell, 1990). One of the most important distinctions among types of teams is how much power they are allocated (Hayes, 1997). When an organization uses teams rather than individual workers to perform tasks, it is giving the teams some power and authority to control the operations of its members. This shifting of power affects leadership, decision making, and how the work activities of team members are linked.

There are three options for organizing people into work groups: a work group, a team, or a self-managing team. The differences among these options are presented in Table 1.2. Work groups are part of the organization’s hierarchical system. Supervisors or managers who control the decision-making process lead these work groups. Group members typically work on independent tasks that are linked by the supervisor’s direction or by the work system.

Teams are given some power and authority so they are somewhat independent of the organization’s hierarchy. Their leaders are selected by management and given some managerial power. Team leaders can use a variety of techniques for making decisions, such as using the teams to provide advice about decisions (consultative), having the teams vote, or using consensus to make decisions. Team members’ work activities are interdependent and coordinated by the leaders.

SOURCE: Adapted from McGrath, J. (1984). Groups: Interaction and performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Self-managing teams are given significantly more power and authority than traditional work groups and are more independent of an organization’s hierarchy. Team members typically select their leaders; as a result the leaders have limited power and must facilitate—rather than control—their teams’ operations. The leaders must rely on democratic or consensus decision making because they have no authority to make teams accept decisions. The work of team members is highly interdependent, and all team members work together to coordinate activities.