AFM280 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Web Conferencing, Quality Circle, Product Design
8 Aug 2018
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Chapter 11 – Team Characteristics & Processes
10.1 TEAM CHARACTERISTICS
• Team – two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals
related to some task-oriented purpose.
• Interaction within teams occur wit a specific task-related purpose in mind. Depend on each other for critical
information, materials, and actions needed to accomplish goals. Teams pool specialized knowledge.
Types of Teams
Type of
Team
Purpose & Activities
Life
Span
Member
Involvement
Specific Examples
Work Team
Relatively permanent teams in which members
work together to produce goods/services.
Inspect each other’s work, stop line to resolve
problem, quality control, improvement idea, etc.
Long
High
Self-managed team
Production team
Maintenance team
Sales team
Management
Team
Relatively permanent team that participates in
managerial-level asks that affect the entire
organization. Help achieve long-term goals.
Long
Moderate
Top management team
Parallel
Team
Teams composed of members from various jobs
within the organization that meet to provide
recommendations about important issues.
Varies
Low
Quality circle
Advisory council
Committee
Project Team
Formed to take on one-time tasks, most of which
tend to be complex and require input from
members from different functional areas.
Varies
Varies
Product design team
Research group
Planning team
Action Team
Teams of limited duration that performs complex
tasks in contexts that tend to be highly visible and
challenging.
Varies
Varies
Surgical team
Musical group
Expedition team
Sports team
Variations within Team Types
• People generally prefer working in teams where level of autonomy and self-management is high.
• Virtual Teams – team in which the numbers are geographically dispersed, and interdependent activity occurs
through email, web conferencing, and instant messaging.
o Follow the sun by members of a team finishing their workday in one country will electronically hand off
the work to another member.
• Team Development
o Forming → members understand their boundaries in team. Lear what is expected of them, acceptable
behaviour, who’s in charge.
o Storming → Members remain committed to ideas they bring to team. Disputes may arise.
o Norming → members realize they need to work together, thus cooperation occurs.
o Performing → members are comfortable in their roles, team is progression towards goals.
o Adjourning → members experience anxiety and other emotions as they disengage and separate.
• Punctuated Equilibrium – a sequence of team development during which not much gets done until the halfway
point of a project, after which teams make necessary changes to complete the project on time.
11.2 TEAM INTERDEPENDENCE
Task Interdependence – the degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for
information, materials, and resources needed to accomplish work for the team.
• Pooled Interdependence → lowest degree of required coordination. Members complete their work
independently, then pile this work together.
• Sequential Interdependence → Different tasks are done in a prescribed order. Members specialize in these
tasks. Member performing task in latter part of sequence depends on members performing it earlier.
• Reciprocal Interdependence → members specialize in certain tasks, but members interact with a subset of other
members to complete work.
• Comprehensive Interdependence → highest level of interaction/coordination. Each member has to interact to
accomplish team work. Due to high interaction, it decreases productivity, but increases ability of team to adapt.
Goal Interdependence – the degree to which team members have a shared goal and align their individual goals with
that vision.
• Ensure team has formalized mission statement that members buy in to.
Outcome Interdependence – the degree in which team members share equally in the feedback and rewards that result
from the team achieving its goals.
• High degree exists when members share in the rewards that the team earns vs. when individuals are
rewarded/punished.
11.3 TEAM COMPOSITION
Team Composition – the mix of the various characteristics that describe the individuals who work in the team.
• Role – a pattern of behaviour a person is generally expected to display in a given context.
o Team Task Roles - behaviours that directly facilitate the accomplishment of team tasks.
▪ Orienteer establish direction of team, devil’s advocate offers constructive challenge to status
quo, energizer motivates team members.
o Team-Building Roles – behaviours that influence the quality of the team’s social climate.
▪ Harmonizer resolves differences, encourager praises work, compromiser helps team see
alternative solutions.
o Individualistic Roles – behaviours that benefit the individual at the expense of the team.
▪ Aggressor puts down on members, recognition seeker takes credit for team success, dominator
manipulates members for power. Fosters negative feelings.
• Ability → Consider physical and cognitive abilities, and the levels needed for both.
o Disjunctive Tasks – members with highest level of ability relevant to task will have most influence on
success.
o Conjunctive Tasks – team performance depends on the abilities of the weakest link.
o Additive Tasks – contribution resulting from abilities of every member add up to determine team
performance.
• Personality → traits affect what roles members take on, how teams’ function and perform as units.
o Agreeable people tend to prefer harmony and cooperation rather than conflict and competition.
o Low conscientiousness can cause interpersonal conflicts and might be time-consuming.
o Extraverts tend to perform better in interpersonal contexts and are generally more optimistic, but the
are also more dominant and assertive.
• Team Diversity – the degree to which team members are different from on another.
o Value in Diversity Problem-Solving Approach – a theory that supports team diversity because it
provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives.
o Similarity-Attraction Approach – a theory explaining that team diversity can be counterproductive
because people tend to avoid interacting with others who are unlike them → to reduce conflict
o Surface-Level Diversity – diversity of observable attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, and age.
▪ Negative impact on teams early on due to similarity attraction, but it goes away.
▪ Fault lines occur where informal subgroups are made, info may not be effectively
communicated.
o Deep-Level Diversity – diversity of attributes that are inferred through observation or experience, such
as one’s values or personality.
▪ Time increase negative effects of deep-level diversity on team function and effectiveness.
▪ Reflect on team progress and strategies, think of another people’s perspective.
• Team Size → having greater number of members is good for management and project teams (complex) but not
for teams in production tasks (routine tasks, less complex).
o Too large a team can be uncoordinated, communication problems, more socializing, less productivity.
Document Summary
Chapter 11 team characteristics & processes: team two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose. Interaction within teams occur wit a specific task-related purpose in mind. Depend on each other for critical information, materials, and actions needed to accomplish goals. Relatively permanent teams in which members work together to produce goods/services. I(cid:374)spe(cid:272)t ea(cid:272)h othe(cid:396)"s (cid:449)o(cid:396)k, stop li(cid:374)e to (cid:396)esol(cid:448)e problem, quality control, improvement idea, etc. Relatively permanent team that participates in managerial-level asks that affect the entire organization. Teams composed of members from various jobs within the organization that meet to provide recommendations about important issues. Project team formed to take on one-time tasks, most of which. Action team tend to be complex and require input from members from different functional areas. Teams of limited duration that performs complex tasks in contexts that tend to be highly visible and challenging.
