Team Performance Management - Literature review Example

Team Performance Management Introduction According to Carson et al. (2004), the promising transformations in employees’ diversity lead to the need for assessment of the influence of these transformations on several aspects of the organization. The top management team diversity, as studied by Knight, et al. (1999) revealed that while demographic diversity single-handedly did have influence on a team’s calculated agreements, the overall efficiency of it was not that powerful. By integrating interpersonal divergence and accord-questing to the demographic diversity, all these effectively enhanced the direct and indirect impacts on the team’s strategic consensus. These top management teams are good determinants of the team performance of the organizations, as mentioned by Goll, et al. (2001). Interpersonal divergence or interpersonal conflict as emphasizes by Morgan (1999), is an important aspect of the top management team since the members of the team should have powerful and effective interpersonal skills in order for these members to smooth the progress of encapsulating the required data and information. Processing of data and information are often done by team members through critical analyses, discussions and open and continuous communications with organization managers and stakeholders. Jansen (2001) says that this intrapersonal divergence could be made into good use by determining their implicit assumptions about normality conditions. On the other hand, agreement-seeking or accord-questing, is important in a team to reach a strategic consensus. Agreement-seeking has in most instances provided advantages for the organization. It is important in an organization for all members of the team to come up with agreement-seeking system that will put order in the company. This agreement-seeking system usually has a direct impact especially when it comes to harmony in the organization, productivity and increase efficiency. Each side of every members of the organization should be taken into consideration as much as possible. This will lead to better performance of the organization. Knight et al. (2004) noted that the potency of personality, positive attributes and personal capacities add to the fulfilment of the aims as well as the effective teamwork of the group or organization. In contrast, inability to work with others may result to not meeting the aims of the group. Poor interpersonal skills can ruin what is supposed to be successful communication within a group. Collaboration values diversity because it values diverse skills and experience, if not actual social, economic, or cultural backgrounds. It does so in an environment of equality. Hence, it is the purpose of this study to critically evaluate ideas and arguments in performance gains through diverse top management teams presented in the article by Carson et al. (2004) and theoretical supports drawn from relevant Organisational Behaviour literatures. Performance Gains through Diverse Top Management Teams With more varied top management teams, there is possibility for disagreement and accomplishment gains that led from the enhanced diversity at the uppermost levels of organizations. Members of a team may have different skills but equal responsibility for group success. Leaders highly valued their direct contact with their workforce because of the professional benefits it brought to them such as exposure to new perspectives and methods, assistance with networking, and others. The value it added to their work performance is critical, like assistance with the design, networking, access of information and others. During dramatic changes in an organization, companies moved aggressively to strengthen the company. Corporate and plant initiatives led to lower costs and increased productivity, and an innovative labor agreement with the organization may provide flexibility to staff and lead to operating the domestic facilities of the organization on a world-competitive basis. When these are considered by the organization, it is possible for the investment community to respond favorably to the team efforts of the organization. Thus, these result to significant productivity and financial improvement in the organization. This way, the organization can continue to implement a good, solid business strategy, growing value-added production capabilities, expanding global business platform, and reducing costs. This may as well lead to increased revenues. While some of the strategies that were implemented had significant up-front costs, they may position the organization long-term profitability across the cycles inherent in a business. There is a need, however, to back this up with commitment to deliver a strong, sustained return on investments and to continue reduction of costs and improvement of the return on capital. Several events in the organization may stand out as key elements in helping to position the company. Leadership team may strengthen. Each of the leaders in the organization should demonstrate exceptional leadership skills and commit to making the organization highly competitive. Winston and Patterson (2005) mentions that the leader selects, equips, trains, and influences his or her follower(s) who possess varied gifts, abilities, and skills and focuses the follower(s) to the organization’s mission and objectives causing the follower(s) to willingly and enthusiastically expend spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organizational mission and objectives. Since as organizations strive to remain competitive, there is much reliance on the top management team and their ability to serve effectively in leadership roles. Managers hold a great deal of responsibility in terms of managing people and processes. Therefore, it is but important to include in the strategies of the organization, a training program for the leaders of the organization. Not only do the top management teams requires continuous education and training, but also every members of the organizations. There is a need to provide stimulating environment in order to advance the growth of the company and improve performance. The challenge to have a trained and highly capable top management teams in the organization is the ultimate competitive advantage for any organization. The rapidly expanding base of new information and technologies affects every one, from factory floor to business office. No matter how capable or successful an organization is, if staff training and continuing education is overlooked, there will be problems in the organization. The challenge is to get the best value for the training dollars spent by choosing training that suits the needs of the company and least impacts the bottom line. In order to meet the challenge, comprehensive approach to top management team development can be adopted. Set goals and reach them. Identify the needs, develop the right intervention, and deliver a practical, results-oriented solution. Interactive training is designed for the adult learner, requiring involvement in the learning process. Handle specialized workplace challenges with customized group training. Handle challenges specific to the organization. A good approach is to maximize training dollars spent by tailoring content to the organization’s explicit situation to produce the results needed. The organization should source top-notch trainers who can combine their experiences with the latest in learning techniques for interactive sessions that emphasize skill development and application (RBA Training, 2006). In recent years, there has been a need of top management teams that respond to the requirements of the global environment. The strong international development has forced many corporations to allocate employees to worldwide assignments without adequate training, considering the requirements needed for a leader to be successful in those new markets. In the case of several organizations, economic conditions, competition, and global trends ratchet up the pressure on company and its executives striving for growth and profitability. In this climate, the top management teams may decide that the organizations that are best positioned for success are those that help their top management teams to develop superior competency in critical areas. The top management teams can collectively and effectively lead even a globally-oriented, culturally diverse organizations and within a multicultural work. However, they must have alternative or additional competencies to cope up with continuously changing environment. The top management teams are expected to be responsible for the day-to-day management of the organization or establishment and its staff and have commercial accountability for planning, organizing and directing all of the organization or establishment services or products. In some organization, these top management teams often have specific remits and functions and make up a general management team. The top management team must strike a balance between customer satisfaction and effective business management, ensuring financial viability, and facilitate a smooth-running service or quality product, while ensuring staff work together as a team. The typical work activities of the top management teams may vary depending on the size and type of the organization, but may include planning and organizing, promoting and marketing the business, managing budgets and financial plans, maintaining statistical and financial records, achieving profit targets, recruiting, training and monitoring staff, planning work schedules, addressing problems and troubleshooting, ensuring events and conferences run smoothly, supervising maintenance, supplies and furnishings, dealing with contractors and suppliers, ensuring security is effective, carrying out inspections of property and services and ensuring compliance with licensing laws, health and safety and other statutory regulations, and many other possible functions. In this study, the need for high quality top management team in an organization has been recognized. It is seen as vital for the long-term well-being of the organization, and eventually, the industry (Morda, 2004). As the organization or industry goes global, further research is required in order to establish top management team leadership styles and the outcomes in the industry, which will set clear directions on creating top management development programs with a global perspective. Another thing strategy that the organization may adapt is that the organization may be positioned in the markets. Synergies that led to cost reductions may be created. With the combined capabilities of each of the team members of the organization, costs associated with redundant operations and administrative activities may be eliminated, production runs may be extended, and more cost may be reduced effectively. The company must also realize an immediate increase in the share of key value-added markets. Labor agreements can be reached that may enable the acquisition of strategic consensus to take place and furthered the mutual interests by paving the way for changes that will make the company more competitive over the long-term. For instance, a labor agreement may lay the foundation for employee restructuring, thus improving productivity, or coming up with cost-sharing mechanisms for employees and retirees medical costs, and many other possibilities and mutual benefits. Another example is launching a process improvement project. This may be a process with the goal of creating an overall process that is globally cost competitive. This may lead to increase in productivity among our non-represented workforce or create an organizational structure and process that will reduce costs and facilitate continuous improvement. By involving employees at all levels of the company, the recordable productivity rates of the company may improve by big percentage across domestic or international operations. Even serious injuries from work requiring days away from work may significantly decrease. Benchmarking world-class safety performers as the company looks to integrate new initiatives to ensure that all of our employees go home safely to their families at the end of every day can be a good consideration when employing systems improvement for the organization. The team’s aim of strengthening economy will continue to create increased demand for the goods or services offered by the organization. Production at near capacity and implementing price strategies across product or service lines of the company as the market dictates may give beneficial impacts. The company may also expect additional consolidation within industry, both domestically and internationally. Company liquidity may improve. The financial strength to participate in further consolidation activity may enhance. The upper echelons theory, as stated by Hambrick and Mason (1984) and Finkelstein and Hambrick (1996), shows that the demographic characteristics of the top management teams have relations to an assortment of company processes and outcomes. On the other hand, Shaw (1981) points that the group process theory demonstrates that interpersonal processes work to influence various team or company outcomes like organization accomplishment. The study of Camelo-Ordaz et al. (2005) provided a sound analysis. These team of researchers found that diversity may have direct and/or indirect effects on innovation in organization. However, not all types of diversity may give favorable impacts on innovation. Functional diversity and top management team educational level have a positive effect on innovation within the organization. Tenure, is another factor that has favorable effect on a company (Pitcher and Smith, 2001). To determine the impact of the top management teams in the organization, assessments can be made to measure the influence on performance of the organization. Formal assessment is usually a written document, such as a test, quiz and others. Formal assessment is given a numerical score or grade based on student performance. On the other hand, informal assessment does not contribute to a student's final grade. It usually occurs in a more casual manner, including observation (Formative and Summative Assessments, 2006), inventories, participation, peer and self-evaluation, and discussion. In the formal assessment, it provides assessor with a systematic way to evaluate how well examinees are progressing in a particular program. For example, after completing a four- to six-week theme, assessor wants to know how well the program participants have learned the theme skills and concepts. Assessor may give all the examinees a theme test in which examinees read, answer questions, and write about a similar theme concept. This type of assessment allows the assessor to evaluate all the examinees systematically on the important skills and concepts in the theme by using real reading (Mark, 2003) and writing experiences that fit with the instruction. In other situations, or for certain examinees, assessor might use a skills test to examine specific skills or strategies taught in a theme. Conclusion This study critically assessed the diversity in top management teams as well as its probable influences in the organization. After a thorough study, the matters and several aspects with regards to the top management teams, the upper echeleon theory and team heterogeneity revealed that several propositions may be offered as potential avenues for empirical research. It cannot be stated that all types of diversity related to TMT activity or work have a positive effect on innovation in companies. In this way, diversity in TMT tenure appears to have a negative influence. Second, the incidence of diversity on innovation cannot be direct in all cases. Therefore, functional diversity has a positive effect on innovation, but always when there is a context of strategic consensus in the management team. Finally, top management team’s educational level exerts a positive effect on organizational innovation degree, independently on processes, which may occur within the team. The managerial implication of this is that the diversity in the top management teams has impacts on the overall strategic consensus of the organization. Hence, the top management teams can efficiently considered for the advancement of an organization. Maximizing the potentials of the top management teams result to positive and desirable impacts to the organization. Future research directions may be on efficiently tapping the diversity of the top management teams as an effective tool in the achievement of company goals. References Bransen, Jan. “On Exploring Normative Constraints in New Situations.” Inquiry, vol. 44 (1), pp. 43-62. Utrecht University. March, 2001. Camelo-Ordaz, Carmen, Hernández-Lara, Ana Beatriz and Valle-Cabrera, Ramón. “The relationship between top management teams and innovative capacity in companies.” Journal of Management Development, vol. 24 (8), pp. 683 – 705. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 2005. Carson, Charles M., Mosley, Don C. and Boyar, Scott L. “Performance gains through diverse top management teams.” Team Performance Management. ABI/INFORM Global, pg. 121. 2004. Finkelstein, S. and Donald C. Hambrick. “Top management team tenure and organizational outcomes: The moderating role of managerial discretion.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, pp. 484–503. 1990 “Formative and Summative Assessments.” World View, May 17, 2006. Goll, I., Sambharya, R.B. and Tucci, L.A. “Top management team composition, corporate ideology, and firm performance.” Management International Review, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 109-129. Hambrick, Donald C. and Mason, Phyllis A. “Upper echelons: The organization as a reflection of its top managers.” Academy of Management Review, 9 (2), pp. 193–206. 1984. Knight, Don, Pearce, Craig L., Smith, Ken G., Olian, Judy D. Sims, Henry P. and Flood, Patrick. “Top Management Team Diversity, Group Process, and Strategic Consensus.” Strat. Mgmt. J., 20: 445–465. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1999. Mark, Tanya Marie. Philosophy of Assessment and Decision Making. December 8, 2003. Morda, Romana/ “Leadership in the hospitality industry: Boadecia vs. Attila--bring it on! Industry & Business News.” Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management. August 1, 2004. Morgan, Mark. “The Post-Incident Review Process: Can You Correct the Weaknesses?” Disaster Recovery Journal. Systems Support, Inc. 1999. Pitcher, P. and Smith, A.D. “Top Management Team Heterogeneity: Personality, Power and Proxies.” Organization Science, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1-18. RBA Training. 2006. VanDamme Associates, Inc. http:/www. info@rballiance.com Shaw, M. E. “Group Dynamics: The Psychology of Small Group Behaviour.” (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill, New York. 1981. Winston, Bruce E. and Patterson, Kathleen. An Integrative Definition of Leadership. Working Paper. Regent University. 2005 Read More