Organizing Activities around Teamwork - Essay Example

Full Teamwork Offers Undeniable Advantages (a management essay) 02 January (estimated word count 148) Introduction The power of cooperative and collaborative effort produces great advantages, lessens workload, and hastens completion of the task at hand. Moreover, cooperation in the early, primitive societies before the advent of the modern civilization ensured survival of the tribe. A good example would be hunting, where several hunters cooperate to capture their prey in the wild, especially with prey that were larger, faster, or stronger than humans, such as buffaloes. The adoption of agriculture and the subsequent rise of farming communities likewise showed the importance of group work, when it comes to planting, irrigating and finally, harvesting the crops. Group work lightens the load as well as hastens the task completion when it is crucial to finish the work before adverse weather conditions set in, such as the coming of winter. Discussion This brief paper explores some of the theories involving teamwork in organizations and provides some examples to illustrate the importance of teamwork to group performance in achieving overall corporate strategy as one of its competitive tools. In this paper, teamwork is discussed within the context of a modern corporate organization. Previous ideas of teamwork entailed mostly primitive activities like hunting and planting, but in the modern setting, it is a teamwork that is anchored in an industrial setting in the post-Industrial Revolution period. In this context, teamwork ideas are anchored on mostly project-based work but it also has other varied applications which are discussed as the paper progresses. Participative management, co-determination, worker representation in management teams, quality improvement circles, and small-group activities, are just some of the fine examples of teamwork (Kandula 124). Organizing activities around teamwork in a corporate setting offers advantages that cannot be attained by someone working individually; some distinct advantages are: Employee involvement – people become more committed when they are involved in the business, when they are consulted, and given a chance to share their inputs. Organizational success is better assured when all people get involved, rather than just a select few or elites. A good way to involve people is to make them join a team for an equitable participation. Conducive to new ideas – people can become more creative when they are exposed to various ideas, suggestions, and comments of other people within a team setting. Although it is sometimes the originality and brilliance of one individual which can make a difference, it is more often the case that an exchange of good ideas in a team that produces the most brilliant insights because data, information, knowledge, and wisdom are shared together. Enhances communications and relationships – the nature of group work requires all people within the team to work together, share their ideas, and communicate frequently such that in the process, they become more interdependent and thereby build stronger relationships. Organizational performance is enhanced when there is effectiveness in good teamwork. Improvements in quality levels – whether it is a product or a service an organization is selling, teamwork raises the level of quality because people supplement and complement each other when quality consciousness is embedded in each employee as a team concept. Raises the learning process – teamwork promotes the learning process in socializing, when people are doing a common task assigned to them, and given a group objective. The idea is an entire organization learns in the process, not just the individuals (Marquardt 52). Reinforces individual strengths – most work today is multi-disciplinary in nature, so no one person can be expected to do it all alone. Teamwork can likewise mitigate weaknesses, enables more rapid adaptation to changes, and saves resources by doing more with less. Various theories have been propounded and put forward by management experts to help executive leadership manage their teams better and achieve expected results. Teams go through four stages, namely forming, storming, norming, and performing. Some of the more popular team theories are discussed below for further illumination and elucidation. Balance Theory (by Theodore Newcomb) – this theory suggests people will form the team only if they have the same attitudes, outlooks and perspectives. These similarities allow a group to share, understand, complement, and comprehend each member (Kandula 121). Exchange Theory (by Thibaut and Kelley) – this posits the idea that a team becomes effective in terms of costs and benefits. If team members perceive they will get more benefits in participation than costs, then they will stay and persevere with the group. If the cost is higher than the rewards, people will dissociate themselves and group strength weakens as team coherence declines. People evaluate team membership in terms of rewards and costs. Punctuated Equilibrium Model (by C. J. G. Gersick) – the theory states teams are usually characterized by alternating periods of inertia and activity. The first team meetings are usually a waste of time due to inertia (inaction, arguments, debates, etc.) while all subsequent meetings are indicated by frenzied activities to accomplish team goals. This model assumes a team goes through this equilibrium process which is punctuated by inertia and activity. Five-stage Model (by Orsburn, Moran, White, and Zenger) – this team theory states a team goes in a five-step process of start-up (training and indoctrination of team members), the state of confusion (members do not know their roles, leadership issues, and decision-making), leader-centred teamwork (the emergence of an acknowledged leader due to brilliant ideas, but other members tend to start depending on the leader and relegate their functions to the leader), tightly-formed team (group finally achieves cohesion and coordination becoming self-reliant), and lastly, self-directed team (members relinquish their egos and support higher objectives). Conclusion Teamwork becomes effective based on a number of factors, such as clear expectation of what is to be achieved, team homogeneity, maturity of the members by abandoning egos, a clear direction exercised by a team leader, and size of the team, are among the most cited. The most important factor, however, is that there is support from higher-up management for it. The various kinds of teamwork can be classified according to their tasks, such as advisory teams, (formulation and review of policies), the production teams (charged with making a product or finding ways to promote service delivery excellence), project teams (a team formed precisely to accomplish a specific purpose only, usually for a limited time period, and hence, ad hoc), and actions teams (designed to act and follow specific instructions strictly, such as counter-terrorism teams). Some examples of teams are those working on a software project, on a drug formulation, or a surgical team of doctors. Another fine example of good working team is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) designed to find ways to improve the entire Internet infrastructure in terms of both hardware and software requirements. The Internet Society had formed this team and it asks for comments, ideas, suggestions, and solutions from the on-line community of experts worldwide through its request for comments (RFC) memorandum. Works Cited Kandula. Performance Management. New Delhi, India: PHI Learning Private Limited, 2006. Print. Marquardt, Michael J. Building the Learning Organization: Achieving Strategic Advantage through a Commitment to Learning. Boston, MA, USA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011. Print. Read More