The Concept of Team Work and Its Role in Success of Organizations - Case Study Example

Evaluation of the Concept of Team Work and Its Role in Success of Organizations Abstract The concept of team work is certainly one of the most important factors that influence the success of organizations. This is because of the fact that the team work helps in better coordination among the team members of the organization and hence they would produce best quality produce and the customer satisfaction would be maximum. The highest level of creativity and flexibility would be facilitated by the team work which in turn helps the organizations to develop final produce that derives maximum customer satisfaction and provided superior benefit in effectively facing the market competition in globalization period. The team work can be made possible even in the cases where individuals have different styles of functioning and when they break their personal relationship as in the case of foot ball players of Manchester United club of United Kingdom. There are some case studies where team work resulted in desirable human behaviors of the team members and hence contributed well to the organizational efficiency. Introduction The efficiency of any organization depends on several factors like productivity of the employees, nature of leadership, style of management and technological advancement. The productivity of the employees of any organization would depend upon the working environment created surrounding them. The strategic human resource management plays vital role in this context. The productivity of the employees gets tremendously enhanced if they work coherently with each other and by sharing the responsibilities jointly for the welfare of the organization (Baker et al., 2006). The individual efforts go in vain what ever the stronger they may be if coherence is lacking. In other words, team work plays crucial role in uplifting the spirit of the organization and thereby enhancing the productivity of the organization. Inculcating the habit of team work is not very simple and it takes considerable time and operates gradually. Hence one has to study and analyze the factors responsible for effective team work for infusing the spirit of team work with in an organization. It also involves desirable changes in knowledge, skills and behavior of employees. What is team work? How it correlates with customer satisfaction? Teamwork can be perceived as the co-operative effort performed by a group of people with an objective of achieving a common goal. For example, the organizations like PepsiCo Ltd, USA have the goal of increasing their sales volume by 10-15 % annually and for achieving this objective, they would strive to come up with perfect strategies which may be multifold in nature but it certainly involves the element of team work. Though the number of employees comes from different regions or countries and from different fields of specializations, as far as the objective of the organization is concerned, they come together in most coherent manner for enhancing the sales volume which is nothing but the team work. At the same time, the result of the team work would be felt highest when customer satisfaction is maximum (Grey, 2008). In other words, the team work and customer satisfaction are positively correlated. Moreover, the success of any organization would mainly depend upon the sales of its products which in turn would depend on the customer satisfaction. Ways for effective team building Several researchers came up with some important strategies for successful implementation of team work (Thomson and Hugh, 2009). Though there were views that team work some times annihilates the individual excellence, in majority instances, the individual excellence and team work correlate with each other. Hence several examples can be found where team work led to the organizational success. For achieving the objective of forming an effective team, the human behavioral changes are necessary for which the strategic human resource management plays vital role. Mullins (2004) followed a managerial approach and effectively demonstrated the application of behavioral science inside the workplace, and the role of human resource management as a core integrating activity for enhancing the application of team work in any organization.   The conduction of training programmes and development of new dynamic leadership would certainly help the organizations to build their teams which would further work collectively and harmoniously for enhancing the overall efficiency of the organization (Larson and Lafasto, 1989). The bigger picture of the organization is more significant than the individual aspirations while working in an organization to increase its efficiency. One more important point to note here is that the teamwork can be improved when the persons modify or alter their behavior according to the common frequency of the group so that performance improves. This also means that for effective team building, it doesn’t necessary that the personality traits of all the individuals of the team should be same (Thomas, 2002). There are several examples where the individual styles are different but work for the common goal for their organization or company. Let us analyze one important case study for this situation here as follows: Case study on team work where two members broken personal relationship Two foot ball key players of Manchester United Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham cooperated with each other irrespective of their different styles of game and personal dislikes (Team Technology, 2009a). This was made possible due to effective team building exercise and both the players could be convinced that the primary responsibility was to score as many goals as possible for their organization or sports club for which they had worked with or had signed the contract. After having severe break down in their relationship during a game at Bolton in 1998, their personal relations never improved and were almost not speaking to each other off field. The heartening thing to note that in the next season (1998-1999) Cole and Sheringham continued as the winning streak of scoring highest number of goals for their team irrespective of their strained relationship off the field. This is an example of marvelous success of team work irrespective of diversity in personal likes or styles of the individuals and this led to giant success of Manchester United which won prestigious tournament medals like The Premiership League, The FA Cup and The European Cup. The employees of other organization must learn key lessons from this illustration of team work and it requires the behavioral changes according to the objectives and goals of their organizations. How to build an effective team? The training of the individuals is required on the principle “good team does not necessarily require good interpersonal relationships or friendships”. Rather, the success of an organization depends upon the tuning of the human behavior of the employees keeping the common goals of the organization in mind. In other words, the performance management of the group behavior is more important than the individual excellence (Team Technology, 2009b). This also requires thorough study of the existing behavior of the employees of the organization so that their personal traits can be changed to little bit more towards the achievement of organizational goals. The target behavior should be aiming at higher efficiency of organization where as the current behavior reflects the possible management of gaps existed at the current moment. All the organizations must try to address these gaps of the human behavior and increase these levels of thinking of their employees more towards the common goals of the organization. As mentioned earlier, the customer satisfaction decides the success of the organizations and hence the employees must try to derive maximum satisfaction by producing good quality of final produce so that the customer satisfaction would be maximum and sales volume of the company would be the best. One important aspect to be kept in mind for effective team building exercise is that the target behavior changes from organization to organization based on their nature of products and final goals (Lafasto and Larson, 2001). In some of the sectors like coal mining, the understanding of the origin of the coal mines is important and accordingly the team would work towards this objective, where as in case of space technology, the organization has to be more strategic. Similarly in case of consumer goods company, the team works towards the creativity for producing new objects that suit the customer’s requirements. The final summary out of this is that the individuals have to be trained according to the needs of the customers and according to the final aims of the organization. The effective team work also aims to identify and manage conflicting expectations of between the management and customers (Reynolds et al., 2002). The efforts must be initiated to reduce the differences if any arise between the management and team. At the same time, the effective team building exercise would try to bring desirable changes in the organizational culture, the preferences of team members, current circumstances and the feedback from people outside the team. The jobs performed by individuals don’t get their weaknesses recognized and hence lead to product failure as far as the change in the taste of the customers is concerned. In case of team work, some members of the group would certainly point out the constraints and the gaps can be minimized if not removed so that the customer satisfaction is expected to be maximum which in turn would lead to higher organizational efficiency. Teamwork in any organization also aids in making businesses to be more cost efficient. As it involves several persons with specific skills at a time, the cost of production per unit goods would be very low so the company would be in a position to market its produce with good quality at reasonable prices. Teamwork certainly helps us to accomplish the things that need to be tuned according to the changes in market trends and with the advancement of time. The customers would get good quality produce in all the time periods once the team work leads to creative products at reasonable rates. Some of the important elements required to be incorporated in best team work are effective communication, coordination, motivation, synergy, goal congruence, clarity in defining responsibility, and flexibility. At the same time, the effective team building should involve clear expectations of the team and organization and context for which the team is working. It should have highest level of commitment and competence for bringing higher organizational efficiency. It should also lead to highest levels of coordination and communication along with good flexibility and it demands for formal management training (Thomas, 2002). Integrated approach to team work An integrated approach for making efficient team work is the need of the hour for producing good quality produce and for enhancing the organizational efficiency. Hence, it involves the simultaneous application of two or more measures or principles that aid in effective team building exercise. As mentioned earlier, it requires a professional and inductive training in effective teamwork. It should facilitate highest level of communications and each member of the team must know about their specific roles to play in the team instead of simply excelling in their individual attributes. The flexibility in changing the roles of the team members based on the need and circumstances of the organization is another key aspect in integrated approach to tea work. The upgradation of the skills, knowledge and attitude of the team members to suit to the frequency of the organizations is mandatory element of the integrated approach for effective team building (Fincham and Rhodes, 1999). The timely evaluation of the team leaders and their team members would also help in correcting the deficiencies and in producing the most effective final produce. Another important element of the team building is in the form of motivation and positive thinking and hence these aspects have to be integrated well in the course curriculum for team managers and team members. Successful case studies The importance of e-learning in training programmes and in bringing human behavioral changes is vital for effective team building exercise (CPID, 2009). Bozionelos and Lusher (2002) emphasized about the role of team work in the UK plant of a US-based global organization competing in the telecommunications technology sector. This study confirmed that the effective training is required for team leaders so that they perform their tasks with perfection and would be able to give proper directions to the line managers. Other wise, the lack of clarity would be experienced by the line managers regarding their specific work targets which would certainly affect the efficiency of organization and the product quality. The findings of this study hence revealed that team leaders’ development was interpreted to be inadequate in both the technical and leadership domains as opined by the line managers. Even the team leaders identified their deficiencies related to their technical training and competence where as the line managers interpreted these constraints related to managerial and leadership skills. Hence there is an urgent need to focus on reorientation of the training programmes and their course curriculum to be developed in the future for better coordination among the team managers and line managers which would positively influence the product quality and organizational efficiency. One successful case study of team work is in the form of VIC, USA. VIC's Advanced Leak Metrology and Industrial Leak Detection divisions combine their expertise in team work mode to create the first fully automated leak testing system for laser diodes (VIC, 2009). The effective team building exercise at VIC made it possible to reach the production target of 3.65 lakh lasers per week. In addition, it could produce the MS-50 Leak Detector from VIC's Advanced Leak Metrology division where team work was exhibited and the final products were found to be more reliable and with performance specifications, and accuracy. Hence it led to higher customer satisfaction and the company could project the future target of one million lasers per year. In this way, the team work helps in successful organizational efficiency. The role of team work in enhancing the efficiency of health organizations was also felt in several cases. For example, team work led to the success of developing an ideal treatment model for providing intravenous antibiotic therapy outside the hospitals (International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 1995). The team work had a significant impact on development of these models which were deigned suiting the local needs and resources with a final aim of quality patient health care. The team work spirit among the physician, nurse, and pharmacist in the clinic-based, physician-directed model would certainly help in providing most effective patient health care. Conclusion Team work is a combined exercise and involves the best efforts of the team members and the individual constraints can be corrected by the other members resulting in higher produce quality. It requires several elements like clarity in understanding the specific roles of the team members, dynamic leadership and regular professional trainings to team managers and other team members. Several successful case studies can be found where the organizational efficiency was enhanced due to effective team building exercise. Overall, the element of team work would be crucial in producing the high quality commodities as it allows the team members to think with more creativity and flexibility (Thompson and Hugh, 2002). This in turn would certainly facilitate the organization to compete well in the international market and hence its production targets would be increased leading to the higher organizational efficiency. 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Thompson, P & McHugh, D 2009, ‘Work Organisations (4th Edition)’, Houndmills. VIC 2009, VIC Leak detection. http://www.vacuuminst.com/index.htm. Accessed on 30.11.2009. Read More