Team - Definition and Types

Team – Definition and Types

Definition Of Team

According to demesne and Futrell (1996) A team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social system. E.g. business unit or the corporational abundances e.g. in a production work team. One members sharing responsibility for the quality and quantity of the final output that is produced.

In a project team research and development engineer may work interactively with manufacturing process engineers to make sure that the designs that are being developed can be manufactured services and carrying out a project such as developing a new product.

Team Works
According to Senial (2000) teamwork is any work performed by two or more people whether in an organization or outside the organization, is teamwork Wright and Noe (1995) define teamwork as the coordination of work groups to achieve one or more common goals / objectives. The encyclopaedia defined teamwork as the concept of people working together as a team.

Types of teams

Mohrman (1995) offered the following types of team which differentiate between advice and involvement teams production and service team project and development team and action and negotiation team of the categories in out typology, work teams correspond to their production and service teams, parallel team with advice and involvement teams and project correspond to their project and development team. Sandstorm (2003) category for management team and the category for action and negotiation team the teams tentative designs may be reviewed by the research and development and manufacturing functional managers. By this definition a department of electrical engineer who works on separate project is not a teams. The engineer work independently of each other and do not share responsibility for outcomes and are not interdependent.

Kalzen back and smith, (2003) team and group can be used interchangeably. The popular management literature has tended to use the term “Team” e.g empowered teams, quality improvement teams and teams effectiveness.

This study is therefore, concerned with the organizational, teams in which employees are organized into teams to achieve some or all of the organizations objectives and goals.

Higgin (1999) defines team (in the organization context) as a group normally within the same department, that is designed to work together to identify and solve group related work problems.

Miller (2002) opined that a team is a relatively permanent work group whose members must coordinate their activities to achieve one or more goals or common objectives.

The objectives might include advising others in the organization, producing goods and services and carrying out a project such a developing a new product.

i. Work team:
Are type of teams most people think about when discussing teams. Work teams are continuing work units responsible for producing goods or providing services. The membership of typically stable, usually fulltime, and well defined (Cohen, 1999). Work team are found both in manufacturing and service settings.

(Sputa Dirnitt & Figarty, 1998) Asserted that, work team are directed by supervisor who make most of the decisions about what is done how it is done, and who does it.

An alternative form of work team called a variety of labels self managing, autonomous, semi-autonomous, self-directing empowered is going favour. Self managing work teams involved employees in making decisions that were formerly the pronounce of supervisor and managers.

Typically, the member of self – managing work teams are cross-trained in a variety of skills relevant to the tasks they perform e.g self-managing engineering work shop teams and telecommunication team.

Katsenbach & Smith (2007) categories work teams with product and service team. These are teams charged with the activities related to producing and selling goods and services team. These are teams charged with the activities related to producing and selling of goods and services. Teams work for this group may be full time over extending period. Examples of such teams includes crews, and data processing groups product and service teams like advice and involvement teams, draw their membership from a broad base and often are formed as a way to empower first time employees although they are low in differentiation, these are highly integrated with suppliers, customers and other groups in the organisation.

ii. Parallel teams
Pull together people from different work units or jobs to perform well (Ledford, 2007). They literally exist in parallel with the formal organisational structure. They generally have limited authority and can only make recommendations to individuals higher up in the organizational hierarchy parallel teams are used for problem solving and quality improvement teams employee involvement groups, quality circles and tasks forces.

Steel (1990) parallel teams have been used for quite sometime but the continuing interest in quality and employee involvement has resulted in the widespread diffusion of this team type.

Katzen bach & Smith (2007) state that An advice and involvement team is a team formed to generate input from a broad base of employees.
Organization may assign all employees or representatives of each department or work group advice and involvement teams. Teams members meet only long enough to generate ideas or develop proposals, because their tasks is limited the group needs little integration with the rest of the organization.

iii. Project and development teams
There are times limited. They produce one time output such as a new product or service to be marketed by the company a new information system or a new plant, (Makin, Cohen, & Dickson 1996). For the most part, project team task, area non-repetitive in nature and involve considerable application of knowledge. Judgement, and expertise. The work that a project team performs may represent either an incremental improvement over an existing concept or radically different new idea.

iv. Management teams
These coordinate and provide direction to the sub unit under their jurisdiction, literally integrating interdependent sub unit across key business processes (Morhaman 1995).

The management teams responsible for the overall performance of a business unit. It is authority stem from the hierarchical rank of its members. It is composed of the management responsible for each sub unit as vice president of research for each and development , manufacturing, marketing and quality.

At the top of the organisation, the exclusive management team establishes the firms strategic direction and manages its performance. The use of top management teams (TMTS) is expanding in response to the turbulence and complexity of the global business environment. Management teams can help companies achieve competitive advantage by applying collection expertise, integrating desperate efforts and sharing responsibility for the success of the firm (Mankind 1996).

(v) ACTION AND MANAGEMENT TEAMS
The members of action and management teams are experts with specialised skills. Examples of such teams includes, players on a basket ball, members of an orchestra and personal on a surgical team owing to their expertise, the team is highly differentiated it is also highly integrated with the organisation and such teams closely coordinate their effort with the work of supporting personnel or with other action and negotiation teams.

For examples, even when the negotiation team is a labour dispute has different objectives each teams success rests partly on the action of others. Resolving the dispute not only requires effective planning by each team independently but depends on the team meeting and communicating with one another.

(vi) Cross Functional Teams
Lepine, (2003) cross functional team with members from several functions that are responsible for a project and crosses functional line communicating and solving problems across functional lines can help organisations more faster by eliminating the time devoted to reviewing and requesting changes in other to identify how it will be affected by another action.

REFERENCES

Cohen, S.G, Ledford, G.E. & Spreitzer, G.M (1996): A predictive model of self – managing work teams effectiveness: Human Relation, 49 (5): 643-676.

Driskell, J.E, Goodwin, G.F., Salas, E.O., & Patrick G., (2006): What makes a good teams player? Personality and teams effectiveness. group dynamics: (CD-ROM) Theory, Research, and Practice. 10, 249-271.

Humphery, S.E., Morgeson, Frederick P., & Mannor, M.J. (2009): Developing a theory of the strategic core of teams: A role composition model of team performance. (DVD) Journal of Applied Psychology, 94,48-61

Kirkman, B, L., Jones R.G., & Shapiro, D.L. (2000): Why do employees resist team? Examming the ‘’ resistance barrier ‘’ to work team effectiveness. (DVD) International Journal of Conflict Management, 11, 74-92.

LePine, J. A (2003): Team adaptation and post change performance: Effects of teams composition in terms of member’s cognitive abilities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 27-39.

Miller, B.C. (2007). Quick activities to improve your team: How to run a successful teams-building activity. (CD-ROM) The Journal for Quality and Participation. 28-32.

Salas, E., Nicholas, D.R., & Driskell, J.E. (2007. Testing three team training strategies intact teams: A meta- analysis. (CD-ROM) Small Group Research, 38, 471-488.

Senecal, J., Loughead, T.M., & Bloom, G.A. (2008).A season-long team-building intervention: Examining the effect of team goal setting on cohesion. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 30.186-199.

Svyantek, D.J., Goodman, S.A., Benz, L.L., & Gard, J.A. (1999). The relationship between organisational characteristics and team building success. Journal of business and psychology, 14(2), 265-283.