Team
As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, "[a] team is a group of people who are interdependent with respect to information, resources, knowledge and skills and who seek to combine their efforts to achieve a common goal".
[citation needed] A team is composed of members who are dependent on each other, work towards interchangeable achievements, and share common attainments.
Teams can meet in-person (directly face-to-face) or virtually when practicing their values and activities or duties.
[citation needed] The definition of team as an organizational group is not completely set in stone, as organizations have confronted a myriad[quantify] of new forms of contemporary collaboration.
Teams usually have strong organizational structured platforms and respond quickly and efficiently to challenges as they have skills and the capability to do so.
Transport logistics executives can select teams of horses, dogs, or oxen for the purpose of conveying passengers or goods.
For instance, a quality-control group on an assembly line would be an example of an advisory team: they may examine the products produced and make suggestions about how to improve the quality of the items being made.
A product reaches the final stage and is put for sales after getting approved by the advisory teams.
Members of these teams might belong to different groups, but receive assignment to activities for the same project, thereby allowing outsiders to view them as a single unit.
In this way, setting up a team allegedly facilitates the creation, tracking and assignment of a group of people based on the project in hand.
Lundin and Soderholm define project teams as a special case in the more general category of temporary organizations which also includes task forces, program committees, and action groups.
A virtual team is a group of people who work interdependently and with shared purpose across space, time, and organisational boundaries using technology to communicate and collaborate.
[14] In their 2009 literature-review paper, Ale Ebrahim, N., Ahmed, S. and Taha, Z. added two key issues to definition of a virtual team: "as small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/ or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organization tasks".
Work teams are responsible for the actual act of creating tangible products and services (Devine, 2002).
Runners do not win their own races merely because the rest of their teammates did, and maths students do not pass tests merely because their neighbours know how to solve equations.
[18][need quotation to verify] Pressuring teams to become independent or interdependent, on the grounds that management has decided that one type is intrinsically better than the other, results in failure.
[19] These types of teams result in the highest potential for innovative work and motivation among its members.
[20] Self-directed teams offer the most potential for innovation, enhance goal commitment and motivation, and provide opportunity for organizational learning and change.
The optimal size (and composition) of teams is debated[21] and will vary depending on the task at hand.
Many teams go through a life-cycle of stages, identified by Bruce Tuckman as: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
Compositional emergence occurs when individual level cognition is similar in form and function to its manifestation at team-level.
Mental models refer to the degree in which team members have similar cognitive understanding of the situation and performance goals which include shared representations of the task.
Rather, the proper implementation of teams is positively related to both member satisfaction and increased effectiveness.
[41] In their review of the relevant scientific literature, Kozlowski and Ilgen demonstrated that such training can greatly benefit team effectiveness.
These two companies took most of the same work force and created one of the most productive automotive plants, producing high quality cars.
And in the last stage, groups focus on team productivity (identical to 'Performing' in Tuckman's model).
Furthermore, the team determines if they need to take an immediate action, or if they can simply watch a situation for a period of time.
In Leadership – Theory and Practice 7th Edition by Peter G. Northouse, he states that, “A team is a type of organizational group that is composed of members who are interdependent, who share common goals, and who must coordinate their activities to accomplish these goals,” (Northouse, 363).
Overall, the team will lead each other to bring forth their own individual ideas and strengths, which create opportunities for great success.
A common myth is that to function effectively, teams need a strong, powerful, and charismatic leader.
