This is a summary of all the mandatory articles for the course Work Design & Team Processes. This summary conducts articles from Hollenbeck et al. Ashfort & Mael, Rink et al., Leslie, Emerson, Anderson & Brown and many more. Including personal notes, tables and important figures of the articles.
Teamwork: people working together to achieve something beyond the capabilities of individuals
working alone. Temporal taxonomy is getting knowledge on how you can study team processes over
time. Success is a function of:
- Team members’ talents
- Available resources
- Processes team members use to interact with each other to accomplish the work
I-P-O is the input-process-outcome framework. There is still no unified conception of what team
processes are and how they operate during team goal accomplishment. This article’s purpose is to
advance future studies of team effectiveness by taking a detailed look at the concept of team
process.
The upper model is the traditional model. You had input factors (organizational, team etc.) that led to
tasks processes and that led to some kind of performance outcome. Now, we recognize that team
and individual influences each other. There are interchangeable effects. They lead to tasks processes
and emergent states. That leads to certain outcomes with loops in between: these outcomes can also
influence the processes, and the processes can also influence the inputs.
Team process: “interactions such as communication and conflict that occur among group members
and external others”. Team interaction processes are patterned relations among team members.
Team process involves members’ interacting with other members and their task environment. Team
processes are the means by which members work interdependently to utilize resources, such as
expertise and equipment. Task work: “a team’s interactions with tasks, tools, machines and
systems”. Taskwork represents WHAT it is that teams are doing. Teamwork describes HOW they are
doing it with each other. Teams use different types of processes to convert input into outcomes.
Work teams should be characterized into 6 types:
Project
Production
Service
Action/performing
Management
Parallel
,Emergent states: “constructs that characterize properties of the team that are typically dynamic in
nature and vary as a function of team context, inputs, processes and outcomes”. Emergent states
describe cognitive, motivational and affective states of teams as opposed to the nature of their
member interaction. Example: teams with low cohesion (emergent state) may be less willing to
manage existing conflict (the process). Emergent states are not processes, because they do not
describe the nature of member interaction. They are not directly task related!
A trait is a “relatively enduring characteristic that has an air of permanency, whereas states are more
fluid and more easily influenced by context. Examples are norms, affect and cohesion”. Emergent
states and team traits serve as inputs and influence the execution of teamwork processes and
taskwork.
Teamwork processes describes interdependent team activities that orchestrate taskwork in
employees’ pursuit of goals. There processes are the vehicles that transform team inputs to both
proximal and long-term outcomes. This article argues that different team processes are critical at
different phases of task execution and that I-P-O relationships occur over a series of related cycles.
Time factors such as deadlines, schedules etc. dictate many aspects of team functioning, including
the strategies, the pace of activities and role assignment. Time-based rhythms act to shape how
teams manage their behavior. Variance across time is collapsed into a static indicator of teamwork
process as though it occurs at a single point in time. Team compilation is a sequence of modal phases
and transition points and different team activities occur in different phases of team development.
Teams are typically engaged in the pursuit of multiple goals simultaneously: several tasks are often
being juggled at any one time. This creates an environment where members are engaged in complex
sequences of interdependent tasks that comprise a larger project.
Teams perform in temporal cycles of goal-directed activity, called episodes. Episodes are
distinguishable periods of time over which performance accrues and feedback is available. Episodes
are identified by goals and goal accomplishment periods. The primary challenge for teams is to
develop and execute a multifaced plan of work that simultaneously manages performance gaps in
each of their important performance episodes. Processes are the means by which teams manage all
of these concerns during multi-episodic goal accomplishment. Over time, team performance is best
viewed as a series of related I-P-O episodes. Adopting this episodic approach suggests that teams are
actively engaged in different types of taskwork at different phases of tasks accomplishment.
Action phases are “periods of time when teams are engaged in acts that contribute directly to goal
accomplishment (taskwork)”.
Transition phases are “periods of time when teams focus primarily on evaluation and/or planning
activities to guide their accomplishment of a team goal or objective”. Teams compare current
performance levels against goal and derive perormance gaps.
,This figure illustrates the temporal rhythm of team task accomplishment.
Task 1: fairly fast cycle rhythm with cyclical transition and action phases. Long-term episodes
are often segmented into sections or sub-episodes of more limited scope and duration that
contribute to the larger effort. These firms consistently redefine goal & mission. For example
start-up companies. They are developing themselves & are in an unstable position.
Task 2: greater period of activity before goal accomplishment is evaluated. Short transition
phase and long action phase. Such as military teams. Training and preparation on transition.
When you have to perform the tasks, you can go immediately to action phase.
Task 3: falls in between the upper two.
Task 4: cycle similar to the first, but in which the onset is delayed relative to the others. In
the beginning, teams are not in transition nor action phase. A lot of emergent states & social
processes are going on before you can think about other stages.
Many organizations think that teams that regularly go back to their transition stage perform most
optimally. These are self-critical, reflective and move back to their own state (agile working).
However, this will create a lot of turbulence and confusion.
I-P-O cycles are nested in action and transition phases within episodes: thus, outputs generated from
processes that occur during the transition phase, become inputs for the ensuing action phase. There
is a need for different perspective: the new taxonomy offers a new categorization system for existing
constructs that fit the definition of team process proposed in this article. The taxonomy contains a
hierarchical structure. The 10 process dimensions are nested within 3 superordinate categories:
1. Transition phase processes
a. Mission analysis
b. Goal specification
c. Strategy formulation
2. Action phase processes
a. Monitoring progress towards goals
b. Systems monitoring
c. Team monitoring
d. Coordination
, 3. Interpersonal processes (occurring in the transition AND action phase)
a. Conflict management
b. Motivation and confidence building
c. Affect management
Each of the 10 process dimensions refers to a general type of activity that can pe performed
anywhere. Transition phases are periods of time when teams focus primarily on evaluation and/or
planning activities to guide their accomplishment of a team goal or objective.
Strategy and planning dimensions are classified in 3 dimensions:
1. Deliberate planning: formulation and transmission of a principal course of action for mission
accomplishment. Such as a briefing for hotel catering teams.
2. Contingency planning: priori formulation and transmission of alternative plans and strategy
adjustments in response to anticipated changes in the performance environment.
3. Reactive strategy planning: alteration of existing strategy/plans in response to unanticipated
changes in the performance environment and/or performance feedback.
You need to adapt measurements to phase and process. Using static methods or one-shot deals are
not good.
When observable decision making & outcome features exist
o Based on the process variables and the transition/action stages, you can see what
processes can be objectively measurable.
When intangible process features exist
o Basket assessment task, self-report measures
o Experienced sampling methods
o Open diary studies
All teams are dynamic over time!
Hollenbeck et al. (2012)
Teams are defined as small groups of interdependent individuals who share responsibility for
outcomes. There is a lack of agreement in the taxonomic system. Many taxonomic descriptions only
generate a few types of coarsely described categories. The classic taxonomy was simple: you had
production teams (output oriented, efficiency focused) and you had decision-making teams
(information sharing, innovation focused). You cannot assume that each team is exactly the same,
there is differentiation. Team characteristics are not normally distributed: the teams placed in the
category may not be representative for the category. Having a normal distribution in a category is the
ideal situation. This still means that only the top of your normal distribution is truly representative of
your category. The majority will not fall in your category, thus the top is not truly representative.
What happens in a team is unique.
Taxonomy problem: it is assumed that all teams are equal in a respective category, while team
characteristics are often dichotomous or not normally distributed. The author wants to move away
from production- and decision-making teams, and create new dimensions. There are several
foundations of why people work together in teams:
Skill differentiation: the degree to which members have specialized knowledge or functional
capacities that make it more or less difficult to substitute members. Other members bring
skills you can learn from diversity. Teams that are characterized by low skill differentiation
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