Analyze Groups, Teams and Effectiveness

Teams of people working together for a common purpose. Human history is largely a story of people working together in groups to explore, achieve, and conquer. Yet, the modern concept of work in large organizations that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is largely a tale of work as a collection of individual jobs. A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades, however, has pushed organizations worldwide to restructure work around teams, to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses to the unexpected. This shift in the structure of work has made team effectiveness a salient organizational concern. Teams touch our lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of societal functions. There is over 50 years of psychological research—literally thousands of studies—focused on understanding and influencing the processes that underlie team effectiveness. Our goal in this monograph is to sift through this voluminous literature to identify what we know, what we think we know, and what we need to know to improve the effectiveness of work groups and teams. We begin by defining team effectiveness and establishing the conceptual underpinnings of our approach to understanding it. We then turn to our review, which concentrates primarily on topics that have well-developed theoretical and empirical foundations, to ensure that our conclusions and recommendations are on firm footing. Our review begins by focusing on cognitive, motivational/affective, and behavioral team processes—processes that enable team members to combine their resources to resolve task demands and, in so doing, be effective. We then turn our attention to identifying interventions, or “levers,” that can shape or align team processes and thereby provide tools and applications that can improve team effectiveness. Topic-specific conclusions and recommendations are given throughout the review. There is a solid foundation for concluding that there is an emerging science of team effectiveness and that findings from this research foundation provide several means to improve team effectiveness. We summarize our primary findings to highlight specific research, application, and policy recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams.

56. Analyze Competitive Advantage with Groups & Teams

Competitive Advantage When a firm is implementing a value creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors, then we can say the firm has a competitive advantage. And when a firm is implementing a value creating strategy not 389 simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors and when these other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of this strategy, then we can say the firm has a sustained competitive advantage (Barney 1991). There are two major models that have to be considered. The first one is the position or environmental model and the second one is the resource-based view model.

Competitive Advantages through the Employees As we mentioned earlier, competition is an issue of service and product. The question then is what is the factor that has a major role in both of them?. Schuler and Jackson 1987 have shown that there is a linkage between competitive strategy, HR practices and performance. Also HR practice results from different human resources existing within the organisation. Therefore in the next section we will focus on the main HR practices that the employees believe have a major impact on their performance.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 655