Teamwork Is The Key Ingredient Of Organisations Success Management Essay

In contemporary society, there is no doubt that teams are a ubiquitous feature of modern organisations and teamwork becomes a key ingredient of organisation’s success. However, there has been a hot controversy over an issue over the question of whether people working in teams always achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively than people working alone. Majority of organisational scholars provide a body of research to empirically prove that teams work better than people working alone whereas only minority of scholars strongly support that people who choose to work individually have a great deal of strengths rather than shortcomings. As a matter of fact, there are no absolutely rights and wrongs in all cases. Different people with various backgrounds and cultures have their own points of views perceiving things in a different way. Some lend support on collectivism or some are in favor of individualism. People with strong collectivist or individualist culture are all dependent upon their normative culture norm which is determinant of how team function and development are being undertaking.

Introduction

This essay discusses whether it is true that people working in teams always achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively than people working alone and examines what similarities and differences are existent between people working in teams and people who working individually. This report builds several themes. It first of all defines what is meant by between people working in teams and people working alone. Secondly, it analyses the main issues discussed in the existing literature regarding goal setting, goal generation and goal striving at both team and individual level. Thirdly, it brings some arguments to demonstrate that teams tend to perform better and effectively rather than individuals do in terms of shared collaborative thinking, knowledge and skills, better decisions making and higher level of motivation. Fourthly, several possible failures of being involved in teamwork are also delineated. Subsequently, particular theories of team development apply across different cultures are addressed. In addition, practical successful examples relating to team development from University experience is given. Finally, several important points addressed in the foregoing discussion are overall reminded in the implication section.

Key findings from the literature

Define team and people working alone

Generally, team is defined as a distinguishable people who interact, dynamically, interdependently, and adaptively toward a common purpose and a set of valued goals or objectives, who hold themselves mutually accountable, and who have a limited life-span of membership (Salas, Dickinson, Converse and Tannenbaum 1992). That definition explicitly stands on the discipline that teams must share to be effective and efficient. On the contrary, people who prefer to work individually exert individual efforts toward personal valued goals and outcomes. Individuals are merely willing to work hard on their own task to the degree that they expect their efforts to be instrumental in obtaining outcomes that they value personally.

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Goal setting, Goal generation and Goal striving

There is a body of research on the theories of team and individual motivation, their goal generation and their goal striving processes as well as their interrelations (Locke and Latham 1990). At a team level, team members generate common goals through consensus agreement and then take collective and coordinated actions towards accomplishing their goals. Team goal generation and goal striving involves a series of processes of analysis of the team’s mission, specifying and prioritizing goals, and formulating plans for accomplishing team goals (Chen and Kanfer 2006). Similarly, individuals also establish a bundle of goals and designate subordinate task and plans which are perceived to be necessary for goal accomplishment. Even though individuals go through individual level goal generation, striving, they work on all these processes by themselves without others assistance and support. Nevertheless, team and individual goal accomplishment could be far more different. All processes in team goal generation, striving and accomplishment are built on shared or common interactions among team members. Most scholars only support teamwork that goal generation and goal striving can be meaningful when team members come to consensus with shared belief and effective team dynamics and coordinate their collective effort towards accomplishing common goals.

Teams are more effective than individuals acting alone in terms of shared collective thinking, knowledge and skills, shared responsibility, better decisions making, higher level of motivation and having a leader.

Shared collective thinking, knowledge and skills

An adequate pooling of collaborative thinking, knowledge and skills from a number of people are the key elements of building an effective teamwork. Effective collaborative thinking and knowledge with various skills in different specific fields are collectively collected transforming into effective team understanding and decision making. Teams are particularly good at combining talents and providing innovative solutions to possibly unfamiliar problems. Compared with people who prefer working alone, they have limited ideas, knowledge and skills to accomplish a task. Hence, the wider knowledge and skills set of the team has a distinct advantage over that of the individuals since the individual level of understanding, problem solving and decision making are of lower quality.

Better decisions making

Teams are always deemed that they can make better decisions than individuals and team decision making has long been lauded as a vehicle for increasing participation, perceptions of fairness, and acceptance of decision outcomes (Brodbeck et al. 2007). Keyton and Beck (2008) argue that effective teams tend to produce evaluation of decisions which is often favored over analysis of the interaction so they are ones that make the best, correct and right decision according to some objectified standard. However, there is a possibility of individuals having some biased minds or subjective perspective to make decisions without sharing ideas with others. Those people do not have clear mind to identify, explore, and modify their value use to set goals and that influences goal accomplishment.

Higher level of motivation

Effective teams have higher motivation and performance levels than individual acting alone because of the effect of ‘social facilitation’. That is people are more energized and active when they are around other people (Carlopio and Andrewarthur 2008). The team process leads to a spirit of coordination, cooperation and commonly shared belief and value. Team members hold the spirit to help each other to be efficient working together. Their desired performance and outcomes are enhanced by their mutual support. With respect of individual motivation, each individual needs to adequately manage his or her own emotional equilibrium and affective reactions so as to perform appropriately. Individual obstacles to the attainment of goals that cannot be overcome through greater allocations of effort may in turn affect affective emotions; instigate revision and abandonment of broad goals. Therefore, it is not easy for individuals to motivate themselves to continue endeavoring toward accomplishing the same desired goal when faced with obstacles. In addition, the big difference between people working in team and people working alone is that there is always a team leader who is responsible for guiding, directing and supervising team members’ actual effort to work in team. Team goal striving are then reinforced by the team leader.

Several possible failures of working in team

Nevertheless, teams are not panaceas that do not have flaws and mistakes are common in team building and development. In Hackman studies of team, he finds that not providing team members in autonomy, taking advantages of team to make all decisions instead of neglecting individuals make decisions when appropriate, recognizing and rewarding individuals instead of team, not boosting independence among team members, failing to be familiar with members and allocate member roles, not providing needed resources for the team are all common mistakes. Interdependence and interaction are key elements in teams. More team members involved in a team may inevitably encounter irreconcilable conflicts which lead to poor team performance. Poor communication, lack of trust, team commitment and team alignment, lack of collaboration and cooperation are major factors that violate some basic principles of team development. They are likely to generate and create confusion and frustration for team members, and that make them difficulty to exert collaborative effort to reach the desired goals and outcomes.

How different cultures influence team development

One of the most important influences on group effectiveness is culture norms represented in the team. Different cultures have different orientations toward what is appropriate in terms of team function and development (Thomas et al 1996). Individuals with different cultures are likely to have very different standpoints of how the team should go about the task, how they should interact with other team members, how member should behave in such a way to achieve the team goals. Many literature reviews focus on the distinction between individualism and collectivism introduced into cultural studies by Hofstede (1980). Individualism is regarded as the tendency to treat the self as the most significant social unit in contrast to collectivism is deemed as the tendency to treat the group to which one belongs, such as the family or work team, as the most significant social unit (Boreham 2004). United Stated is a typical example of an individualistic culture embedded with the self and equality. This culture is characterized by team patterns of behaviors that emphasize equality in resource sharing according to contribution and distribution of resources equally among members (Fiske 1990). Japan is rooted by collectivistic culture and characterized by team patterns of relationships that emphasize communal resource sharing and sacrifice for the team feature prominently (Thomas 2008). Hence, cultures with individualism and collectivism differ in ways in which they designate how their team functions toward achieving their team goals by using their normative belief.

Practical examples

Through several years of University life, I have gained a great deal of experience of working in teams. It is convincing to make me believe that working in teams is much better than working individually since the level of effectiveness and efficiency of performance were higher and goal achievement is much possible. One of my experiences on working in team, I was extremely satisfied with the entire team development and the outcome we strived toward in the end. We did successfully go through all the basic stages of team development which were forming, storming, confronting and performance. In the forming stage, we oriented all team members, established a clear team purpose, and elected a team leader who had the talent of leadership skills. In the storming stage, we clarified each member’s role by examining members’ weaknesses and strengths, established groupthink, and managed conflict. In confrontation stage, we provided feedback, motivated each other and maintained team cohesion. Finally, we fostered continuous improvement and innovation encouraged introspection. Another experience was working on a big project by myself. A sense of frustration and helplessness were gained at the very start and until the end. There were no others assistance and support, no incentives to achieve the goals that I set, no feedback given to see if the project has been undergone in an appropriate way. As a consequence, performance was affected by my sense of frustration and an average mark for the project was given.

Implications

For the foregoing discussion, the similarity and differences are existent between people working in teams and people working individually have been examined above. Basically teams usually have goal setting, goal generation and goal striving as well as individuals. The attainment of the goal requires collaboration among members whereas individuals need to set and plan to achieve them by themselves. However, collective and collaborative effort may not be congruent with individual effort. More possibly, the former one works better than the latter one in terms of its goal accomplishment. Additionally, having shared collaborative thinking, more pool of knowledge and skills, better decisions making and higher level of motivation in teams may have an advantage over individuals who prefer working alone. Furthermore, culture is also vital element in determining how teams develop from the start to the end. People with a culture high in collectivism tend to work in teams toward a common and consensus goal whereas people with a culture high in individualism stand for working alone toward his or her own goals.

Conclusion

To sum up, this essay has discussed whether people working in teams always achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively than people working alone. A comparative analysis on goal setting, goal generation and goal striving at team level and individual level has been delineated. Subsequently, the essay has explored some factors of why teams performing better and effectively rather than individuals do by using some examples of shared collaborative thinking, knowledge and skills, decision making and level of motivation. However, it has also pointed out that common mistakes always take place in teams so as to prove teams have flaws at times. Moreover, the essay has also explained that different cultural normative beliefs influence team function and development significantly. People tend to prefer working in teams or working individually depends upon whether they are rooted in collectivistic or individualistic culture.