Purpose Of Joining Team

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

INTRODUCTION

Teamwork will be the title of coursework that is going to explain more detail here. In business environment, almost individuals within an organisation will belong to more teams. A team is a set of people with different skills that will excellently have goals that contribute to the overall corporate of the business. They will usually have somebody who is identified as the team leader. (THE TIMES100, 2013)

The importance of teams that perform well cannot be underrated. It is generally accepted by high accomplishing organisations that to be effective you need to create a motivated team, give members a brief objectives, appoint a leader of the team, manage the team, provide them with authority, monitor the progress of the team and finally ensure effective communications streams. Lack of interaction can be the one of the biggest issues that will unsuccessful the organisations. (THE TIMES 100, 2013)

Some teams are temporary, whereas others are permanent. Each type of team has been created intentionally to serve an organisational objective.

PURPOSE OF TEAM

There is a purpose the individuals who form into team or group. Purpose of joining team can also help to meet organisation needs. Again, task accomplish can be done easily together with the team members.

Another purpose is security. By joining a group we can reduce our insecurity. We feel like stronger and more resistant to threats. If management creates an environment in which employees feel insecure they are likely to turn to unionization in order to reduce their feelings of insecurity. An individual can increase his self esteem through group membership. The close relationships an individual can develop as a group member get chance for compliment and recognition that are not available outside the group. One may get esteem by becoming a member of a high status group. (Aswathappa,K et al 2009)

Besides that, affiliation is that they enjoy the normal company of other people especially those who own common interests. When people are new to an organisation, they are enthusiastic to find friends with whom they can check their perception of uncertain environment. (Aswathappa,K et al 2009)

Huddling is also one of the purposes of joining group. It is because the way bureaucracies individual, work especially executive. Huddling enables executives to deal with emerging matters and minimise the amount of surprise. Huddling also can replace for a lack of leadership by taking collective and unofficial responsibility for getting things done.

TYPE OF TEAMS

There have types of team which is problem solving teams, self managed teams, cross functional teams (Sheard and Kakabadse 2004) and virtual teams. In the early 1980s, problem solving teams becoming popular based on working in organisations. They normally make up of five to twelve employees from the same department to discuss ways of efficiency, work environment and improvement quality. As a problem solving teams, they share ideas or offer opinion on the way work processes and method can be improved. No matter how these teams are seldom, they given the authority to carry out any action.

Besides that, self managed teams are usually makes up of ten to fifteen people who become popular responsibility of their former supervisor. Normally these responsibilities are included fixing of work assignment, collective choices of inspection procedure, collective control over the place of work and organisation of breaks. Self managed teams usually select their own members to appraisal each other performance. As a result, supervisory positions take on reduces important and may even be removed. (Sheard and Kakabadse 2004)

Finally, virtual teams are whose members carry on business across time, space and organisational boundaries. It is connect through information technologies to accomplish organisational tasks. Similarly, it may be a temporary task force or permanent service team (McShane el 2010).

In the late 1980s, cross functional teams are increases sharply. They usually made up of employees from same hierarchical level but work in different area when come together to perform their work. Cross functional teams are effective which mean allowing people from varied areas in a company, developing new ideas and solve difficult problems. (Sheard and Kakabadse 2004)

DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR OF INDIVIDUALS

However, one or team members may show productive and unproductive behaviours which meddle with completing the jobs. For example in production, raising a concern, responsibility, asking questions, listening and reflecting will be one of the behaviour of people when working in a team. On the other side is when excessive team behaviour is unproductive. In unproductive, there have possessiveness, missing detail, nitpicking and lurking. Possessiveness is like refusing to listen or allow anyone to change the work you have done for the project although have problem. Constantly ask questions because you were not paying attention for first time. This will affect missing detail. Lurking is like never contributing in team meetings. (Penn State University 2012)

Teams can achieve best result when they have clear goal, decision making authority, effective relationship, good communication between team members, reward team performance and sufficient resource.

THEORY AND RESEARCH ABOUT GROUP BEHAVIOUR

Next, will be the current theory and research about group behaviour namely Hawthorne, group formation, group structure, team processes, control and effectiveness.

Hawthorne

During the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, the Hawthorne studies were attained practical management thinking, human relation movement and a highly influential school academic. In the early 1920s, the General Electric Company attempt to promote the sales of light bulbs for experiment to demonstrate a positive act between the amount of light of workplace and productivity of workers. They hoped to show that artificial lighting in a factory would reduce accidents, save the workers sight and raise productivity.

The experiments were transmitted at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company and it was located in Cicero, Illinois. Then, George Elton Mayo who was an academic research team members. Besides Elton Mayo, other members of researcher team were included Fritz Jules Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson. Their investigation consequences show the important effect of social factors on workplace behaviour. Four in particulars have stand out by researcher team such as the illumination experiments, the interviewing programme, the relay assembly test root experiment and finally the bank wiring observation room experiment. Different experiments come out with different result of responds from the workers in a group. This can referred to as the Hawthorne effect. The human relations approach to management was born as depend on employee openness to management objective. The Hawthorne studies deduce was that works are a group activity and individual should not in alienation. It should see as group members. Secondly, the need for security and recognition is vital in determining workers productivity and morale than physical condition. Thirdly, employees at work are motivated by more than just pay and conditions. Furthermore, supervisors should aware of both individual social needs and the power of informal group in order to cooperate these to achieve the goals. Finally, although their informal group have strong controls over the workplace but there capacity of informal group should not be underrate at work. (Hucynski and Buchanan 2001)

Group Formation

According to Tuckman and Jensen (1977), they have proposes that group have five stages of development which are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. (Tuckman,1965; Tuckman and Jensen, 1977). Although it has five stages of development but not all groups develop through all the stages. However, this all stages will finally become important and unavoidable.

Forming will be the first stage of development. During the forming stage, the set of individuals has not yet clear. Members are busy finding out about each other attitudes and bringing about rules. Members are also relying for support on some leader to provide them with structure in an agenda. Doing task in wisely will seek orientation as to know their goals while doing the task. (Hucynski and Buchanan 2001)

Storming is the second stage of development. At storming stage is a conflict stage in a group. Group members start to bargain with each other as they try to separate them into individual. This is happen when they have find out that they have different personal goals with other group members. Management of conflict is the main personal relations problem in this stage.

Norming is the third stage of development. In this sharing stage, group members develop ways of working as friendship and closer relationships. Therefore, a framework is created in each group when they can relate and agreeing expectation while doing the task. Group stress cohesion is happen within the personal relations. Then, increases in data flow as members become more prepaid to their goals on the task.

Performing will be the fourth stage of development. During the performing stage, the group has advanced into effective structure. The fully mature group has now been created. Cooperation and functional competition is happen between them on the task. By contrast, there is a high obligation to the goal, problem solving activity for sure and jobs are settled well.

Adjourning is the final stage. The group might be split up as the task has been achieved and therefore the members have left. Before they go, they might reflect on their time work together and ready for themselves to go their own route. (Hucynski and Buchanan 2001)

Group Structure

Group structure refers to the comparatively stable of relationships between distinct group members. Differences between group members start to occur while people come together to interact. This difference between the members of a group will happen along not only one but in many structures such as power structure, leadership structure and communication structure. (Hucynski and Buchanan 2001)

Power structure is the ability of individuals to overwhelm obstacle to produce consequence regularity with their goals and interest. Having a power structure, the group prevent to proceeds power struggles which can interrupt its functioning. However, it can also connect to objective achievement activities to a system of authority as seen as lawful. It has several types of power namely reward power, referent power, and expert power.

In leader structure usually has group leadership. Group leadership refer to the achievement of those take action which help the group to accomplish its goals. Communication, influence and decision making have created through a group situation. After a group has achieve their own goal, group leader will the one who provide rewards to the group members. In the reward, the leader by giving them higher influence and status. Group leader has power in term of their capability to affect the behaviour of those around them.

Finally is communication structure. It is necessary to know the structure of position, direction of communication from position to position to understand the communication structure of group. Increasing different individuals of the same group may be situated in different countries and interest through video conferencing. There are different methods to ascertain a group communication structure in any of situations such as communication network, pattern analysis and interaction process analysis.

Team structure can benefit toward an organisation by division of groups, employees must trained, less boundary organisation and finally technology.

Team Processes

Team processes was involved team norms, team cohesive and team trust. These components correspond to features of the team that continuously develop.

Team norms are shared expectation and informal rules that group created to control the behaviour of their members. Norms normally apply to behaviour. Norms are advanced as a team form because members require forecasting how others will do. Norms also form as team members realize behaviours that help them do act more effectively.

Secondly, team cohesion refers to the level of attraction people feel toward the team. A sense of team pride is also a key component of team cohesion. There are a several factors that affect team cohesion namely team size, member interaction, external competition and so on.

Team trust refers to positive expectation one person toward another person in situation involving hazard. A high level of trust happens when others influence you in situations where you are at risk. Trust involves your aware feeling and your beliefs about the connection with other team members.

The team processes have two categories which are vital to team functioning. First category is a task team processes. It was involved task focused interaction, functional conflict and team citizenship behaviour. Second category of the team process is regard as important to team functioning which called social team processes. It was involved group cohesion, identification and trust. (Vincent 2010)

Task focused interaction refer to communication that happen within the team as it directly link to the team task. From this, teams contribute opinion and discuss different choices to settle the task. In fact, attain consensus as to suitable path to done the job. Besides that, functional conflict is referring to challenging of belief and assumption influence by other team to achieving the task. Team member from different back grounds have different idea of the task to complete the task. Team citizenship behaviour was proposed to affect team result. It is a deliberation of team members that are prepared to help others on the members to complete the task. (Vincent 2010)

Group Control

As an organisation get more diverse or simply larger, a broad range of motivating mechanisms would need to be applied since it is have control mechanisms. There have several type of control namely result control, action control and personnel control.

In result control is defined the dimensions in which results are desired. This control has connected to manufacturing achievement with can determine. People are induced to behave is because these result are also not accidental those that will maximise workers rewards.

In action control, it needs individuals to carry out unerring actions that are advantages to the company. According to Merchant (1985), this control does not connected to this study. Empowered worker were given discretions in decision making.

In personnel control, in many cases individuals will do what is best for the organisation because they are affected by group norms. Managers always take steps to arise the opportunity those positive strength are exist the managerial actions are known as personnel controls. Performance of Empowerment is one of the managerial actions taken to promote intrinsic motivation which in turn to positive impact on performance. (Merchant’s 1985)

Team Effectiveness

Team effectiveness is happen when it benefits the organisation, members and its own survival (McShane et al 2010). Team effectiveness can be classify into several ways such as team design, performance, attitudinal, behavioural outcomes, group psychosocial traits, internal or external processes and finally environmental factors.

Team design can category into task characteristic, team size and team composition. In task characteristic, teams work better than individuals when work in difficult task. Complex work needs skills and knowledge furthers the ability of one person. Team size normally need be large enough to offer the essential perspectives to carry out the work. However, small teams can maintain efficient coordination involvement of each individual. Small teams work efficiently because they have less process loss. On the other hand, team composition is happen when the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) hires new talent, it does not just look for knowledge and technical skills (McShane et al 2010). It will select people with the necessary competencies and motivation so that the work effectively in a team. Employees should have more than one skills and self leadership to do their own work.

Team performance is externally concerns and focused meeting the needs of customers, fan or company colleague. It was calculated using measure namely quality, quantity and time ((Hucynski and Buchanan 2001).

RIGHT ENVIRONMENT

Environment factors will influence its effectiveness. There is a right environment that makes group cohesive such as the nature of the task, physical setting, communication and technology.

The nature of tasks may help cohesiveness when the workers are share a common task and face the same problem. Bring group members all together is for them to interact frequently with each other when perform their work. For instance, although members of group work at different location but they can still experience a feeling of working together in a group because the nature of the task needs communication.

Besides that, physical setting in right environment is mean when member of a group has a close physical proximity to each other and work in the same place. This will usually assist cohesiveness.

On the other side of right environment is communication. Communication can affect team effectiveness especially in virtual team which are highly relying on information technologies to work (McShane et al 2010). The easier the members can interact frequently with each other, the greater the group cohesiveness. Difficult in communication can increase production but less freedom of movement. Obstruction on social communication can restrict group cohesiveness. (Catchpole 2008)

Lastly is technology. The nature of technology has an important impression on cohesiveness. When work process involved skill in technology there is greater group cohesiveness. Nonetheless, it is more difficult to advance cohesiveness with machine gathered line. As a result, it has enlarged implication for planned activity and behaviour of group. (Catchpole 2008)

AVANTAGES OF GROUP

Being a group also can provide advantages on us rather than being an individual while doing a work. One of the advantage is it can increases productivity and performance in the organisation. Groups that work together can attain higher result than individuals. Discussing and sharing opinion can play an important role so that can deepening our understanding of a specific subject section.

Moreover, skills development is also a one of the advantage.  Being one of a group will assist us to increase our interpersonal skills such as listening and speaking. In fact, group working skills namely motivating others, working with and leadership. These skills will be useful in future throughout your academic career and all are valued by employers. (StudySkill 2012)

Work in group also can help you find out more about your strength and weaknesses. For instance, you may be a better speaker than leader or maybe good in writer or editor (StudySkill 2012). Besides that, difficult tasks get done effectively and faster as working in a group. It is because more than one people are better than being alone to done the tasks.

CONCLUSION