Five key factors to team effectiveness Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Five key factors to team effectiveness - Essay Example This article will firstly give brief explanation of team and teamwork, and try to find out some key conditions of developing effective team through collating early literature. The focus will be in the scope of human resource management even though much research discussed team combining consideration of organizations and leadership etc. The characteristics of effective team will be assessed and continually some issues will be arisen and viewed as challenges for managers examining. Debates also arise in the parts of the autonomy and reward. Finally the conclusion will mention the required change in the managers' roles in a changing environment. A team is a group of people assigned a task or a set of tasks to accomplish and often 'granted autonomy over how to accomplish their assignment' (Baron & Kreps, 1999). Harris and Harris define teamwork as 'a work group or unit with a common purpose through which members develop mutual relationships for the achievement of goals/tasks' (Tarricone & Luca, 2002). Combining the concept of autonomy, the definition of teamwork is chosen here for providing a simple, conceptual notion to discuss work teams with various purposes and types in business environment context. Since team-working has been widely ... Study has identified effective teamwork as one of the underlying elements of businesses with high performance. In other words, successful corporations 'rely on teamwork as an essential basis for everyday operations (Tarricone & Luca, 2002).' Therefore, the characteristics of effective team-working have been drawn and listed in tremendous amount of research. The conditions included in this article are listed and discussed next. 1. Mission clarity Some studies list the mission clarity as one of the necessary conditions (Sundstorm, Meuse & Futrell, 1990; Gustafson & Kleiner, 1994; Natale, Libertella & Rothschild, 1995; Borrelli, Cable & Higgs, 1995; ) or the most important one (Davis & Scase, 2000) while discussing effective team. Mission clarity means all team members fully and clearly perceive the purpose, goal and task. Purpose is that team members need to know why they are gathered to form a team, which means team formation (Gustafson & Kleiner, 1994). Goal is the target which members need to achieve, and it includes the match of short-term objectives and long-term strategies. Task contains deciding what should be done and assigning work. 2. Rewards and recognition Rewards occur while team tasks or goals are accomplished and the achievement appeals to be significant for the team or organization. Rewards may contain praise for team success, pay, time off and promotion etc. These outcomes are 'bestowed by people other than group members', and they 'do not include any benefits derived from within the group.'(Shea & Guzzo, 1987) Recognition is that 'individual contributions to the team and team contributions to the