The longevity of teams

Citation

Benders, J. and Hootegem, P.L.C.a.G.V. (2014), "The longevity of teams", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2013-0208

The longevity of teams

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 27, Issue 2

In 1997, Professor David Buchanan held the keynote address at the first International Workshop on Teamworking. His talk was entitled: "An eager and enduring embrace: the ongoing rediscovery of teamworking as a management idea" (Buchanan, 2000). More than fifteen years later, the question arises how firm of an embrace this still is? Did it endure?

Self-managing teams have been around for decades if not ages. In terms of research, teams received a considerable amount of attention across a variety of fields from management and organization studies to social psychology. Guided by the paradigmatic changes and methodological advancements in social psychology (Moreland et al., 1994), industrial relations, sociology as well as management and organization studies (Hollenbeck et al., 2012; Tannenbaum et al., 2012) research on organizational teams evolved in a way that resembles management fashions (Nijholt and Benders, 2007). Therefore, despite a wealth of studies, a wide interest into their incidence and functioning, we have relatively little insights into how teams develop over time. Most studies are cross-sectional and are hardly ever repeated (Benders et al., 2002). This holds for both quantitative and qualitative studies. Thus, we have little insight into what happens after teams have been "introduced" or "implemented". Prescriptive phase models advocate "paths to maturity". But is "maturity" ever reached? Or do teams more often "fade out"? Although dominated by a rather positive discourse revolving around the empowerment and workplace democracy, flexibility, versatility (Rolfsen, 2013), research on teams also reports situations in which teamwork does not deliver the goods (Sims and Salas, 2007), make controversial decisions with long lasting implications (Janis, 1972), has negative consequences for team members (Sewell, 1998). Achterbergh and Vriens (2013) discuss how to design "dark systems", i.e. organizations with perverse effects. Whilst their design rules are unlikely to be followed intentionally, they can be easily recognized in actual organizations and teams. All these negative aspects are serious dangers for a team’s viability. At the same time, such "negative views" are likely to be underreported in the literature (Boiral, 2003).

A potential pitfall lies early in team’s lives: there are many lists of "critical success factors" for implementing and/or sustaining self-managing teams. A list of Ruth Wageman (1997), an established authority in organization studies, contains the following factors:

• a clear direction for the team;

• a real team task;

• a proper reward structure;

• basic material resources;

• the authority to manage the work;

• team goals; and

• strategy goals.

Whereas other authors may add one or more factors, and/or stress particular ones, it seems safe to state that these factors are uncontroversial. The only major omission from a sociotechnical perspective is that a team’s task environment must be (made) suitable (Cummings, 1978). In this view, self-managing teams are a logical complement of properly designed organizations. This structural approach stressing the importance of "Simple organizations with complex jobs" (De Sitter et al., 1997; Van Hootegem et al., 2005, p. 168) differs from the behavioristic views that dominate the team literature, and appears at least equally important to explain teams’ performances (Delarue et al., 2008). Consequently, an additional critical success factor would be "a proper task environment".

But as virtually always holds for guidelines and prescriptions on organizational literature: it is easier said than done. There are many factors to take into account and more likely than not, these factors may also interact. In other words: launching teams and keeping them alive is a complex affair.

Once launched, teams must keep on track. Vallas (2003) pointed to the existing of "conflicting logics", in his case between enhancing autonomy on the shop-floor and the use of a continuous improvement program. Whilst both are in theory compatible and can even be mutually reinforcing, Vallas found that in practice they often conflict. This becomes more likely if managers from different departments that are involved in implementing teams, for instance those in HR and the operations, have different points-of-view and interests, leading to tensions (Vallas, 2003, p. 245). Vallas’ work also reminds us that all implementations are local. The general and abstract notion of teamwork must be in a local context, necessitating "translating" and in the process adapting the idea to that context. Even within the same organization, completely opposite developments may take place (cf. Jackson et al., 2000; Ingvaldsen et al., 2013).

A similar case but probably more pressing, was presented by Koch and Buhl (2001). They studied how ERP-systems (organization-wide information systems aiming to control and connect all organizational processes) fit together with self-managing teams. Once again, in theory they may go hand in hand but in practice the centralistic and generally dominant logic of ERP-systems tends to overrule the participatory logic of self-managing teams. Such conflicts may only be resolved if sufficient autonomy is given at the local level to find ways to combine potentially contradictory practices. In all cases, abstract concepts must be tailored and "translated" to local circumstances. This requires an awareness of the potential conflicts, and the willingness and political power to resolve them. The latter often transcends the local team level, which necessitates support from higher levels.

A more simple reason for self-managing teams to disappear is that there is no longer anything to manage, i.e. their intra-organizational environment is simply not suited for teams (cf. Molleman and Slomp, 2001), where an initially suitable environment gradually evolved into an unsuitable one.

On a more optimistic note, perhaps, Ortmann (1996) emphasizes that, unlike the influential impression created by orthodox economists, organizations and thus also organizational forms, need not maximize their performance, but it is sufficient to meet minimum norms. Those are not just economic. Equally important are for instance legitimacy and sufficient political support. The latter plays a major role for self-managing teams, in the sense that control over shop floor operations is often contested.

Perhaps a comforting thought is that teams may "fail successfully" (Kühl, 2001). Kühl studies three cases. In two of these, teams had been implemented not because of their inherent characteristics but because they were at that time fashionable which helped to gain support from other parties. In one case this party was senior management which decided not to close down a facility but rather to invest in it because of the promising new work organization. In another case, the products were sold as being produced by teams. After their fashionability had declined, they were no longer a vehicle to appear legitimate.. Kühl stresses that the teams were crucial for these organizations to survive, yet in quite another way than one would expect. It is an empirical issue to what extent fashionability played a role in introducing teams and their durability. The data presented by Nijholt and Benders (2007) suggest that in Dutch organizations, teams remained to be used long after the discourse (measured by print-media traces) had declined.

All in all, and following Buchanan (2000), a legitimate question is whether teamworking still endures and persists as a key way of organizing work? Whilst it is not our intention to answer this question in full (if indeed such answers are possible), we would like to summarize what the selected papers have to say.

Two papers discuss very pertinent cases of resilience. In contrast to what we wrote above, which stresses the vulnerability of teamworking, these papers focus on teams’ toughness. Both describe situations where teams survive somewhat against the odds. Monica Rolfsen and Stand Johansen aptly entitled their paper "The silent practice". The researched Norwegian company has been followed, with interruptions, for some 20 years. Inspired by Volvo and other Scandinavian developments, the interest in teams started in the mid-1990s. Crucial was the close involvement of employee representatives, in this case the union. Whereas a take-over threatened to halt the development and implementation process prematurely, the appointment of a new CEO gave the teams a new boost. In Buchanan’s terms, they were eagerly and enduringly embraced, even to such extent that self-managing teams, without foremen, became common practice. The crisis of 2008 once again brought in a new top manager who was critical of teams. They were no longer supported, however, they were not formally abolished either. Helped by the fact that it was felt to be too expensive to re-introduce foremen, in actual practice the team-based ways of working simply continued. In this case, teams are seen as legitimate by those who actually make the teams work and at the same time, management does not oppose them.

The Japanese case presented by Inamizu and colleagues is quite different form the Norwegian one. Teamworking has for long been a common feature of Japanese manufacturing organizations, although these teams are quite different from the self-managing teams commonly discussed in the "western" literature (Benders and Van Hootegem, 1999; Delbridge et al., 2000; Sey, 2000; Morita, 2001). Whereas the Norwegian teams could survive because re-installing foremen would be too expensive, foremen are quintessential for the Japanese teams. The single most important characteristic of Japanese teams is strong position of the team leaders. The plural "team leaders" is used on purpose: the basic work unit in Japan is called "kumi" which (generally) consists of two "han". Both the kumi and the han have their own leaders. These words tend to be translated is "group" and "teams" respectively, which obviously gives rise to confusion in those lingual areas where "group" and "team" are not explicitly distinguished.

Based on exceptionally intensive and detailed data gathering, Inamizu et al. show how the tasks of the team and group leaders have shifted over time to cope with increasing and relentless pressures to keep raising labor productivity. The high pressures on shop floor workers lead to absences and turnover, in which case the team leaders have to stand in. Their regular activities are then taken over by the group leader. Whereas this task flexibility is common and characteristic for the Japanese teams, the continuous pressure means that in practice, team leaders work for most of their time as shop floor employees and increasingly the group leader as well. This goes at the expense of their supervisory tasks and is against the philosophy behind the teams. It remains to be seen whether this "extra lean" modus is sustainable, but so far, the teams (and organization) have survived.

Bikfalvi and colleagues present international data on the prevalence of self-managed teams in organizations. Many recent studies on teams and teamwork, position their contribution by boldly claiming that teams are ubiquitous forms of organizing work and most certainly this paper gives us the ground to make such claims. Modern organizations seem to rely extensively of self-managed teams, especially large manufacturing organizations in Slovenia, Spain, France, Finland and Denmark, yet in general the use of teams seems to decrease slowly during the last years. Other results of the study are that organizations using self-managed teams are more innovative both in terms of products and services. As such, the paper illustrates both the benefits associated with the use of teams (flexibility, innovativeness) and points towards the perils of teamworking such as high workload and stress.

Schruijer and Curseu explore the gap between the psychodynamic literature on groups and the social psychological perspective on group dynamics and combine a citation analysis of Wilfred Bion’s work with a series of interviews with pioneers of social psychological research in Europe. One of the central results reported in the paper is that Bion’s research on the emotional dynamics of groups is more influential for practitioners, rather than for group researchers. Paradigms used in the study of groups seem to be influenced by general trends ("fashions") in the social psychological research and reflect the dominant logics of the research field, rather than the practice-related needs. With a steady increase of research endeavors exploring group emotions, authors hope for a resurgence of psychodynamic perspectives, as this approach has the potential to unravel the way in which collective emotions emerge and influence group dynamics and effectiveness. The study illustrates the great practice-theory divide by exploring the tension between research fashions (as influenced by political factors) and the true added value of established research traditions in informing group design and management. The same tension between approaches that inform group design and intervention in real life and what drives theoretical development is illustrated by the rise and fall of socio-technical design. The socio-technical tradition seems to have been immensely practical, yet in terms of fundamental research on group dynamics its influence is rather marginal.

Buchanan’s publication with which we started this introduction is based on a keynote address to the first International Workshop on Teamworking, held in Nottingham in 1997. Three from the four papers in this special section were presented at the 15th International Workshop on Teamworking (IWOT), held in Leuven, 1-2 September 2011. Fortunately, this yearly workshop that brings together researchers and practitioners with a wide range of perspectives on teamworking, survived and still prospers!

Jos Benders, Petru L. Curseu and Geert Van Hootegem

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