Organizational Behaviour And Teamwork: Maximizing Productivity And Development Of Reputation

Introduction to Project and Organization Behaviour

Organisational behaviour can be defined as the study of the different ways by which people interact within groups in the organization. This mainly helps in developing an attempt to create more efficient business organizations. This topic of the organizational behaviour mainly focuses on the approach which can be applied in the management of workers where use of different theories help in different human resource issues and purposes (O’Leary, Taggart & Cousins, 2016). This help in the maximization of the output from individual group members. Often executives and human relations professionals can use the findings of the organizational behavior’s body of researches. They can learn and understand a business culture and how the culture helps in facilitating or hindering the productivity of the workers in the organization. It also helps them to develop an idea bout employee motivation in the particular organization and how to best evaluate candidates’ skill test and personality during the hiring process (Hystad, Mearns & Eid, 2014).

Theories in the organizational behavior help in handling a number of domains like personality, job satisfaction, leadership, job satisfaction as well as leadership, authority and politics and power. Researchers of the present generation that the organization would exhibit the best productivity in today’s world with the best application of the concept of group development and effective teamwork (Schimdt, 2016). Individual decision making has taken a backstage and team working with correct dynamics and features has paved the way. Team management approach for problem solving as well as decision making has been found to be more productive for organizations (Sorensen et al., 2017). Therefore, most of the organization mainly has adopted the teamwork strategy. However, it is not an easy approach and various important aspects remains linked up with it. The assignment will mainly focus on how team work can result in better organizational behavior that will ultimately lead to higher productivity and development of reputation.

Organizations often spend valuable resources to bring together some of the best qualified individuals in the organization in forming and managing teams. The main purpose of the teams is to work as a unit and accomplish common goals to achieve the best outcomes and increase the productivity and meet the organizational goals.

One of the biggest advantages of working in teams is that it results in equal division of labor and therefore instead of an individual having to look at all the aspects of a particular project individually, different individuals can share the task and look over each aspect by dividing them and properly allocating them effectively to different members. Smaller tasks obviously require less time and effort to complete (Salmon et al., 2017). Therefore working in a team becomes beneficial for releasing the job related stress and burnouts rarely occur. However, working in a team does not simply imply that one individual has to only focus on his own parts. The first priority should always be completing the own part successfully but he or she should also provide assistance to someone else who is stressed, needs help or is unable to complete within deadline (Sreelandt et al., 2014). This is manly done to develop the organizational behavior where all should work towards meeting a common mission and vision of the organization. Being part of team should be accompanied by development of traits which include learning to work in an unobtrusive and altruistic manner.

Teams in an Organization

The main advantages if team working is that it helps members in making better decisions as members from various backgrounds come with unique decision making strength. Information also gets shared uniformly giving lesser gaps for miscommunication. It also helps in development of strong bonds that promotes better relationship building and higher productivity. It also motivates and keeps members engaged giving lesser chance to lose focus. The disadvantages include some inefficient members enjoying the fruits of labor of efficient team members creating more pressure on the latter. Moreover conflicts and computability issues may arise due to power struggles or for those coming from different cultural backgrounds.

There may be different types of teams. Teams which show high performance are leadership teams or production teams. Departmental teams and self directed teams also show high performance. Teams which show low performance are the task force teams and action teams. Advisory teams show low to medium levels of success in their responsibilities. Teams with medium levels of performance are Skunk works and communities of practice. However researchers suggest that virtual teams show varied performances.

Teams working in an organization can provide many benefits. Firstly, effective teamwork helps in promoting creativity on the work floor. When employees are found to work together in a collaborative manner, there are often times when they will effectively brainstorm innovative as well as creative ideas. This will benefit the organization. Team working also helps in providing motivation. When team members work in harmony, they are seen to motivate each other. It has been seen that many employees working in effective teams has stated in their interviews that the sense of accomplishments that they receive from working with a productive team increases their morale (Certo, 2015). A proper team can develop the organization behavior as strong bonds built on trust can be seen to develop their morale. It is also found that employees who trust each other do not compete with one another unnecessarily. However, in spite of effectiveness of teamwork in developing a better workplace resulting in higher productivity a number of issues also remain associated with this. One of the disadvantages of team working is rising of conflicts which provide a negative picture of organizational behaviors.  Possibility of conflicts may arise when one of the team members disagree with the ideas of another team members that often lead to arguments. Another issue which may also rise during working in teams is compatibility issues. There are many individuals who work better when they work by themselves than when they work in a group. The incompatible worker may detach himself from the rest of the team and in turn will refuse to participate (Oooko et al., 2015). Another unfortunate event that may act as a disadvantage of team working is called the free riding issues. Researchers have found out from their researches that there have been complaints where some team members take advantage of the efforts of other team members of the group. This often creates various issues within the teams as the member doing the effort may feel that other members are coasting along and not pitting their own efforts. Another issue that should also be handled properly as stated by the researchers is indulging in the blame games when things go wrong. Often it is seen that in time of crisis, team members point fingers at one another and indulge in a blame game. Since a team mainly works on collective rather than individual responsibility, it becomes difficult to find out where things went wrong (Eubanks et al., 2016)..

Importance of Teams in Organization

Team design mainly comprises of three main characteristics. The first one is the task characteristics. In this role, a team work better when tasks which are provided to them are clear and understood by them properly. Teams should also have inner compatibilities so that they can share and be interdependent on each other proactively to complete tasks. The second one is the team size. Researchers opine that smaller teams are better as they require less time to coordinate, resolve differences, maintain member involvement and ensure higher commitment. However it should be of sufficient size to accomplish and complete the task. The third one is the team composition. Team members are always willing to work as a team and should possess 5 competencies described below.

Co-operating is the first competency that includes proper sharing of resources by properly accommodating among them. Next is coordinating skill which involves workers to align with others and keep the teams on working mode. The next is communicating which involves sharing information properly, freely, respectfully, efficiently at the same time of listening actively. The other is comforting skill that requires team members to show sympathy towards each other at the same time of building confidence. They should provide psychological comfort making the workplace an interesting area to remain hooked to the objectives and missions. The next is conflict resolving which includes members to diagnose the sources from where conflicts arise and thereby using the best conflict handling style.

Tuckman’s four-stage model for team work management mainly comprises of four stages. The first stage is called the forming stage leaders take an active role in developing plans, answering questions and helps them to form the group. The second stage is the storming stage where the teams try to focus on the job roles assigned and clarifications queries are clarified. Team in this stage tries to be focused and try to avoid any distractions. The third stage is the norming stage where agreement and consensus are largely formed across the teams. Community and unity is built up. The last stage is the performing stage where the team is more strategically aware and knows that rationale of the tasks and how to perform them effectively (Du et al., 2014). Overcoming disagreements the team is able to work towards achieving of goals. While many suggest that conflict stage should have been included as a separate stage in the team development stargy where many suggest that his theory lacked quantitiave research rigor to his observations. It also had a concern with the description and control of independent variables. Many other researchers’ stated that the model lacked the viewpoint where groups change over time. The model also fails to address the effects of team development on creativity in problem solving cases (Salmon et al., 2017). Other researchers also suggested that the model does not show two things- it does not discuss either failure to achieve success in task performance or the ability to show outstanding performance.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Team Working

4.4. Belbin theory and team roles of criticism on belbin advantages and disadvantages:

Belbin has proposed that a team must consist of different rules which help in achieving the maximum performance. He believes that there are nine roles which are essential and complement and reinforce each other. However, sometimes they might also contradict each other. The team role says a lot about the style of work of a team member and defines the personality of the individual. Implementer is one of the members who are actually the practical organizer within the team. He is disciplined, orderly and task oriented and thereby takes the responsibility of putting the plan and ideas into executable tasks. He mainly follows a structured approach and is hardworking and down to earth. However many researchers are of the opinion that although he follows a structured approach and is excellent executer of plans, this member also shows many pitfalls like he is not at all inflexible and dismisses innovations (Kozlowski & Bell, 2013). Innovations are of the most important aspects that organizations follow to keep up with the competition and therefore his approach he might not be suitable and have to adapt himself for effective teamwork. Resource investigator is another member who is cheerful and extroverted. He is adventurous, open minded and flexible but researchers say that people get distracted and does not finish task after staring them. Just like the above mentioned two types, there are the team workers, coordinators, plants, monitor evaluator, specialist, shaper, implementer and complete finisher. All of them gave their own strengths and pitfalls and all such team members thereby help in forming teams. Researchers are of the opinion that Belbin analysis can help an individual to discover patterns of behaviour in the work setting. It also helps an individual to increases coherence between how one sees him and how others see that individual. It also helps development of the organizational behavior when Belbin team role analysis can be used to uncover hidden talents and strengths. This is extremely useful for new managers, project teams and virtual teams as they quickly see the dynamics as well as the composition of the teams. Such knowledge of the theory helps in increasing of the team performance through an understanding about how team roles are distributed among the team members. However, it has many limitations. The Belbin theory is applicable for work in organizations but not in personal settings or in social settings. This also helps in measurement of behaviors only when he works in a team but not allows knowing about the personality of the member individually. It does not help by providing any measurement about personality attributes but helps in finding clusters of behaviors that is only helpful in assessing their team working skills (Shen et al., 2015). It is also criticized by the researchers as it does not acknowledge the demographic data of the individuals. Concept of resilience is also not taken by Belbin in his theory which is actually the capacity of the individuals to bounce back from the failures.

Different Types of Teams

Researchers describe team cohesion to be the degree of attraction which is felt by team members towards their team. This actually helps team members to keep up their motivation and remain aligned with each other’s interest thereby working together. Social identity of a team member may play a big role as team cohesion involves both cognitive and emotional process. Member selection, team size and member interaction all play important roles.

This may be defined as the positive expectations that a member of a team must have from another member when any situation of risk occur in front of them. They may be of three types. Identification based trust that remains based on common mental models and values. This trust increases with members’ social identity with team. This gives highest trust. Another is calculus based trust which remains based on deterrence. Researchers suggest this trust to be fragile and limited in potentiality as they are dependent on punishment. This gives lowest trust. Knowledge based trust is of medium potential level of trust which remain based on predictability and competence.

Researchers are of the opinion that in many cases, it is seen that many organizations take the initiative of developing diverse teams. This is done by the leaders or the mangers with an aim where the team members can draw on experiences as well as abilities from one another. Researchers say that diversity within teams is extremely important because different cultures approach problems in different ways and this brings out innovative situations (Du, Fu & Wang, 2014). This not only initiates creativity but makes multicultural teams successful in conducting global business. Motivation also causes employees to desire to achieve greater success. It has been seen that motivated employees benefit the organization by providing excellent customer service. It also increases efficiency and productivity. Development of trust is critical. They can develop the focus that working together is helpful for the organization (Obeidat, 2014). They help each other in times of need and thereby prevent development of job stress among them resulting in less chance of developing conflicts. Researchers have found out that conflicts and hostility within the teams results in limiting of the productivity, creativity and innovation as well as decision making process. Therefore, it becomes extremely important for the managers to effectively manage the teams so that chances of arising of conflicts minimize. Compatibility issues may have negative impacts. In course of time, it is seen that rest of the team members develop negative feelings for this incomplete employee. As a result of this, communication will suffer in this group (Oooko et al., 2015). Here, managers have to play a very big role in developing the organizational behaviour by providing training or removing such individuals from the group so that the group may gain backs the stability. Another issues that leaders should keep note on is that whether any lazy and inefficient members are not exploiting the hard work of the efferent members If such issues are not properly monitored and handled immediately by the managers, the members performing the efforts will be agitated and those unmotivated employees will continue to feel no need of putting the same effort as others. This may affect the stability of the teams which will affect productivity (Bush et al., 2017). Blame games should be avoided. Several such instances had been reported by researches when questioners were prepared asking team members to note their take on blame games. This issue becomes worse when individuals cannot take the blame as they did their work flawlessly (Eubanks et al., 2016). Such issues also arise when there is an unequal and unfair share of distribution at work. These issues create rifts among friends and disrupt smooth flow of work. All teams should maintain the five C’s or five competencies for effective teamwork to ensure that smooth workflow is maintained and productivity is not affected.

Literature Review of Team Work

Conclusion

From the entire discussion, it becomes quite clear that organizational behaviour through proper team development is exceptionally important for the organization to continue is existence in the cut throat market. Teamwork helps in overcoming many barriers and has characteristics which help in increasing productivity. However, it also has different negative aspects which the managers need to take care of so that issues do not occur. Managers can also follow the Belbin’s theory and also Tuckman’s theory for betterment of teamwork. However, they should also keep in mind the limitations so that they can utilize the theories in proper ways.

References

Bush, J. T., LePine, J. A., & Newton, D. W. (2017). Teams in transition: An integrative review and synthesis of research on team task transitions and propositions for future research. Human Resource Management Review.

Certo, S. (2015). Supervision: Concepts and skill-building. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Du, S. C., Fu, Z. T., & Wang, Y. (2014). The flipped classroom: Advantages and challenges. In International Conference on Economic, Management and Trade Cooperation, April (pp. 12-13).

Eubanks, D. L., Palanski, M., Olabisi, J., Joinson, A., & Dove, J. (2016). Team dynamics in virtual, partially distributed teams: Optimal role fulfillment. Computers in Human Behavior, 61, 556-568.

Hystad, S. W., Mearns, K. J., & Eid, J. (2014). Moral disengagement as a mechanism between perceptions of organisational injustice and deviant work behaviours. Safety Science, 68, 138-145.

Kozlowski, S. W., & Bell, B. S. (2013). Work groups and teams in organizations: Review update.

Obeidat, B. Y., & Abdallah, A. B. (2014). The relationships among human resource management practices, organizational commitment, and knowledge management processes: A structural equation modeling approach. International Journal of Business and Management, 9(3), 9.

O’leary, L., Taggart, L., & Cousins, W. (2016). An exploration of the organisational enablers of and barriers to promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours for people with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 60(7-8), 717.

Ooko, P. A., & Odundo, P. (2015). Impact Of Teamwork On The Achievement Of Targets In Organisations In Kenya. A Case Of Sos Children’s Villages, ELDORET. European Journal of Business and Management www. iiste. orgISSN, 2222-1905.

Salmon, P. M., Stanton, N. A., & Jenkins, D. P. (2017). Distributed situation awareness: Theory, measurement and application to teamwork. CRC Press.

Schmidt, C. (2016). Discussion. In Agile Software Development Teams (pp. 115-124). Springer, Cham.

Seelandt, J. C., Tschan, F., Keller, S., Beldi, G., Jenni, N., Kurmann, A., … & Semmer, N. K. (2014). Assessing distractors and teamwork during surgery: developing an event-based method for direct observation. BMJ Qual Saf, 23(11), 918-929.

Shen, Z., Lyytinen, K., & Yoo, Y. (2015). Time and information technology in teams: a review of empirical research and future research directions. European Journal of Information Systems, 24(5), 492-518.

Sørensen, J. L., Østergaard, D., LeBlanc, V., Ottesen, B., Konge, L., Dieckmann, P., & Van der Vleuten, C. (2017). Design of simulation-based medical education and advantages and disadvantages of in situ simulation versus off-site simulation. BMC medical education, 17(1), 20.