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CHAPTER 1
What Is Organizational Behavior?
1.2 Think again about the worst coworker you’ve ever had—the one who did some of the things
listed in Table 1-1. Think about what that coworker’s boss did (or didn’t do) to try to
improve his or her behavior. What did the boss do well or poorly? What would you have
done differently, and which organizational behavior topics would have been most relevant?
1.3 Which of the individual mechanisms in Figure 1-1 (job satisfaction; stress; motivation; trust,
justice, and ethics; learning and decision making) seems to drive your performance and
commitment the most? Do you think you’re unique in that regard, or do you think most
people would answer that way?
1.4 Create a list of the most successful companies that you can think of. What do these compa-
nies have that others don’t? Are the things that those companies possess rare and inimitable
(see Figure 1-2)? What makes those things difficult to copy?
1.5 Think of something that you “know” to be true based on the method of experience, the
method of intuition, or the method of authority. Could you test your knowledge using the
method of science? How would you do it?
Case: Levi’s
Clearly the end goal behind the Improving Worker Well-Being initiative is laudable. The
stickier question is how to achieve that goal in 72 different factories. A natural temptation
would be to focus on interventions with universal appeal and to roll out those same interventions in all 72 places. That sounds both efficient and consistent, doesn’t it? Levi’s is
taking the opposite approach. It offers funding and guidance but lets the specifics vary by
supplier and by region. For example, the company connected one of its suppliers—Apparel
International—with a nonprofit to help it identify need areas. The resulting feedback led to
better water fountains, better overhead fans, microwaves and griddles in the cafeteria, and a
new soccer field.
The feedback also led Apparel International to improve its managers—who had a reputation
for being disrespectful and authoritarian. Explains Oscar González French, the president of the
supplier, “We had lots of people complaining their supervisors didn’t have the right leadership
style—they were too strong, too blunt, they didn’t treat them well.”* An additional nonprofit
was then brought in to design a 10-week training and team-building program tailored to Apparel
International’s needs. Supervisors are trained to learn employees’ idiosyncratic circumstances,
listen to their opinions, and foster open two-way communication. As González French summarizes, “We’re teaching them to be better leaders.”* How important is having better leaders
to Apparel International’s employees? Well, it showed up as a need area more frequently than
higher wages, despite the fact that Mexico’s minimum wage for apparel workers is only $5 a day.
Indeed, González French believes bad managers is a key reason why the annual turnover rate in
his plant tends to be in the 30–40 percent range.
In reflecting on the bottom-up structure of the Improving Worker Well-Being initiative, Kim
Almedia notes, “We needed to step back and listen to vendors.”* Offers Bergh, “If this is going
to be sustainable over time, we have to prove to the factory owners that this is good for their business . . .”* Still, the question remains how to measure whether the initiative is helping, especially
if it takes on different shapes and sizes across suppliers and regions. After all, Levi’s is offering
funding, even if the suppliers themselves are sharing the responsibility. How exactly will the
company measure the success of the initiative? Much like it did with the design and execution of
the Apparel International program, it found help. The company has asked the Harvard School of
Public Health to design a rigorous scientific study to assess the impact of the Worker Well-Being
initiative.
*Fortune Media IP Limited
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11
Teams: Characteristics
and Diversity
ORGANIZATIONAL
MECHANISMS
Organizational
Culture
Organizational
Structure
INDIVIDUAL
MECHANISMS
GROUP
MECHANISMS
Job
Satisfaction
Leadership:
Styles &
Behaviors
Leadership:
Power &
Negotiation
Teams:
Processes &
Communication
Teams:
Characteristics &
Diversity
Stress
INDIVIDUAL
OUTCOMES
Job
Performance
Motivation
Trust, Justice,
& Ethics
Organizational
Commitment
Learning &
Decision Making
INDIVIDUAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Ability
Personality &
Cultural Values
LEARNING GOALS
After reading this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions:
11.1 What are the five general team types and their defining characteristics?
11.2 What are the three general types of team interdependence?
11.3 What factors are involved in team composition?
11.4 What are the types of team diversity, and how do they influence team functioning?
11.5 How do team characteristics influence team effectiveness?
11.6 How can team compensation be used to manage team effectiveness?
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WHOLE FOODS
W
hich grocery store chain comes to mind when you
think of high-quality natural and organic foods?
Chances are the answer to this question is Whole
Foods. Founded in 1980, Whole Foods is now a Fortune
500 company, with sales of nearly $15 billion generated
from its 460 stores and 87,000 employees. Even if there’s
not a Whole Foods market located near you, or you could
care less about whether your food has hydrogenated fats
or artificial colors and preservatives, you may be familiar
with the company because of accolades and coverage from
news and business publications. As examples, the company has been named to Fortune’s list of the “100 Best
Companies to Work For” each year since the list’s inception
in 1998. It’s also one of Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired
Companies” and has appeared on Newsweek’s list of “Top
Green Companies in the U.S.,” and Forbes’ list of “100 Most
Trustworthy Companies in America.”
So, what accounts for Whole Foods’ tremendous growth
and reputation? To sum it up in one word, the answer may be
“teams.” The original idea behind Whole Foods was that the
world was ready for a natural foods supermarket. However,
Brooks Kraft/Contributor/Getty Images
the company’s success has been driven largely by a strong
set of values that are enacted through teams and supportive
team practices. The company believes that teams not only
result in the type of collective learning and intelligence that
promotes incremental progress, but also that teams reinforce a sense of community and dedication to the company,
customers, and other stakeholders in society.
Although many companies claim that they value and rely
on teams, Whole Foods’ belief in teams is all-encompassing.
Each store is structured around 8 to 10 teams, and because
these teams are largely self-managed, they are teams in
the true sense of the word. Team members not only work
together to carry out the responsibilities of their department,
but they also meet regularly to discuss issues, make decisions, and solve problems. Team members are also given
feedback about how well their team is performing relative to
historical standards and to other teams, and their compensation is tied to the performance of their team as well. Because
the fate of team members is shared at Whole Foods, employees are motivated to work cooperatively, and this maximizes
the chance that the interests of everyone are satisfied.
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CHAPTER 11
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
TEAM CHARACTERISTICS AND DIVERSITY
The topic of teams is likely familiar to almost anyone who might be reading this book. In fact,
you’ve probably had firsthand experience with several different types of teams at different points
in your life. As an example, most of you have played a team sport or two (yes, playing soccer in
gym class counts). Most of you have also worked in student teams to complete projects or assignments for courses you’ve taken. Or perhaps you’ve worked closely with a small group of people
to accomplish a task that was important to you—planning an event, raising money for a charity,
or starting and running a small cash business. Finally, some of you have been members of organizational teams responsible for making a product, providing a service, or generating recommendations for solving company problems.
But what exactly is a team, and what is it that makes a team more than a “group”? A team
consists of two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish
common goals related to some task-oriented purpose.1 You can think of teams as a special type of
group, where a group is just a collection of two or more people. Teams are special for two reasons.
First, the interactions among members within teams revolve around a deeper dependence on one
another than the interactions within groups. Second, the interactions within teams occur with a
specific task-related purpose in mind. Although the members of a friendship group may engage
in small talk or in-depth conversations on a frequent basis, the members of a team depend on
one another for critical information, materials, and actions that are needed to accomplish goals
related to their purpose for being together.
The use of teams in today’s organizations is widespread. National surveys indicate that teams
are used in the majority of organizations in the United States, regardless of whether the organization is large or small.2 In fact, some researchers suggest that almost all major U.S. companies are
currently using teams or planning to implement them, and that up to 50 percent of all employees
in the United States work in a team as part of their job.3 Thus, whereas the use of teams was limited to pioneers such as Procter & Gamble in the 1960s, teams are currently used in all types of
industries to accomplish all the types of work necessary to make organizations run effectively.4
Why have teams become so widespread? The most obvious reason is that the nature of today’s
work requires them. As work has become more complex, interactions among multiple team
members have become more vital. This is because interactions allow the team to pool complementary knowledge and skills. As an example, surgical teams consist of individuals who received
specialized training in the activities needed to conduct surgical procedures. The team consists of
a surgeon who received training for the procedure in question, an anesthesiologist who received
A surgical team consists of
specialized members who
depend on one another to
accomplish tasks that are
both complex and important. Why might you not
want to have surgery conducted by a surgical team
that functions like a group?
Photodisc Collection/Getty Images
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CHAPTER 11
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337
training necessary to manage patient pain, and an operating room nurse who was trained to provide overall care for the patient.
Teams may also be useful to organizations in ways beyond just accomplishing the work itself.
For example, one study revealed that problem-solving teams composed primarily of rank-and-file
workers could boost productivity in steel mills by devising ways to increase the efficiency of production lines and quality control processes.5 Although implementing teams often makes sense in
settings such as these, for which the nature of the work and work-related problems are complex,
teams vary a great deal from one another in terms of their effectiveness. The goal of this chapter,
as well as the next, is to help you understand factors that influence team effectiveness. Fortunately,
there has been over a century of research on this topic that we can refer to in this effort.6
WHAT CHARACTERISTICS CAN BE USED TO
DESCRIBE TEAMS?
This is the first of two chapters on teams. This chapter focuses on team characteristics—the task,
unit, and member qualities that can be used to describe teams and that combine to make some
teams more effective than others. Team characteristics provide a means of categorizing and examining teams, which is important because teams come in so many shapes and sizes. Team characteristics play an important role in determining what a team is capable of achieving and may
influence the strategies and processes the team uses to reach its goals. As you will see, however,
there’s more to understanding team characteristics than meets the eye. Team characteristics such
as diversity, for example, have many meanings, and its effect on team functioning and effectiveness depends on what type of diversity you’re concerned with as well as several additional complicating factors. Chapter 12 will focus on team processes and communication—the specific actions
and behaviors that teams can engage in to achieve synergy. The concepts in that chapter will help
explain why some teams are more or less effective than their characteristics would suggest they
should be. For now, however, we turn our attention to this question: “What characteristics can be
used to describe teams?”
TEAM TYPES
One way to describe teams is to take advantage of existing taxonomies that place teams into various types. One such taxonomy is illustrated in Table 11-1. The table illustrates that there are five
general types of teams and that each is associated with a number of defining characteristics.7 The
most notable characteristics include the team’s purpose, the length of the team’s existence, and
the amount of time involvement the team requires of its individual members. The sections to follow review these types of teams in turn.
11.1
What are the five general
team types and their defining
characteristics?
WORK TEAMS Work teams are designed to be relatively permanent. Their purpose is to produce
goods or provide services, and they generally require a full-time commitment from their members.
As an example of a work team, consider how cars and trucks are manufactured at Toyota.8 Teams
are composed of four to eight members who do the physical work, and a leader who supports the
team and coordinates with other teams. Although the teams are responsible for the work involved
in the assembly of the vehicles, they are also responsible for quality control and developing ideas
for improvements in the production process. Team members inspect each other’s work, and when
they see a problem, they stop the line until they are able to resolve the problem.
MANAGEMENT TEAMS Management teams are similar to work teams in that they are designed
to be relatively permanent; however, they are also distinct in a number of important ways. Whereas
work teams focus on the accomplishment of core operational-level production and service tasks,
management teams participate in managerial-level tasks that affect the entire organization.
Specifically, management teams are responsible for coordinating the activities of organizational
subunits—typically departments or functional areas—to help the organization achieve its long-term
goals. Top management teams, for example, consist of senior-level executives who meet to make
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CHAPTER 11
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
TABLE 11-1
Types of Teams
TYPE OF TEAM
PURPOSE AND
ACTIVITIES
LIFE SPAN
MEMBER
INVOLVEMENT
SPECIFIC
EXAMPLES
Work team
Produce goods or
provide services.
Long
High
Self-managed
work team
Production
team
Maintenance
team
Sales team
Management
team
Integrate activities
of subunits across
business functions.
Long
Moderate
Top management team
Parallel team
Provide recommendations and resolve
issues.
Varies
Low
Quality circle
Advisory council
Committee
Project team
Produce a onetime output (product, service, plan,
design, etc.).
Varies
Varies
Product design
team
Research group
Planning team
Action team
Perform complex
tasks that vary in
duration and take
place in highly visible or challenging
circumstances.
Varies
Varies
Surgical team
Musical group
Expedition
team
Sports team
Sources: Cohen, S. G., and D. E. Bailey. “What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research from the Shop Floor to
the Executive Suite.” Journal of Management 27 (1997): pp. 239–290; and Sundstrom, E., K. P. De Meuse, and D. Futrell.
“Work Teams: Applications and Effectiveness.” American Psychologist 45 (1990): pp. 120–133.
decisions about the strategic direction of the organization. It may also be worth mentioning that
because members of management teams are typically heads of departments, their commitment to
the management team is offset somewhat by the responsibilities they have in leading their unit or
teams in their unit.
A Toyota work team is
responsible for vehicle
assembly and quality
control.
Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images
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PARALLEL TEAMS Parallel
teams are composed of members from various jobs, and
other teams, who provide recommendations to managers
about important issues that run
“parallel” to the organization’s
production processes.9 Parallel
teams require only part-time
commitment from members,
and they can be permanent or
temporary, depending on their
aim. Quality circles, for example, consist of individuals who
normally perform core production tasks, but who also meet
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CHAPTER 11
regularly with individuals from
other work groups to identify
production-related
problems
and opportunities for improvement. As an example of a more
temporary parallel team, committees often form to deal with
unique issues or issues that arise
only periodically. Examples of
issues that can spur the creation
of committees include changes
to work procedures, purchases
of new equipment or services,
and non-routine hiring.
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
339
The Rolling Stones, an
English rock band formed
in 1962, is an example of
an action team that has
stayed together for an
extended period of time.
Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance/Getty Images
PROJECT TEAMS Project teams are formed to take on “one-time” tasks that are generally complex and require a lot of input from members with different types of training and expertise.10
Although project teams exist only as long as it takes to finish a project, some projects are quite
complex and can take years to complete. Members of some project teams work full-time, whereas
other teams demand only a part-time commitment. A planning team comprised of engineers,
architects, designers, and builders, charged with designing a suburban town center, might work
together full-time for a year or more. In contrast, the engineers and artists who constitute a design
team responsible for creating an electric toothbrush might work together for a month on the project while also serving on other project teams.
ACTION TEAMS Action teams perform tasks that are normally limited in duration. However, those
tasks are quite complex and take place in contexts that are either highly visible to an audience or of
a highly challenging nature.11 Some types of action teams work together for an extended period of
time. For example, sports teams remain intact for at least one season, and musical groups like the
Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Kiss, and AC/DC sometimes stick together for decades. Other
types of action teams stay together only as long as the task takes to complete. Surgical teams and
aircraft flight crews may only work together as a unit for a single two-hour surgery or flight.
SUMMARY So how easy is it to classify teams into one of the types summarized in Figure 11-1?
Well, it turns out that teams often fit into more than one category. As an example, consider the
teams at Pixar, the company that has produced many computer-animated hit films, such as Toy
Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, Wall-E, Up, Brave, Monsters University, Inside Out, Finding
Dory, and Coco. On the one hand, because the key members of Pixar teams have mostly remained
together for each film the company has produced, it might seem like Pixar uses work teams.12 On
the other hand, because the creation of each film can be viewed as a project, and because members are likely involved in multiple ongoing projects, it might seem reasonable to say that Pixar
uses project teams. It’s probably most appropriate to say that at Pixar, teams have characteristics
of both work teams and project teams.
FIGURE 11-1
Types of Teams
• Work teams
• Management teams
• Parallel teams
• Project teams
• Action teams
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Team
Types
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CHAPTER 11
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
As you read the descriptions of the different team types, it may have occurred to you that
it’s possible that employees find themselves working in a variety of teams and team types. This
situation arises naturally with parallel teams; however, it occurs often with project, management,
and action teams as well. In fact, estimates are that between 65 percent and 95 percent of people
employed in knowledge-intensive jobs work in multiple teams—often three or four at a time.13
Research on this type of work arrangement, referred to as multiple team membership, indicates
that employees do not identify with each team equally and that these differences have important
implications as to how much effort and commitment employees bring to each of their teams.14
As an example that may be familiar to you, consider your experience as a student. During any
given semester, you may have had membership in two or more teams as part of the requirements
of the courses you were taking. If this is the case, you may have noticed that you did not experience the same type of satisfaction with each team. With some teams, you might have been fully
engaged in the team’s work and with the other team members, while in other teams, you may have
put forth less effort and limited your involvement with your teammates. Regardless of whether
these differences in your attitude and behavior were due to the meaningfulness of the teams’
projects, the time and level of involvement required to complete the teams’ tasks, or perhaps the
drama and stress members of some of these teams created for you, it’s likely these differences
had an influence on how well each team did on projects and assignments and, quite possibly,
the grades you earned in those courses. It turns out that this process unfolds the same way in
the workplace. However, instead of grades, the consequences of how team members’ divide their
attention and effort may be the success of a multimillion-dollar project, and following from this,
whether the team members receive sizable year-end bonuses.
At this point, we should point out that multiple team membership is not necessarily conducive
to organizational effectiveness, especially in complex work contexts where it is critical that members of teams develop tight interpersonal bonds and specialized work routines that can deal with
the unique challenges they face.15 Although employees might like the variety of working in multiple
teams and can learn from their experiences working with different teams and teammates, it takes a
great deal of time and effort to coordinate meeting times with different teams and to switch between
teams and tasks when the time comes. Given these challenges, researchers have begun to consider
actions that managers could take to enhance how employees feel about the various teams in which
they work, particularly those teams that are most crucial to organizational success. As an example,
one recent study found that team leaders who share authority, encourage self-management, and bolster confidence tend to inspire positive team behavior from members, and that, remarkably, these
positive team behaviors carry over to benefit other teams in which the team members also work.16
VARIATIONS WITHIN TEAM TYPES
The Pixar team, shown
here at the Cannes Film
Festival, has characteristics
of both work teams and
project teams. Trying to
characterize this team is
even more complicated
when you consider that
key members are involved
in the management of
the company, and their
involvement in the films
runs parallel to these other
responsibilities.
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Even knowing whether a team is a project team, an action team, or some other type of team
doesn’t tell you the whole story. In fact, there are important variations within those categories
that are needed to understand
a team’s functioning.17 As one
example, teams can vary with
respect to the degree to which
they have autonomy and are
self-managed.18 If you’ve ever
been on a team where members
have a great deal of freedom
to work together to establish
their own goals, procedures,
roles, and membership, you’ve
worked on a team where the
level of autonomy and selfmanagement is high. You may
also have worked on a team
where the level of autonomy
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and self-management is low. In these teams, there are strict rules regarding goals, procedures,
and roles, and team leaders or managers make most of the decisions regarding management of
the team with respect to membership. Research has shown that although people generally prefer
working in teams where the level of autonomy and self-management is high, the appropriate level
of self-management with regard to overall team effectiveness may depend on a variety of factors.19
For example, researchers have concluded that high levels of self-management may be most advantageous for teams where team members have high levels of team-relevant knowledge obtained
from outside experts and others in their social networks.20
Another way that teams can vary relates to how the members typically communicate with each
other. Virtual teams are teams in which the members are geographically dispersed, and interdependent activity occurs through electronic communications—primarily e-mail, instant messaging,
group calendars, web conferencing, social media, and other meeting tools.21 Although communications and group networking software is far from perfect, it has advanced to the point that it’s
possible for teams doing all sorts of work to function virtually, and it’s also true that many teams
do at least some of their work virtually even if the members are colocated. In fact, there has been
an 800 percent increase in the number of virtual employees over the last decade or so, and it’s
likely that there are tens of millions of virtual teams operating today.22 Companies such as Con
Edison, New York’s giant electric and gas utility, have invested significant resources in technology and training to help these teams function and perform more effectively.23 The same is true at
IBM, where at least 40 percent of the employees work virtually.24 At TRW, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, virtual teams provide an efficient way to accomplish work on projects
when members are geographically separated.25 In fact, many companies in high-tech industries
are leveraging virtual teams to make continuous progress on work tasks without members having
to work 24/7. For example, Logitech, the Swiss company that makes things such as computer
mice and keyboards, universal remotes for home entertainment systems, and gaming controllers,
attributes its success to teams of designers and engineers who are located in different places
around the world.26 Although you might be inclined to believe that time-zone differences would
be a hindrance to this sort of team, Logitech turned it into a competitive advantage by letting the
work follow the sun.27 Specifically, work at Logitech is accomplished continuously because members of a team who have finished their workday in one country electronically hand off the work
to team members in another country who have just arrived at the office. Because these electronic
hand-offs occur continuously, product development and other work needed to bring innovative
products to the market can be completed much more quickly.
In addition to varying in their “virtuality,” teams of any type can differ in the amount of experience they have working together. One way to understand this point is to consider what occurs in
teams at different stages of their development as they progress from a newly formed team to one
that’s well-established. According to the most well-known theory, teams go through a progression
of five stages shown in the top panel of Figure 11-2.28 In the first stage, called forming, members
orient themselves by trying to understand their boundaries in the team. Members try to get a feel
for what is expected of them, what types of behaviors are out of bounds, and who’s in charge. In
the next stage, called storming, members remain committed to ideas they bring with them to the
team. This initial unwillingness to accommodate others’ ideas triggers conflict that negatively
affects some interpersonal relationships and harms the team’s progress. During the next stage,
norming, members realize that they need to work together to accomplish team goals, and consequently, they begin to cooperate with one another. Feelings of solidarity develop as members work
toward team goals. Over time, norms and expectations develop regarding what different members
are responsible for doing. In the fourth stage of team development, which is called performing,
members are comfortable working within their roles, and the team makes progress toward goals.
Finally, because the life span of many teams is limited, there’s a stage called adjourning. In this
stage, members experience anxiety and other emotions as they disengage and ultimately separate
from the team.
But does this sequence of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning apply to
the development of all types of teams? Chances are that you’ve had some experience with teams
that would lead you to answer this question with an emphatic “no.” In fact, although this theory
of group development is intuitively appealing and identifies things that may occur as teams gain
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CHAPTER 11
FIGURE 11-2
Teams: Characteristics and Diversity
Two Models of Team Development
Some teams develop in a predictable sequence . . .
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
Adjourning
Time
. . . whereas many develop in a less linear fashion.
Process
Revision
Inertia
Punctuated Equilibrium
Forming and
Pattern
Creation
Inertia
Time
Midpoint
Time
experience working together, there are factors in work organizations that can significantly alter
what occurs during a team’s life.29 One situation in which this developmental sequence is less
applicable is when teams are formed with clear expectations regarding what’s expected from the
team and its members. With many action teams, for example, there are established rules and
standard operating procedures that guide team members’ behaviors and their interactions with
one another. As a specific example, an aircraft flight crew doesn’t have to go through the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages to figure out that the pilot flies the plane and the
flight attendant serves the beverages. As another example, though the adjourning stage only happens once for each type of team, the implications are likely to be more significant for team types
with longer life spans that require high member involvement. Dissolving a work team that’s been
together for four years is likely to trigger greater anxiety and stronger emotions among members
than a situation in which a committee that meets briefly once a month for a year is disbanded. For
an example of an action team that developed very quickly, see our OB on Screen feature.
Another situation in which the development sequence is less applicable may be in certain
types of project teams that follow a pattern of development called punctuated equilibrium.30 This
sequence appears in the bottom panel of Figure 11-2. At the initial team meeting, members make
assumptions and establish a pattern of behavior that lasts for the first half of its life. That pattern
of behavior becomes a matter of habit for members and creates an inertia that continues until
roughly the midway point of the project. Then something remarkable happens: Members realize
that they have to change their approach to the task to complete it on time. Teams that take this
opportunity to plan a new approach during this transition tend to do well, and the new framework
dominates their behavior until task completion. However, teams that don’t take the opportunity to
