Teams - Making Them Work For You Essay -- GCSE Business Marketing Cour

Teams Making Them Work For You The organisational organ known as the team is becoming more and more apparent in today's dynamic business world. Increasingly managers are searching for a means to improve production and keep their organisation competitive in the global market. A lot of these managers have turned to the team as a means for achieving this improvement. Quality circles were looked at to fulfil this role. However, this form of team is being phased out and may have posed as incubator for the current trend; self - managed work teams (Klein, 1995). These teams are increasingly being looked at today to solve many an organisation's production problems and inefficiencies, and in the process are both badly failing and greatly succeeding. Therefore, the discussion of teams is a very important contemporary management issue to address. Managers should be aware of such a concept and learn about it so as a means to further their organisation and for when the time comes to implement a team they are armed with enough knowledge to implement the team properly. As with many management trends or processes, they are often labeled, producing a huge list of "buzzwords", like total quality management, just in time management, management by objectives, downsizing, rightsizing, etc. The organisational team also pulls a long chain of "buzzwords"; workgroup, work team, project team, project group, task force, committees and so on and so on. What these terms basically refer to is a "collection of two or more individuals who interact with each other, share common beliefs, and perceive themselves as being in a group." (Vecchio, Hearn, Southey, 1996:846). This is a very basic interpretation of a team and which can be expanded upon. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company defines a team more specifically as "a group of people with specific roles and responsibilities, organised to work together toward common goals or objectives, in which each member depends on others to carry out responsibilities to reach those goals and objectives." (1986, cited in Denton, 1992:87). The implementation and operation of a team can either be a great success or a costly failure, both money wise and time wise. Many companies have benefited from teams, as Dumaine (1994) points out, "when teams work, there's nothing like them for turbocharging productivity." There are many examples of success... ...close to the problem, they also may be more capable of identifying the most viable solutions. And as authors of the solutions, they have a vested interest in their success. Even without a role in developing solutions, staffs are critical to implementation," (Magee, 1997:26). Bibliography: Denton, D.K. (1992). Building a team. Quality Progress, October, 87 - 91. Dewar, D. (1999). 13 keys to successful teamwork. Workforce, 78 (2), W3. Dumaine, B. (1994). The trouble with teams. Fortune, 130 (5), 86 - 90. Kezsbom, D.S. (1995). Making a team work: techniques for building successful cross - functional teams. Industrial Engineering, January, 39 - 41. Klein, S. (1995). Teams under stress: the effects of work pressures and management action. IIE Solutions, May, 34 - 38. Magee, Y.S. (1997). Teams: avoiding the pitfalls. Public Management, 79 (7), 26 - 28. McGarvey, R. (1996). Joining forces: 12 steps to creating winning teams. Entrepreneur, 24 (9), 80 - 82. Taraschi R. (1998). Cutting the ties that bind. Training and Development, 52 (11), 12 - 14. Vecchio, R.P., Hearn, G., & Southey G. (1996). Organisational behaviour. 2nd edition. Marrickville: Harcourt Brace.