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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02621719710164274. When citing the article, please cite: Rosemary K. Rushmer, (1997), “How do we measure the effectiveness of team building? Is it good enough? Team Management Systems - a case study”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 16 Iss: 2, pp. 93 - 11.

With the growth in teamworking, organizations are increasingly turning to team role models in the hope of enhancing the effectiveness of their teams. However, such models can be both expensive to buy‐in and administer. Examines significant similarities between the two major team role models ‐ Belbin and TMS models. Argues that if the two systems/assessments can be used interchangeably, organizations could make considerable savings in both time and money. Finds no simple, direct correspondence between the two models (despite close congruence between the role behavioural indicators). Finds a small degree of predictability in some roles (none in others, especially the “creative” and “leadership” roles). Suggests that generally, the Belbin roles do tend to gravitate towards the relevant quadrant of the TMS wheel, but not directly to an identifiable role. Proposes that further research is needed to see if this tendency is a robust and significant finding.

Looks at the use of the Team Management Index (TMI) as a team building intervention in a programme of organizational development (OD). Attempts to assess the instrument’s effectiveness using a variety of measures (including the taxonomy of De Meuse and Liebowitz, 1981). In so doing, raises wider methodological and epistemological issues as to the whole nature of data collection, validity and proof in measuring the effectiveness of OD interventions. Discovers that, according to the measurement criteria, set out by De Meuse and Liebowitz, the TMI can be considered to be an effective OD instrument. However, finds that these measurement techniques are “blunt” and, by their very nature, lacking in academic rigour. Argues, therefore, that all levels of data collection and evidence gathering can never constitute 100 per cent proof of a causal link between OD interventions and resultant changes in the organization. Concludes that what will be deemed to count as adequate evidence or proof of an intervention’s effectiveness ultimately will be a personal choice; that in concentrating on comparing before and after measures of a team’s effectiveness theorists have ignored the change process which is taking place as a team begins to become effective, and have treated teams at the end of a team building intervention as if they were finished products; and finally that research time should be devoted to studying the process of change which a team undergoes during its development (of which team building is just the beginning) in order to highlight the ways in which an organization could nurture, support and facilitate this process to ensure the effective development of its work teams.

For many years there has been a preoccupation with the need to evaluate the effectiveness of team building interventions (TBIs) in organizational development projects. Often these evaluations attempt some kind of measurement of the team before and after the team‐building event in order to measure any change in skills or attitudes. Such work has several potentially valuable outcomes. However, such research often has had mixed success in gathering or assessing data that would serve as conclusive (“bottom line”) proof in these cases. Much of the research does not even attempt an evaluation. It may be that the nature of the phenomena under investigation itself, or the circumstances under which data are collected, is not amenable to that kind of analysis. The starting point for this paper then, is twofold: (1) if it has proved elusive and largely fruitless to try to evaluate team building in these ways; maybe there is a better and more useful way to examine the action that takes place on TBIs?; and; (2) if it is the case that team building is often an intervention that in practice turns out to be less than permanent (and perhaps even damaging), what can be done to help overcome this problem? Takes the view that to try and assess the effectiveness of the team building event per se is to treat the team after the team‐building event as a finished product. Instead, the team‐building intervention is seen as a start, with the team in the process of becoming. Sees the team as a dynamic entity, always under flux and adapting to its circumstances. Postulates that if we can identify what is happening both within the team and to the individuals involved during a team‐building event that sparks off this process of becoming an effective team, then this might gives assistance to the organization as to what kinds of support, practices and resources they might be able to offer the team on its return to ensure the becoming continues. Data were collected from 22 full‐time MBA students on a three‐day outward bound residential course via an open‐ended questionnaire. Each student was asked to recount, in their own words, positive and negative events on a daily basis and consider whether anything had changed regarding themselves or the team. Examines emergent themes in a discursive way and proposes tentative recommendations in what is a preliminary study in an ongoing piece of work.