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Why do some teams work effectively and others not? The authors, in examining the attributes of High Performing Teams, show that there are three major areas which team leaders need to concentrate upon. These are example, experience and expertise. There are certain work functions that are critical to success and there is a need for every work team to have a member who can co‐ordinate and integrate these functions. This person performs the “linking” role.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of superleader behaviors in self‐managed work teams, on organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem.

Data were collected on‐site over a period of three days from employees working in a non‐union paper mill located in a small rural community in the northwestern region of the USA. The survey was completed by 141 employees, representing a 9 per cent response rate. Self‐leadership, organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem were all measured using different instruments.

The results indicated that teams groups that were led by a supervisor who exhibited the characteristics of a superleader had higher levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction, and organization self‐esteem.

The study is based on a small sample and relied on self‐report data, thereby allowing for the possibility of same source bias. However, this is a common problem with cross‐sectional designs.

Leading in a self‐managed work team environment requires a unique approach to leadership. The results of this study illustrated that superleader behaviors result in some beneficial outcomes for organizations including enhanced levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self‐esteem. It behoves organizations to encourage, through training programs, the development of these behaviors.

Introduction All managers and supervisors are dependent on the performance of their team members. Unless these subordinates perform effectively, then the manager or supervisor will be seen in most cases to have failed. As Brown has noted, “the supervisor generally is more dependent on the work group than on the individual employee, because the work group's performance provides a measure of his or her supervisory capabilities”. We have recently been looking at the work of managers and supervisors in relation to the groups that they lead, to try to identify those factors which contribute to the success of a team. We have been able to identify a number of factors which define what we call High Performing Teams (HPTs). One of these factors is the linking factor — that is, all teams need a manager or supervisor who acts as a critical “link person” in getting things done.

Aims to measure the differences which may exist between a number of team aspects for groups working on projects with two different contractual bases: cost‐plus (CP) and fixed‐price (FP). Investigates work groups from engineering companies. Measures team characteristics and their perceived value to team members using self‐report questionnaires. Analyses the primary data obtained using statistical means. The findings show that team members did perceive differences in about half of the team aspects studied. Generally the feeling of “teamness” was higher in the CP project groups. Discusses the implications for management of the impact of the contractual base on the environment of teams, and suggests that the questionnaire may have application elsewhere as a management tool.

Work teams have gained increasing importance as businesses shift to knowledge-based organizational structures. At the same time, advances in information technology have facilitated this change by enabling virtual work environments. To add to this complexity, the increasing demographic diversity of workers is coinciding with the rise in virtual and knowledge-based work environments. Therefore, it is critical that we understand the impact of these changes as they coincide in organizations today.

One of the extolled virtues of work teams is their potential to combine the unique knowledge held by individual workers, integrating these knowledge resources to bear on productive tasks. To effectively utilize their distributed knowledge, work teams have to perform three basic knowledge-processing activities: (a) knowledge acquisition; (b) knowledge integration; and (c) knowledge creation. However, work teams often have difficulty processing their distributed knowledge. The ability of team members, or lack thereof, to work effectively with each other is usually the problem.

The increasing demographic diversity of workers presents similar challenges for organizations. Demographically diverse workers have more unique knowledge, leading to increased knowledge differentiation in work teams. A work team that has high knowledge differentiation is one whose members possess different expertise. The unique knowledge held by individual team members effectively enlarges a work team's pool of knowledge resources. However, the increasing demographic diversity of workers often results in work teams having more difficulty processing their distributed knowledge because team members are not able to work effectively with different others. That being the case, the potential for demographically diverse work teams to more effectively perform productive tasks is lost.

We realize that demographically diverse work teams are a special (and important) case of teams in that they are both high on differentiated knowledge and high on the potential for conflict and other process losses. However, with an increasingly global marketplace, this special case is quickly becoming commonplace. Therefore, it is critical that we find ways to help demographically diverse work teams limit their process losses and realize their full potential.

Virtual work environments only heighten the need for demographically diverse work teams to minimize their process losses. Team members are often separated by both geographic space and time, which makes it even more challenging for them to work effectively with each other. In such environments, team members are often isolated from one another and find it difficult to feel a part of their team. Interestingly, computer-mediated communication has been shown to enhance team performance by helping team members communicate more effectively with each other. In fact, empirical work by Bhappu, Griffith, and Northcraft (1997) suggests that computer-mediated communication can actually help demographically diverse work teams process their distributed knowledge more effectively.

In this chapter, we will discuss the effects of demographic diversity and virtual work environments on knowledge processing in teams. More specifically, we will describe when computer-mediated communication is likely to enhance knowledge processing in demographically diverse work teams and when it is not. In doing so, we hope to provide both workers and managers with a set of guidelines on how to best navigate these organizational changes.

Examines new developments in work group design. Autonomous work groups, also called self‐regulated work groups or self‐managing work teams, have been described as originating primarily from socio‐technical work design. The concept of autonomous work groups has also been described as a more comprehensive application of the methods employed in quality circles. Both of these examples will be shown to be inaccurate descriptions of a truly self‐managed work team. Instead, through the implementation and application of self‐managed work teams, a combination of socio‐technical design is utilized with a concept that goes far beyond that of quality circles‐empowerment. Empowerment is the idea that employees and groups can achieve higher levels of productivity, quality, and team member satisfaction through delegation of more task‐related decisions to the team. However, there are considerations in the implementation of autonomous work groups. These include development of trust, appropriate status and reward systems, senior management support, and the effective management of change. Focuses on the changes and processes that are integral parts of the successful implementation of empowerment.

The received wisdom is that team working is a good thing and is spoken about positively as a means of promoting co‐operation and of making the best use of employees' strengths. This article seeks to examine why this may be and to address the four areas highlighted by ACAS where improvements are made, i.e. productivity, quality, the use of new technology, and motivation.

The paper explores here in the light of the current organisational environment.

The study outlines the lessons learned in introducing teamwork, the need for managerial commitment, the changes in culture that can be promoted by team working and how to go about planning for change.

The paper presents a practical and realistic view. This is the first of two articles on the subject. The second will deal with the issues of establishing and running teams.

Team working has widely been seen by managers as a key way of utilising employee ideas and improving performance. But how important it is depends on circumstances. This article examines its introduction into a motor assembly plant, and draws attention to the specificity of the local context. It draws on research carried out at the Vauxhall Motors Luton plant.

This is the second of two articles on teamwork which aim to deals with the selection and formation of teams, team leadership, team roles and team development.

The paper builds on the first article which covered such issues as the reasons for moving to team working for improving performance, improving quality and encouraging innovation, promoting and exploiting technological advances and as a means of improving motivation. The article also looks at how teams are chosen and developed. Best practice as outlined by the UK Advisory, conciliation and arbitration service (ACAS) is used together with the personal experience of the author.

The first thing to recognize is that organizations will be at different points in their evolution in team working terms. Teams that need to work within and across an organization such as sales, marketing, purchasing, personnel and finance find that team working fosters a collaborative rather than a competitive or adversarial approach. It is vital that teams must be capable of doing the job for which they have been selected and this clearly implies that the membership should include people able to contribute towards the completion of task.

It is important that management, trade unions and employees ensure they know how team working will contribute to their business strategy and that it is likely to involve a long‐term transformation.

The necessity for effective multidisciplinary team working within increasingly complex health and social care environments has been emphasised in The NHS Plan. Good teamwork makes a critical contribution to effectiveness and innovation in health‐care delivery and it is through such teams that the agenda of quality improvement through clinical governance can be delivered at local level. The NHS Clinical Governance Support Team’s Team Resource Management Programme supports individuals who work directly with poorly performing NHS teams. A case study example illustrates how a team coach has used her experiences on the Programme to facilitate effective change in a “troubled” team in her health‐care organisation.