When teams aren't doing well, managers often ask people to work together better—or order or beg them to. But they make no changes in how they manage, then blame the group for not changing. Questionnaires completed by 2,200 individuals on 381 teams in a large multinational bank may point a way to improving team togetherness and performance without asking for it. This study looked at the relationship between:
These variables were compared in various ways to learn how they were related. Job complexity and autonomy levels were highly related to group cohesiveness, which in turn was highly related to performance. This was true in all teams, but much stronger in teams oriented toward individual work (mostly U.S. teams). The researchers suggest that this is because in collectivist cultures, group cohesiveness is already relatively high, so there's less room for variation based on work differences.
The authors say that while motivating team members to put the group first can be difficult, their research points the way: "Members may not completely buy in to the 'in-group' concept…In order to promote group effectiveness and performance, management can assign them more challenging work and allow more latitude to groups in managing their own tasks."
Source: Man, D., and S. Lam (03), "The Effects of Job Complexity and Autonomy on Cohesiveness in Collectivistic and Individualistic Word Groups: A Cross-Cultural Analysis," Journal of Organizational Behavior 24:979.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.