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EFFECT OF TEAM WORK ON ORGANIZATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
In this world of increased competition, leaders recognize the importance of teamwork more than ever before. Teams can expand the output of individuals through collaboration. Employees who are working in teams become the standard for the organization (Alie, Beam & Carey, 1998). It is the mean of improving man-power utilization and potentially raising performance of individual. With a support from upper level management, an employee works confidently in team and increases productivity of the organization. Nowadays, in the new business world, managers are assigning more team projects to employees with opportunities to strengthen their knowledge and develop their skills (Hartenian, 2003).
Teamwork has been around the world for as long as anyone can remember and there can be few organizations that have not used the team in one sense or another. It is common to hear of management teams, production teams, service team or even whole organizations being referred to as teams that is, many organization today are moving towards “team based” approach to work, this means that working in teams is the basic method used to get work done in these organizations. As a result, employers stress the importance of employees working as a team and advertise for staff with the ability to work in such a way (Richard, 2001).
McShone (2005) said that teams are replacing individuals as the basic building blocks of organization – French language television programs has shifted to team-based projects and giving more recognition to teams than to individuals. Companies are not just looking for technical ability but looking for people who can work on teams and solve problems. According to Steiner (2003) teams and teamwork are not novel concepts; teams and team thinking have been around for years at companies such as Procter and Gamble; and Botany. In the 1980s the manufacturing and auto industries embraced a new team-oriented approach when United States firms retooled to combat Japanese competitor who were quickly gaining market share. Brown et al (2004) examined that managers discovered the large body of research indicating that teams can be more than the tradition corporate structure for making decisions quickly and efficiently. He further said that teams needed for the restructuring and reengineering processes of the future giving instances that simple changes like encouraging input and feedbacks from workers on the line make dramatic improvements.
Both profit and non-profit making organizations are finding teamwork very important in their operations and especially in employee performance and the overall performance of the organizations. Many organizations that have established the culture of teamwork do operate with high quality, speed and are more economical in their operations. According to Aichouni (2005), man is unable to live on his efforts alone and he therefore requires the help of a fellow man. Consequently, teamwork in many organizations is as important as the mutual interactions of man. A secure and friendly work environment is not a condition within itself for forming progressive teamwork. Politeness and respect are the first conditions for successful advancement of the team. However, they do not characterize teamwork (Romig, 1996). The important values of teamwork are communication, conflict resolution, and cooperation among employees.
Teamwork is the concept of people working together cooperatively, as in sales team, sports team etc. It has also become so valued that many large corporations have developed specific tests to measure potential employee’s teamwork ability. Hence, it has become important goal in most work places, the belief is that teamwork gives employees a sense of ownership and encourages cooperation (Adeleke, 2008). According to Jenner, Foote and Zhao (2010), several people have defined teamwork differently. However, though the views slightly differ, the organization of work using teamwork can be defined as a wide range of possibilities such as quality work, cross-functional teams, self-managing teams, or virtual teams. Many employers usually provide autonomy together with teamwork. A distinctive feature of teamwork is the successive work actions to assemble different parts of the product. In places where the aim is to improve the process of production, teamwork is more of complexity, increase in communication and integrative work. However, for the purposes of this study, a team was used to mean Group(s) of employees who have at least some collective tasks and where the team members are authorized to regulate mutually the execution of these collective tasks’ (Critchley, Edwards & Fallon, 2007).
1.2 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM
Every organization either large or small, struggles to acquire productivity so as to achieve success and maintain valuable image in this present world of organization competitions. And it is the wish of organizations to see the input they use (resources) and the output (goods and services produced) they have at the end.
High population of workers in an organization will be achieving a very low productivity and with no improvement in their product as a result of absence of teamwork in such organizations. There are so many organizations that have teams and yet achieve little or no productivity at all as a result of lack of teamwork, and small organization with little employee will achieve more because of team work among them. That is the failure of an organization to coordinate works into work group in order to tap from the respective human resources of the organizations process. The way organizations rewards their workforce may also lead to low organizational productivity even when their staff works in teams.
RESEARCH QUESTIIONS
1. What are the benefits of employee teamwork
2. Is there a relationship between employee teamwork and performance
3. What are the factors affecting employee performance
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
1. To find out benefits of employee teamwork
2. To assess the relationship between employee teamwork and performance
3. To examine factors affecting employee performance different organization
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The researcher shall restrict the scope of analysis to selected organizations in Ogun state. The study shall focus more on team work on organizational productivity. It shall also study how bad team work can be eliminated and the effect of team work on the growth of the organization
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The findings of this research would add on the existing literature that would help other interested researchers to formulate related research questions on related issues employee teamwork and organizations performance.
It was also hoped that, this research would provide data that may assist organizations planners, policy makers and implementers in Nigeria in order to come out with proper decisions and policies based on reliable data about employee teamwork and organizations performance
The research would also benefit the future researchers who will carry out research about the same topic and help them learn more about employee teamwork practices, factors affecting employee performance, the relationship between employee teamwork and employee performance among others.
The study would benefit policy makers like the International Labor Organization, Workers’ Union and other government organizations to come up with effective realistic policies of motivating employees.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
As the case usually is, there are certain limitations the researcher will be faced with in the cause of this work. One is in the area of finance for transportation to various organizations. Apart from finance, also considering the fact that research work of this nature is often done within a time bound, the study therefore cannot be exhaustive in its entirety.
However, it is hoped that these constraints will be checkmated by making the best use of the available materials and spending more than the necessary time in the research work. Therefore, it is strongly believed that despite these constraint, its effect on this research report will be minimal, thus, making the objective and significance of the study feasible.
METHODOLOGY
Secondary sources of gathering data will be largely employed for our variables. This again will be based on content analysis, what these involves is the critical review of related materials, literatures, journals, magazines and textbooks, it will also involve sourcing or browsing the net for materials. Communication with authorities in the field will also not be overlooked.