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Teams - Making Them Work For You Essay

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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 …show more content…

(Dumaine, 1994). The Ford Motor Company in the United States also had great success with teams when producing the new Mustang prototype. Ford produced the Mustang from design concept to the finished product under budget and in record time. (Klein, 1995).

However, many companies and managers are put off by the very mention of the word team. As McGarvey (1996) suggests, are teams just another management fad or are they for real? He also points out that "… many businesses have had bad experiences with teams that flopped." (McGarvey, 1996:80). As is also pointed out by Magee (1997:26) "… ill - functioning teams can cause disastrous effects on the individuals involved, the organisation's service delivery and customer service reputation, and the mood of the entire organisation." So, there is little wonder why many organisations and mangers are disillusioned by teams and apprehensive to implement them. Evidence of this apprehension could be interpreted from a study conducted by the Centre for Effective Organisations at the University of Southern California. The Centre conducted a survey of Fortune 1000 companies and found that 68% of those companies used self - managed work teams. However, on the flip - side, only 10% of total workers are in such teams. (Dumaine, 1994). Not a large percentage of the total workers. These results may suggest that most companies are still learning and piloting

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