Why Is Establishing Teamwork Difficult in Organizations - Coursework Example

Is establishing teamwork difficult in organizations By: Student name Student id University name City Course Date Executive summary This essay is trying to explore the difficulties that face the process of establishing teamwork in organizations. Various theories and concepts have been used in the process of determining the possible difficulties that are likely to face team development process. Some of the theories that have been used in the course of assessing the difficulties that are likely to affect the process of establishing teamwork include Abraham Maslow theory, motivational theory, theory X, theory Y, and scientific management theory among other theories. A conclusion has been provided that is based on the various literature that has been reviewed to provide to assess the factors that are likely to affect the teamwork development. Table of Contents Executive summary 2 Introduction 4 Teamwork difficulties 5 Theories affecting teamwork 6 Teamwork concepts 7 Team Cognition 8 Agent teamwork 9 Conclusion 10 References 12 Introduction Various difficulties have faced the process of establishing teamwork spirit. They can be related to factors such as diverse cultural orientations of the employees. For an organization to ensure that there is teamwork, there is the need to ensure good relations among the employees. Scientific management theory has emphasized the need to ensure that there are good relations between the employees in an organization. According to this theory understanding the needs, attitudes, and human behaviors of the employees in their workplaces. However, the establishment of the good relations among the employees can be challenged by the diversity in the organizational workforce (Burgoon, Stern, and Dillman, 2001). An organization with diverse workforce can have a challenge of ensuring that the employees do interact well despite their differences. Therefore, there is the need of the organization to ensure that workforce diversity in organizations is properly managed. Organizations that do fail to have the necessary strategies for managing the differences among the employees are likely to face challenges in the process of building teams. Globalization can be considered responsible for increasing differences among the employees in organizations as people can be in a position to move from one place to the other in search of employment opportunities. As a result, an organization that has employees who have different cultural background hence having differences in their values, beliefs, and experiences. The ability of an organization to ensure that employees are in a position to recognize and respect the differences existing among employees determines the capability of such organization to establish teamwork. Teamwork difficulties The challenges that have been facing the process of ensuring teamwork in an organization can be mainly attributed to the difficulties concerning group process and social interactions in organizations. The failure of organizations to realize the need of ensuring harmony in the workplace that supports human relations can result in teamwork difficulties. The harmony in the workplace can be developed by recognizing the social needs necessary in the working environment. Abrahams Maslow theory has tried to define how needs of employees can be identified where the management can employ the use of the hierarchy of needs to assess the social needs that can ensure harmony in the workplace. The use of the theory can be crucial in the process of ensuring that the employees need that need to be met to enhance the relations in workplaces (Burstein and Diller, 2004). Employee satisfaction in an organization can be crucial in the process of ensuring that there are excellent social interactions in the workplace. Leadership system adopted in an organization has been considered crucial in the process of ensuring good relations among the employees. This is based on the fact that some leadership styles are likely to result in the division of the employees hence affecting the level of teamwork in an organization (Fan and Yen, 2004). Therefore, behavioral approaches used in the management of organizations can be crucial in determining the social interactions where the leadership adopted by the management is determined by the behavior demonstrated by the leaders. It is through leadership that the employees can be in a position to recognize the differences that do exists among the employees and ensure respect for the differences. The leadership employed in an organization then determines the respect for the diverse cultural values and beliefs that might exist among the workers (Cannon, Salas, and Converse, 2003). Therefore, these differences can pose challenges in the process of ensuring teamwork if the leadership of an organization does not ensure proper management of the diverse workforce. Theories affecting teamwork Motivational theory can be used in the process of determining how employee motivation affects the level of teamwork in an organization. For instance, the working environments in an organization can determine the level of interactions of the employees. Organizations need to ensure that the workplace promotes social interactions among the employees (Chen and Sycara, 2008). However, the social interactions can face difficulties due to the lack of necessary strategies that can guarantee employee interactions in their workplace. Management theory has shown a shift from an economic view of the employee motivation to social interactions where social relations have been considered better in the process of ensuring teamwork than the economic incentives. Through social relations, the employees can be in a position to appreciate each other hence ensuring harmony in the working place despite the cultural differences and experiences that might exist among them (Argall and Browning, 2006). The failure of the management to recognize the fact that employees have social needs can hinder the development of teamwork in an organization. For instance, things that have social consequences are said to be powerful motivators in workplaces. Theory X and Theory Y do affect the level of teamwork where the behaviors of the leaders using these theories are likely to affect the social interactions of the employee. For instance theory Y is said to employ participative leaderships that have been considered crucial in developing teamwork among employees (Entin and Serfaty, 2000). On the other hand, theory X involves the use of autocratic leadership that can hinder collaboration in an organization. Industrialization process has been said to affect personal interaction due to the division of labor and specialization. This has reduced the employee interactions in their workplace as employees have specialized in their areas of operations. As a result, the social bond among the employees has been destroyed hence leading to difficulties in the process of establishing teamwork. For instance, technology has played a crucial role in the process of developing teamwork as it has increased specialization and individualism in the workplace (Christoffersen and Woods, 2004). The advancements in technology have increased the division of labor where the employees have been involved in areas of production that they are best suited hence reducing the level of interactions. Teamwork concepts The teamwork concepts that do influence our understanding of human teamwork into the following categories: 1. Social psychological approach: this approach involves assessing the relations and interactions of the members of the team. 2. Sociotechnical Approach: involves the implications of the interactions and relationships of the members of a team in their workplaces. 3. Ecological approach: measures how the working environment of an organization is likely to affect the teamwork spirit. 4. Human resources approach: this approach measures the level of utilization of the talents and capabilities of the team members. 5. Technological approach: this approach assesses the technological progress in an organization and how an organization is keeping pace with the changes in technology. 6. Lifecycle approach: entails assessment of how the performance of teams has been changing during the lifecycle of the team’s existence. 7. Task-oriented approach: this approach measures the roles of the team, tasks, and functions of the team. Human teamwork can further be divided into multiple dimensions that include attitudes, cognitions, and skills. Attitude dimension is said to measure the feelings of the team members that entail measuring mutual trust, team unity and the importance of teamwork. The cognition category includes the information about team missions, norms, objectives, resources, and problem models (Giampapa, Paolucci, and Sycara, 2001). Teamwork skills are said to include behaviors like; leadership, adaptability, interpersonal cooperation, communication patterns and performance monitoring. Team Cognition The human team performance research suggests that experienced team develop shared understanding utilized to ensure coordination of behaviors by predicting and anticipating each other's needs and enhancing demand task adaption. Both explicit and tacit coordination strategies are considered important in the process of facilitating the teamwork development. Explicit coordination can take place by externalized non-verbal and verbal communications. On the other hand, tacit coordination entails metacognitive activities concerning the members so a team who do share some mental models that do show what need to be done by who and when (Allen and Ferguson, 2012). A team with the shared mental models can allow the members to ensure proper coordination with their behavior aiming at ensuring that there is better communication concerning the situational demand. Representative theories do suggest that for a team to make sure that there is successful coordination of the actions of the team members there is the need to make sure that the members has common knowledge structures. Possessing common knowledge structures can be crucial in the process of making predictions concerning the behavior of a team towards the performance expectations that are shared among the members (Mastrangelo, Eddy & Lorenzet, 2004). It entails the members being aware of the responsibilities and roles of each member with sound knowledge of the procedures and the sequencing of the tasks of the members. Agent teamwork The theoretical work that can be associated with agent teamwork can be characterized by the behavior of the team that has various features. First, the agents are expected to have some commonalities concerning the goals that need to be achieved. They need to share to some extent the knowledge concerning the environment in which they work and how the environment does affect the behavior patterns of the members of a group. Second, there is the need for the agents to share their intentions in the process of executing the plans geared towards achieving a common objective. Besides, the team members need also to be aware of the capabilities that the members do possess and the best ways that they can be adopted in the process of fulfilling their roles that are necessary for the process of achieving the set goals. The members are expected to have the capabilities of monitoring their progress to assess whether they are in line with the set objectives (Quinn, et al. 2007). Organizations need to employ the use of these ideas concerning teamwork in the process of overcoming the challenges ha might face teamwork building in organizations. The management of organizations can be in a better position to work towards improving the effectiveness of the process of ensuring successful teamwork building by coming up with the strategies that need to be followed while putting into considerations the ideas presented by the agent teamwork theory. Conclusion Teamwork has been facing numerous difficulties due to the increased globalization due to the increased technology use in production. For instance, there has been increased diversity workforce in organizations because of employees from diverse cultural backgrounds. Besides, increased automation of the production processes has created difficulties in establishing teamwork. However, communication is considered crucial in the course of ensuring teamwork in an organization where the members are expected to share ideas and opinions concerning the organizational operations (Allen, 2012). However, for successful communication in an organization, two elements are crucial. These elements include the ability of the team members to understand the thinking of the other member and capacity to determine the intentions or the goals of the members. In the process of making interpretations of the actions of the members, three options are considered crucial to ensure successful interpretations of the actions. These options include design stance, physical stance and the intentional stance (Samson, Danny, and Daft, 2009). The physical stance entails the applications of the existing nature laws in the process of predicting what a member is likely to do. The design stance involves attempting to make predictions concerning the member based on the beliefs of the intentions of the designer. The intentional stance entails assessing the perceptions of the members concerning the desire that might be directing the members to take certain actions. People can rely on the intentional stance in the process of making the prediction of the behavior of the members of a group and in the course of reading the members minds. References Allen, 2012. Mixed initiative interaction. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 14(5). Allen and G. Ferguson, 2012. Human-machine collaborative planning. In NASA Planning and Scheduling Workshop. Argall, Y. Gu, and B. Browning, 2006. The first Segway soccer experience: Towards peer-to-peer human robot teams. In Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Human-Robot Interactions. Burgoon, L. Stern, and L. Dillman, 2001. Interpersonal Adaptation: Dyadic Interaction Patterns. Cambridge University Press. Burstein and D. Diller, 2004. A framework for dynamic information flow in mixedinitiative human/agent organizations. Applied Intelligence, 20(3). Cannon-Bowers, E. Salas, and S. Converse, 2003. Shared mental models in expert team decision making. In J. Castellan, editor, Individual and group decision making. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Chen and K. Sycara, 2008. Webmate: a personal agent for browsing and searching. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents. Christoffersen and D. Woods, 2004. How to make automated systems team players. Advances in Human Performance and Cognitive Engineering Research. Entin and D. Serfaty, 2000. Adaptive team coordination. Human Factors, 41, Fan and J. Yen, 2004. Modeling and simulating human teamwork behaviors using intelligent agents. J. of Physics of Life Reviews, 1(3). Giampapa, M. Paolucci, and K. Sycara, 2001. Agent interoperation across multiagent boundaries. 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