SAGE Journal Articles
Journal Article 1 Boss, R. W., McConkie, M. L. (1981). The Destructive Impact of a Positive Team-Building Intervention. Group & Organization Management, 6(1), 45-56.
Abstract: Team-building interventions seek to build competent, collaborative, and creative work teams by removing the barriers to effective group functioning and by helping participants better understand and utilize the group processes associated with effective group behavior. This article examines a confrontation-team-building intervention that was highly successful in building the supervisors into a cohesive, trusting, and unified group. However, the team became the most important variable, with little consideration given to the rest of the organization. As a result, the whole organization was severely crippled and had to be completely rebuilt. Lessons are drawn from this excellent example of a lopsided intervention.
Abstract: This article describes the ways the authors incorporated team-building activities into our online business writing courses by interrogating the ways that kinesthetic learning translates into the electronic realm. The authors review foundational theories of team building, including Cog's Ladder and Tuckman's Stages, and offer sample exercises they have converted. The authors show how the medium affects the exercises, how the choices made as teachers affect the exercises, and how they adjusted to meet the needs of their students. The authors argue that teamwork most successfully occurs after team building, and too often this team building is lacking in online environments.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to construct an integrated theoretical model for building effective teams based on a literature review guided by several research questions on all aspects of teams, team building, team member selection, team development, and theoretical constructs that affect the development of effective teams. The principal outcome of this article is a relationship model that is grounded in the teams, teamwork, and team building literature and based on several theoretical frameworks. This rigorous model may be applied consistently among human resource development (HRD) practitioners and scholars to assist them in building effective teams.
Abstract: This article analyzes the most important issues, concepts, and ideas in collaborative public management research and practice today. The issues, concepts, and ideas are (a) competing definitions of collaboration; (b) changes in the environment of public management that have encouraged the growth of collaborative public management; (c) “thinking DaVinci”--lateral thinking and interdisciplinarity; (d) the management challenges of working in networks; (e) the paradox of balancing autonomy and interdependence; (f) factors to consider before collaborating; (g) the importance of the individual; (h) the shifting leadership challenge; (i) weaknesses in collaborative public management research; and (j) the missing link between theory and practice. The authors conclude that the study and practice of collaborative public management is generally fragmented with low level of consensus. From a research perspective, it is a low-paradigm field. The authors close with a view to the future. To advance the study and practice of collaborative public management the authors urge (a) agreement on definitions of commonly used terms, beginning with the term “collaboration”; (b) agreement on pressing collaborative public management challenges and substantive research and practice questions; (c) more precise theoretical models of behavior; and (d) agreement on the measurement of relevant variables.
Journal Article 5 Hodson, R. (2010). Work Group Effort and Rewards: The Roles of Organizational and Social Power as Context. Organization Studies, 31(7), 895-916.
Abstract: Self-managing teams have a history of mixed effects for the employees involved. Organizational contexts reflecting different constellations of power may be useful for understanding these different outcomes. We theorize two different organizational mandates (management-initiated versus craft) and three social contexts (union presence, abusive management, and minority concentration) that may be consequential for work group outcomes. Content analysis of the population of workplace ethnographies (N = 204) provides data with a combination of organizational variability and rich in-depth descriptions of work group outcomes useful for evaluating these expectations. Union environments are found to be essential for the most positive team outcomes. Minority concentrated work groups benefit especially from the craft organization of work. And management abuse dramatically undercuts any positive consequences of management-initiated teams for employees. We conclude with a discussion of the centrality of power for understanding work group outcomes, an insight useful for resolving ongoing debates in the field about the conditions that underwrite success or failure of team arrangements.