Essentials of Organizational Behavior, 14/e

Creating Effective Teams

Teams are often created deliberately but sometimes evolve organically. Take the rise of the team “hive” over the past five years as an example of organic evolution. The hive process typically begins with freelancers. Freelancing is typically the solo work of people who are highly specialized in their fields and can provide expertise to organizations on a short-term basis. The difficulty is for the freelancers to effectively market themselves to organizations, and for organizations to find freelancers who fit their needs. To bridge this gap, freelancers form teams with other freelancers from complementary specialties to present a cohesive working unit—a hive—to clients. This team-based approach has proven very successful. ...