Managing Human Resources, Eight Edition

Work: The Group Perspective

We turn now to an examination of work from the perspective of employee groups. In the flat and boundaryless organizational structures, teamwork is an imperative. Indeed, as we have seen, teams are the basic building blocks of both structures.

What exactly is a team and how does it operate? A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who work toward common goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.16 Teams can vary significantly in size, from 2 to 80 members. The upper range may occur with virtual teams where members collaborate on large projects over the Internet. Most teams have fewer than 10 members, with 5 to 6 members considered to be an optimal team size.17 Unlike work groups ...