Team Building: Proven Strategies for Improving Team Performance, 5th Edition

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REDUCING CONFLICT BETWEEN TEAMS

Thus far we have focused on designs and methods for increasing team effectiveness within a work unit. But often a major organizational problem is the lack of teamwork between work units. In fact, teams that become too cohesive and too self-involved may be ineffective in their working relationships with other groups with which they must coordinate.

Because of the importance of dividing labor into various organizational units to promote efficiency, such units are, and should be, different from each other.¹ Thus, context, the first of the Four Cs of team performance, often drives conflict between teams since such teams often have differing tasks, goals, reward systems, time constraints, and structures. These differences ...