Teams and team management are replacing the traditional adversarial relationship between management and labor in a variety of environments. Companies are switching to team-based approaches because they have found that such approaches lead to higher productivity, higher quality and can be more cost-efficient than traditional solo efforts. Teamwork also tends to improve job satisfaction, motivation, and employee morale, resulting in lower turnover and long-term productivity at the organization. Without trust, however, teams cannot be effective. Trust is the element that enables team members to achieve their individual, and thus the team's goals. This research examines team environments and how trust can help build teamwork, as well as how teamwork and trust can be applied in retail car environment.
Traditional management approaches of one manager with many subordinates are based on compartmentalized functions, fragmented tasks, and sequential, simplified activities. Such characteristics are reflective of the assembly line that Henry Ford pioneered. Modern work processes are more complex, often nonlinear, and frequently unable to be simplified into strings of quick and sequential tasks. The productivity and quality that companies need to survive require a high degree of collaboration among people, departments, and functions (Varley, 1999, p. 261).
Another reason that teamwork is effective is that simplified and fragmented tasks can rob the people who perform them of their self-esteem, sense of accomplishment, and pride in their work. As workers in the United States have become better educated, they have also become less likely to do oversimplified, mechanical jobs (Van Der Wall, 1999, p. 132). Many workers can and want to perform more complex and sophisticated jobs; teams give them the opportunity to do that. As a result, workers are better motivated and perform better in their jobs.
Since teams have begun to be u...