Teams and team management

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 ta

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t this stage because sales representatives are compensated through commissions, and there is considerable competition. This leads to a high level of suspicion which is often unable to progress past the "Suspicious Still" phase. The second stage of team development is characterized by a high level of competitiveness among team members. Members grow impatient with the team's lack of progress during the initial stage, and realize that the team's job may be difficult and more difficult than they had initially considered it. The gap between expectations and reality can lead to frustration and anger. This stage of development can be filled with assigning blame to members for failure to move forward, defensiveness, destructive disagreement, and test confrontations. During this stage, there is positive movement toward building a mission, goals, objectives, tacks, roles, and internal responsibilities. It is during this phase that members will move toward a "Trust Still" level. Teams may never move out of this stage in a car dealership because of the high rate of turnover in the industry (perhaps brought about because teams do not move forward) and the environment in which sales representatives operate. The third stage is one

Category: Business - T