so that the teams remain both as effective and as harmonious as possible.
Along with a flattened hierarchy and the reduction of what can come to be seen as unnecessary middle managers, one of the primary elements of a work team is that it draws together people from different departments or areas of a business. Beckmann (1998, p. D2:20) describes the formation of a typical work team like this: It usually starts in the hallway. Sarah from engineering and James from marketing commiserate about a mutual problem. Pretty soon, Juan from production wanders by, joins the conversation or gripe session and suggests a solution that might work but has some rough edges. Suddenly there's a new task force on "Smoothing Out the Rough Edges."
Orsburn et al. (1990) give this slightly less colorful definition: A work team is a highly trained group of from 6 to 18 employees (on average) that is fully responsible for producing a well-defined segment of finished work. This segment could be an entire product, such as a refrigerator or an insurance claim, or it could be a subdivision of an entire product like a refrigerator motor. One of the most essential elements of the concept of the work team is the idea that every member of the work team shares equal responsibility for the entire segment of work. Philosophically (and thus in many ways organizationally), work teams are the direct opposite of assembly lines, where each worker assumes responsibility for only a narrow technical function (Orsburn et al., 1990, p. 8). Work teams demand much greater responsibility from the individual worker, but in return they offer much greater chance for empowerment and reward on an individual basis and productivity on a company-wide basis.
In some ways work teams sound as if they were just groups of good "team players," but Orsburn et al. stress that this is not quite the case. Team players are good at getting along with each other, certainly. But...