Leadership CHapter 12 - Team Leadership

Leadership in organizational work teams has become one of the most popular and rapidly growing areas of leadership theory and research. A team is a specific type of group composed of members who are interdependent, who share common goals, and who must coordinate their activities to accomplish these goals. Examples of such teams include project management teams, task forces, work units, standing committees, quality teams, and improvement teams. Teams have an applied function within an organizational context. A team has specified roles for its members with requisite knowledge and skills to perform these roles (Levi, 2011).
 

Reviews of the historical roots of group research provide a clear explanation of the long and diverse study of human groups (Levi, 2011; McGrath, Arrow, & Berdahl, 2000; Porter & Beyerlein, 2000). Porter and Beyerlein (2000) indicate that the study of groups actually began in the 1920s and 1930s, with the focus of the human relations movement on collaborative efforts at work, as opposed to the individual efforts previously advocated by scientific management theorists. In the 1940s, the focus shifted to the study of group dynamics and the development of social science theory. In the 1950s, the focus moved to sensitivity training and T-groups, and the role of leadership in these groups. Much of this early research was based on laboratory studies of experimental groups, frequently ignoring the con-texts in which the groups were embedded (McGrath et al., 2000).
 

In the 1960s and 1970s, the era of organizational development, researchers focused on developing team and leadership effectiveness through interventions in ongoing work teams. In the 1980s, competition from Japan and other countries encouraged the focus on quality teams, benchmarking, and continuous improvement. In the 1990s, the focus on organizational teams, while still focusing on quality, shifted to a global perspective focusing on organizational strategies for maintaining a competitive advantage. Organizations have faster response capability because of their flatter organizational structure, which relies on teams and new technology to enable communication across time and space (Porter & Beyerlein, 2000). Mankin, Cohen, and Bikson (1996, p. 217) referred to this new organization as being “team-based, technology-enabled.” The organizational team-based structure is an important way to remain com-petitive by responding quickly and adapting to constant, rapid changes.