The impact of Teams on Organizational Performance.
Department: Management
No of Pages: 63
Project Code: MGT2
References: Yes
Cost: 5,000XAF Cameroonian
: $15 for International students
ABSTRACT
This
study on the impact of teams on organizational performance in NPACCUL was set
out specifically, to examine the various characteristics of effective team, the
effect of teamwork on employees’ commitment at work and the effect of teamwork
on organizational productivity.
This
study adopted descriptive research design and data collected for this study was
from primary source (questionnaires) and chi square was used to analyze the
data. The target population for this study was employees of NPACCUL Limbe, comprising
management and all other employees. Using a sample size of 20 respondents.
This
study found out that teams highly contribute to organizational performance as
it increases fast execution of tasks, hard work and competition thus increasing
output. From the findings, it was established that teams has a significant
impact on organizational performance with confident thereby rejecting that
teams has no significant impact on organizational performance in NPACCUL.
Conclusively,
we therefore recommended that the management of NPACCUL Limbe should encourage
their workers to work in teams and also encourage collaboration among the
workers. This study suggests that research on employee-manager relationship
should also be carried out to verify its impact on performance.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the
study
Teams
are an integral part of the workplace. Basic teams involves everyone working
together to support the organization and complex teams could involve ‘’work
teams’’ chosen to complete a project by working closely.
Teams
enhance performance through joint and collective efforts. Allowing team members
to bring their specific education and training to a project or a work task
which maximize the variety of work the team can accomplish as well as the
number of task s completed without additional research. It is true that more
minds can work better than a single one (Okoh, 2006).
Teams
are as old as mankind and as such many organizations use the term ‘’team’’ in
either one sense or the other that is, such as in the production, marketing
processes etc. Examples are management team, production team or an entire
organization can be referred as a team.
(Cook
1998) stated that there is a growing consent among researchers in the World
that organizations may be getting works done through individuals, but his super
achievement lies in the attainment of the set goals through teams (teamwork).
It
is a well known fact that team work is not only the foundation of all
successful managements, but the means of improving overall results in
organizational performance.
Wage
(1997) describe teams as an idea of working together in a group to achieve the
same goals and objectives for the goods of the service users and the organizations
in order to deliver a good quality of service users and organizations in order
to deliver a good quality of service(performance).
Teams
are the actions of individuals, brought together for a common purpose or goal,
which subordinate the needs of the individual to the need of the group. In
essence, each person on the team put aside his or her individual needs to work
toward organizational objectives. Effective team work is essential to the
success of any business.
As
‘’no man is an island’’, the positive effects of performance on team work can
energize an entire organization. Just as the negative effect of lack on team
work can cripple an organization. An essential ingredient to effective team
work is attracting and keeping the right team members that would facilitate
performance in an organization.
As
such most human resource approaches lay so much emphasis on team work due to
its importance to organizational performance. Teams enable individuals to
empower themselves and to increase benefits from cooperative work engaged on as
a group.
Getting together with others also can allow individuals to better understand the importance of teams and how organizations operate as well as promote the culture of team success.
Employees take little steps toward accomplishing key
action items and nothing important is finished. Teams work together towards a
common vision and it is a fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon
results.
Collective
action is widely recognized as a positive force for teams in any organization
or institution to succeed. David (2007) posited that employers always stress
the need for employing those employees that can be able to work with a team.
And
the employers generally talk on team work when they want to emphasize the need
to various talents possessed by different employees into different teams such
as management team, production team etc. This is purposely to tap from the
abilities of respective human resources employed by an organization.
Organizations
according to Caroline (2008) is a social entity that is goal directed,
deliberately structured activity systems with a preamble boundary. Alain (2008)
claimed that productivity is the rate at which an employer, company, or country
produces goods and the amount produced, compared with how time, work and money
is neede to produce them.
This therefore, shows that, this study will concentrate specifically on the use of the term ‘’Teams” which involves reshaping the way work is carried out. This includes organizing employees into teams based on distinct product, each team performing a particular task.
These teams are given a high degree of responsibility
and are expected to work with flexibility and increase productivity. Thus, this
study is carried out to examine the impact of teams on organizational
performance.
According to Cohen and Bailey (1999) an
employee team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in the
tasks and who share responsibility for the outcomes. Teams enable people to
cooperate, enhance individual skills and provide constructive feedback without
any conflict between individuals (Jones 2007).
A
team comprises of different individuals with complementary skills and who work
together. However, the concepts of team and group are often confused and mostly
used instead of one another. One opinion in the literature suggests that the
team is not different from the group and that the studies on them goes well
long common past but they do not have the same qualities.
As
mostly accepted definition, group is “two or more number amount of people who
perceive themselves as a group and share the common goals, who have stable
relation in between and are within interaction”. Up to date books on
organizational behaviour exhibit the distinctive attributes that defines the
team on group.
Those
are; shared goals and objectives, mutual confidence and loyalty, expressing the
feelings explicitly, making decisions with compromise cooperation, coordination
and compliance, having a common synergic effect. Assessing above given
definitions it can be inferred that they have a lot in common.
In
addition, Delarue (2003) define a team as group of employees who have at least
some collective tasks and where the team members are authorized to regulate
mutually the execution of this collective task. Team work is define by a common
task requiring interdependent work and successive or integrative action ( Hacker
1998).
However, Katzenbach and Smith (1999) describe
three fundamental characteristics of a team which are devotion, accountability
(responsibility) and the skills. Teams within organizations can be classified
in many different ways.
According to the formation style, formal and
informal teams according to the functions they claim responsibility for,
advisory and implementary teams and according to the relations within the
organization vertical and horizontal teams . Apart from these they can also be
classified as problem solving, self-managing and cross functional teams award a
common goal.
Teams
in NPACCUL can be classified in a formal ways that is, according to their
function in NPACCUL we have the senior staffs who are the board of directors
and the junior staff who make up the teams in this institution and they are
still struggling to grow since their population size is not too large. The
board of directors with the staff working in teams often experience high
performance than those working in isolation.
1.2. Problem statement
In
NPACCUL, team performance is becoming more and more critical to organizational
success. One of the first question asked at most interviews today is ‘’ can you
work as part of a team’’? if performance management of NPACCUL activity is not
defined correctly, employees individual goals may damage the team’s performance
and vice versa
NPACCUL
is a category one micro finance institution struggling to increase performance
so as to achieve success and maintain a valuable image in this competitive
business world. This is driven by the desire to effectively use resources to
produce the best output and this effectiveness is closely tied to human capital
(labour).
Organizations
with staffs working in teams often experience high productivity than those in
which individuals work in isolation. Nevertheless, the workers in an
organization may be very large and yet that organization is performance is very
low and with no improvement in their
products.
Some
of these problems that occur in NPACCUL are as a result of absent of teams in
their institution. In this case common, problems face by them are lack of team work in this institution, poor
leadership styles, lack of motivation of the workforce resulting to poor
performance in the organization.
It
is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine the impact of teams
on organizational performance. This problem has led to the following research questions,
which will be addressed:
- What are the characteristics of effective teams in NPACCUL (National Ports Authority Cooperative Credit Union Limited)?
- What is the effect of teamwork on employee’s commitment in NPACCUL?
- What is the effect of teams on organizational performance in NPACCUL?
1.3 Objectives of the
study
The
main objective of this of this study is to examine the impact of teams on
organizational performance.
The
specific objectives of this study will include:
- To identify the characteristics of effective teams in NPACCUL (National Port Authority Cooperative Credit Union Limited)
- To examine the extent to which teams affect employee’s commitment to NPACCUL
- To examine the effect of team Work on organizational performance in NPACCUL
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