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Working as a team

发布时间:2018-04-18
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THIS is a well-researched academic work though a very difficult one to read, not the least because it deals with a rather complex organisational concept. Because of rapid technological changes, democratisation of the modern work place and a heightened aw areness of individual self-worth, new methods to get people to work harder and smarter are constantly being evolved. Practically all of them in recent years have centered around the concept of getting workers to be members of self-managed work teams

Barker's book is an unusual one in as much as it links organisational behaviour theory to practice. The considerable body of literature on human work system is extensively drawn upon by him in this book to explain a real world experiment -- that of a com pany he refers to as ISE. This firm had shifted to team-based work with considerable success to its bottom line. ISE's management allowed barker to observe how the newly introduced system worked and also gave him free access to its personnel to enable hi m to elicit their views about such a radical change to their work environment

In the first three chapters of his book, Barker introduces the subject of his scrutiny the ISE company and the business environment in which it is placed. These chapters are `heavy' (the author throws in a lot of theory in these early chapters) but they must read carefully in order to fully appreciate the importance of Barker's analysis of team based work

Barker's ISE is a small and successful communications hardware manufacture with a 150 person workforce. It took two years of planning of ISE's management to introduce self-managed team work systems in its manufacturing department -- a unit characterised by its independent tasks, complex processes, time sensitivity and the need for rapid change and adaption.' By a change-over to team based systems, ISE, according to Barker was able to overcome the `inflexible hierarchical and bureaucratic constrains tha t stifled creativity and innovation...reducing their competitive viability

ISE's experience with self-managed teams appears to have been a very happy one. For one thing it firmly meshed workers and company objectives. This in turn resulted in considerable improvements to productivity, quality and profits for the organisation

Why are self-managed team systems so appearing to modern organisation? Barker lists four reasons for this. The first is because technological change alters the manner in which people work and interact with one another. The second is globalisation which r equires increasing levels of decentralisation in decision making for firms to respond nimbly to changes in the world's market places. The third factor driving organisations towards teams based work systems is the fact that today's workforces are better e ducated than their earlier counter parts

Such workforces respond positively to participatory management systems for example self--managed teams where reasons for decisions are understood and management actions explained and empathised with. A fourth factor compelling organisations to work throu gh self-managed teams is the fact that work-forces are now composed of people from many different social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Such diversity needs to be managed by organisations. Team-based management systems appear to do this job better tha n any other one

Given these factors, the traditional bureaucratic method of organising work does not look attractive anymore. But merely grouping workers into teams is no guarantee that things will work to an organisations advantage. First of all management has to allow a lot of its powers to be exercised by teams directly. Secondly decisions on how work is to be arranged and tasks prioritised on a day to day basis require to become teams issues and therefore responsibilities. Some of the best portions of Barker's book are the ones which deal with such matters both at the theoretical as well as real-world levels

Unlike bureaucratically organised work systems, self-managed teams evolve their own rules. These are largely based on the principle of group of self-interest. Neither development of rules within teams nor their observance by individual team members has e scaped Barker's scrutiny! ``What seemed to be peer pressure and power games on the surface'' are, he informs us, ``in fact a manifestation of generate discipline of concertive control

To a great extent informal and participatory methods through which teams initially deal with the issues that confront them eventually get formalised into rules. This makes teamwork look more and more like its stodgy bureaucratic cousin. The drift towards bureaucratisation appears to be inevitable but Barker doesn't tell us clearly why this should happen at all though he does throw a few hints. According to him, organisations are taking to team-based work only because they are better at getting things do ne with much less fuss than formal bureaucratic systems. One reason for this Barker suggest is because ``power relationships attached to their values enable them to act in good ways. They knew practical methods for problem solving and meeting their work demands

Teams are harsh systems to work in. Barker does not gloss over this fact especially since he has gathered enough evidence of this from his observations of team-based work in ISE. Teams, he tells us, tend to assume a near religious control over their memb ers much in the same way cults do: ``the teams power relationships are so seductive, the values so compelling, the conscription of identification so unobtrusive, so much a natural part of the teams interactions, that the apparency of coercion among the t eam members submerges and a new, unobtrusive from of control emerges

At one level Barker's book is an expose of how teams tend to trap individuals ``in the steel cage of ...discipline.'' The apparent consensual nature of team based work has, as barker informs us, terrifying ....over tones

All in all, The Discipline of Teamwork is a very significant but disturbing book. It gives us a terrific insight into a method of work that is taking over the lives of numerous workers around the world. For students of organisational behaviour as well as practicing managers Barker's book is therefore one which deserves to be read and read very carefully

The reviewer is Registrar, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

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