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Team Development and Team Performance Responsibilities, Responsiveness and Results; A Longitudinal Study of Teamwork at Volvo Trucks Umeå

Ben Kuipers

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Labyrint Publications PO Box 334 2984 AX Ridderkerk The Netherlands Tel: +31 (0)180-463962

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Offsetdrukkerij Ridderprint B.V., Ridderkerk

ISBN 90-5335-060-8

© 2005, B.S. Kuipers Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen, of enig andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de auteur. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, without prior written permission of the author.

RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN

Team Development and Team Performance Responsibilities, Responsiveness and Results: A Longitudinal Study of Teamwork at Volvo Trucks Umeå

Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Bedrijfskunde aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 7 juli 2005 om 14.45 uur door Benjamin Stanley Kuipers geboren op 18 augustus 1975 te Groningen

Promotor:

Prof. dr. A.H. van der Zwaan

Copromotor:

Dr. M.C. de Witte

Beoordelingscommissie:

Prof. dr. E. Molleman Prof. dr. S. Procter Prof. dr. A.M. Sorge

Preface First of all, I would like to address the reader who is curious as to what this book about teamwork might bring. Let me tell you up front: dissertations are not known for being read thoroughly, so don’t be bothered too much about that. Actually, I would already be happy when each of you manages to find just one useful thing in this book to improve your way of working with others and enjoying it. But before you start, you may wonder what inspired me to make a four-year study of teamwork, spending months and months in the North of Sweden and ages at my desk writing this dissertation. That’s easy to explain. It’s because the world is full of beautiful and inspiring things: the clean air and sultry midsummer nights 300 km below the polar circle*, the forgetting-everything-around-you music and lyrics from bands like Coldplay**, the fascinating words from books like Funky Business*** and the brightly colored impressionistic landscapes by Van Gogh**** (the painter). Most of all, it’s just the plain simple people like you and me trying to accomplish something together. Let me set you at ease: the path to a dissertation is not just full of clichés like those mentioned above; there are actually a lot more. It also takes some pretty lonely days at the computer, some tough struggles to get valuable questionnaires back from a few respondents, some really frustrating moments with figures that don’t look like you want them to, and indeed those stubborn colleagues who believe their theory of reality (which they never even saw) is best. But what the heck, it could have been worse! Try to imagine life as a PhD candidate with 760500 responded items, but then without a computer (actually there were more, but calculating these precisely would involve me sitting at my desk even longer). These “unreliable” respondents did give me a good story and the bad figures did help me think over my theory more carefully. So what’s left now are these unworldly colleagues; but since I’m one of them, things actually seems to be pretty much back to normal. To be honest, my four years and several months of working on this research gave me a lot of fun, important new insights, great experiences, many new friends, and my girlfriend. All these things can’t be captured in a book like this, nor on a page with a few acknowledgements. In a sense, everyone in their own way contributed equally to this work, though some more equally than others. I’ll try to name a few of the most equal ones here. First of all, I would like to thank the four people who formed both the basis for the research project leading to this dissertation as well as the platform for my professional career. My supervisors in Groningen, Ad van der Zwaan and Marco de Witte, who by their coaching showed what “steering of self-organization” means in practice and how to reach something in science. With Peter Hertinge and Mona Edström-Frohm from Volvo in Umeå I experienced the value of real teamwork by accomplishing something together in a large organization like Volvo. Also, I would like to thank all my other friends (some of whom are also colleagues) in and from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, The United Kingdom, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, The United States, Colombia,

Surinam, Uruguay, South Africa, Australia, Russia, Kyrgyz, Vietnam, and of course all of those in The Netherlands for their inputs, ideas, interest and warm relationships. I would also like to thank my family: my mother, father and sister, oma and opa (who unfortunately is not with us anymore to see me becoming a doctor), and my uncles, aunts and cousins, who are always there for me. A special thanks goes to Natasha, who always looks at science with common sense and after me with love. Furthermore, I would like to thank the members of the examination committee for their time and valuable feedback. Last but not least, I need to thank the more than 2200 employees and managers of Volvo Umeå who provided me with all the valuable data and patience during all those years of research. These people showed me what teamwork and organizations really are. And finally, according to good Swedish custom: “kram till er alla”! Ben Kuipers ‘s Gravenhage, May 2005 [email protected]

*

If you are interested to find out, beware that the Umeå tourist office has very limited opening hours.

**

“I was just guessing at numbers and figures Pulling the puzzles apart Questions of science, science and progress Do not speak as loud as my heart Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me Oh and I rush to the start Running in circles, chasing our tails Coming back as we are” From: The Scientist by Coldplay (2002) (source: www.coldpaying.com)

*** “Reasoning is what the typical manager is rewarded for. Eventually the analytical side of the brain grows so large and heavy that some executives find it difficult to avoid walking in circles.” [p.273] From: Funky Business by K.A. Nordström and J. Ridderstråle (2000) **** For those who hate museums, we have two cheap repro’s hanging in our living room.

Contents PART I

INTRODUCTION: Model and study

1

Chapter 1 Introduction

2

1.1 Trends in Teamwork: Theoretical traditions

2

1.2 Trends in Teamwork: Practice-based literature

5

1.3 Trends in Teamwork: Scientific literature

6

1.4 Trends in Teamwork: A research agenda

8

1.5 Trends at Volvo

9

1.5.1 The Volvo Umeå site: Processes and departments descriptions 1.5.2 Work teams at Volvo Umeå

10 12

1.6 Overview of content

13

PART II RESPONSIVENESS: Dimensions of team responsiveness and their relations to team responsibilities and team results

14

Chapter 2 Responsiveness: Processes of work teams

15

2.1 Introduction to the literature

15

2.2 Phase models and process models

17

2.2.1 Consultancy phase models 2.2.2 Sociotechnical phase models 2.2.3 Recurring phase models 2.2.4 Critics to phase models for work teams 2.2.5 Process models 2.3 Towards a new model for team responsiveness and team development

17 19 22 23 24 26

2.4 Methodology and results 2.4.1 Data and sample 2.4.2 Results of factor analyses

29 29 31

2.5 Three dimensions of team responsiveness

33

2.6 Team responsiveness at Volvo Umeå

35

2.7 Conclusions

37

Chapter 3 Concepts and methodology for responsiveness and results

38

3.1 Introduction to the literature

38

3.2 Models for team results

40

3.3 Relating team responsiveness to team results

42

3.3.1 Hypothesizing cross-sectional effects of responsiveness on results 3.3.2 Hypothesizing the longitudinal effects of responsiveness on results 3.3.3 Summary 3.4 Methodology and measures 3.4.1 Methods for the statistical analysis 3.4.2 Measures of business performance 3.4.3 Measures of quality of working life

43 45 46 46 46 48 50

3.5 Further specification of hypotheses and methods

51

PART III RESULTS: Effects of team responsiveness on business performance and quality of working life

53

Chapter 4 Team responsiveness and business performance

54

4.1 Direct effects on business performance

54

4.1.1 Product quality 4.1.2 Utilization 4.1.3 Costs 4.2 Longitudinal effects on business performance

55 57 57 58

4.3 Summary and conclusions on business performance

60

Chapter 5 Team responsiveness and the quality of working life

63

5.1 Direct effects on quality of working life

63

5.2 Behavioral outcomes

64

5.2.1 Sick-occasions 5.2.2 Long-term absenteeism

64 65

5.3 Attitudinal outcomes

67

5.3.1 Satisfaction 5.3.2 Involvoment 5.3.3 Burnout

67 68 70

5.4 Longitudinal effects on quality of working life

71

5.4.1 Longitudinal effects on behavioral outcomes 5.4.2 Longitudinal effects on attitudinal outcomes

71 73

5.5 Summary and conclusions on quality of working life

77

PART IV RESPONSIBILITIES: Complexity and location of regulation tasks and their relationships with team responsiveness

81

Chapter 6 Responsibilities: Management structure of the team-based organization

82

6.1 Introduction to the literature

82

6.2 Operating and managing systems

84

6.3 Responsibilities and the management structure

86

6.4 Characteristics of the regulation tasks

87

6.4.1 Complexity of regulation tasks 6.4.2 The location of regulation tasks

88 88

6.5 Relating team responsibilities to team responsiveness

89

6.6 Methods and measures of the management structure

92

6.6.1 Determining regulation tasks

92

6.6.2 Measures for complexity 6.6.3 Measures for location 6.6.4 Methods and summary of hypotheses

93 93 94

Chapter 7 Team responsibilities and team responsiveness: Exploring the relationships

97

7.1 Selection of crucial regulation tasks

97

7.2 Characteristics of the management structure

99

7.2.1 Regulation task complexity 7.2.2 Regulation task location

100 102

7.3 The relationship between complexity and location of regulation tasks

104

7.4 The effects of location on team responsiveness

106

7.4.1 The effects of the proximity of authority and expertise 7.4.2 The effects of the number of regulation tasks 7.5 Conclusion

PART V GENERAL CONCLUSIONS: Findings, model, further research and practical applications

106 110 114

116

Chapter 8 Conclusions and discussion

117

8.1 Team responsibilities, responsiveness and results

117

8.1.1 Team responsiveness 8.1.2 Team results 8.1.3 Team responsibilities

117 118 119

8.2 Three R’s: a model for team development

120

8.3 Strengths, weakness and further research

122

8.3.1 Strengths 8.3.2 Weaknesses 8.3.3 Further research 8.4 Applications of the 3R-model 8.4.1 Limitations of phase theories for practical use 8.4.2 Starting team development from the results perspective 8.4.3 Practical steps for developing teams

122 122 123 124 124 125 125

8.5 Concluding remarks

References

129

131

Appendix A. Factor loadings

140

Appendix B. Factor congruence test

142

Samenvatting

145

Summary

153

PART I INTRODUCTION: Model and study

1

PART I

Chapter 1

Introduction This first chapter of my dissertation will provide the reader with some insights into the concepts, theories and trends regarding teamwork and work teams. My study takes place in the automotive industry, which often strikes the imagination, and which teamwork experiments received much attention in managerial and scientific literature. After illustrating its background I will develop an agenda and first model for my research. I shall finish this chapter with an introduction of the Volvo plant in which I studied more than 150 teams during a three year period. An important message, which I will underline throughout this dissertation, is that teamwork can never be a goal in itself.

1.1 Trends in Teamwork: Theoretical Traditions Working in groups has been studied since the twenties of the last century (Beyerlein 2000; Buchanan 2000; Van Hootegem et al. 2005), with the Hawthorne studies as one of the first and most famous examples. Groups have been subject to studies in various forms and in the 1950s the literature on group processes started to be referred to by the term group dynamics. Lewin (1947) introduced this term, describing group dynamics as “the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances” (Forsyth 1999). Social psychological perspectives in general and group dynamics in particular not only involve teamwork, but all possible types of groups. Forsyth (1999) sees the concept of “work teams” as a special application of groups in “business, industry, government, education, and healthcare settings … lying at the foundation of the modern organization.” By now “almost all of us work in teams” (Sheard & Kakabadse 2003), and the term in itself seems to be inflated. Teamwork did become very fashionable, especially during the 1990s (Van Hootegem, Benders, Delarue, & Procter 2005) and so far I have not met anyone denying to work in a team, in one way or another. This raises the question of what teamwork is and I maybe disappoint the reader by telling that there is no one single answer to this question. Throughout this dissertation you will find that different authors use different perspectives, dependent on different

2

Introduction

backgrounds and different interests; group work does not automatically imply work groups and vice versa1. Group dynamics as a concept covers group work in general, varying from studies of therapy groups to laboratory studies. The concept of working groups covers to a large extent the literature concerning groups in organizations. The general applied term team is mostly used for this latter type of groups and defined as: “A collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems (for example, business unit or the corporation), and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries” (Cohen & Baily 1997). Within this definition a distinction can be made between management teams, project teams and work teams (Cohen & Baily 1997; Sundstrom et al. 2000). Generally management teams consist of several managers, who steer entire organizations or parts of organizations. Project teams are “time-limited” (Cohen & Baily 1997; Sundstrom, McIntyre, Halfhill, & Richards 2000) and carry out specified projects, often consisting of a variety of different experts. Work teams are divided by Sundstrom et al. (2000) into ‘Production groups’, consisting of “front-line employees who repeatedly produce tangible output”, and ‘Service groups’, consisting of “employees who cooperate to conduct repeated transactions with customers”. Both groups are referred to by various terms such as semiautonomous, self-regulating, self-managing, self-directed or empowered teams. These teams need to be distinguished from parallel teams, such as quality circles. Semi-autonomous work teams are everyday working teams, with their members working full-time together on the joint production or service tasks, while “parallel teams pull together people from different work units or jobs to perform functions that the regular organization is not equipped to perform well” (Cohen & Baily 1997). This study focuses on the concept of work teams, which is embedded in two general traditions, which I name briefly here to grasp the field of study. These two traditions are the sociotechnical systems theory (STS) and the Japanese Lean Production (LP) (Kuipers, De Witte, & Van der Zwaan 2004; Procter & Mueller 2000), also called the “team” and “lean” approaches (Applebaum & Batt 1994) or “anti-Taylorism” and “neo-Taylorism” (Pruijt 2003). Several articles and books are available that compare and distinguish between the two (Adler & Cole 1993; Benders & Van Hootegem 1999; Benders & Van Hootegem 2000; Berggren 1994; Jürgens 1992; Procter & Mueller 2000; Van Amelsvoort & Benders 1996). An 1

People can do group work without being a (formal) work group, they also can be member of a work group but not working as a group.

3

PART I

overview of the differences between them based on this literature is given in the following table: Table 1 Differences in Team Concepts: The Sociotechnical Systems Theory Versus the Lean Production Approach Aspect

Sociotechnical Systems (STS)

Lean Production (LP)

(Western, mostly European)

(Japanese and partly American)

Task design

Focus on job enrichment (workers autonomy)

Focus on job enlargement (but with standardized operating procedures)

Organization principle

Simple organization with complex jobs

Simple jobs in a complex organization

Organization structure

Team-based work organization

Hierarchy-based work organization

Leadership

Rotating team coordinator

Fixed foreman

Improvement focus

Quality of Working Life

Continuous Improvement

Improvement philosophy

Holistic view: ‘complete’ tasks and ‘complete’ products, fundamental redesign

Reductionist view with incremental changes: focus on single aspects such as delivery times, product quality, or absenteeism

Production set-up

Short flows / docks: with work teams

Assembly line: with parallel teams

LP is often seen as an effective work organization concept in mass production, while STS is considered to be more effective in production environments with lower volumes and more customer specifications (Van der Zwaan & De Vries 2000). Despite many combinations in business practice, which bring the traditions closer together (Adler & Docherty 1998; De Leede & Looise 1999), LP and STS nonetheless are still seen as theoretically different concepts and recognized as different solutions for different situations (Adler & Cole 1993; Niepce & Molleman 1998). The teams I studied at Volvo, and the concepts applied there, do not mind the debate and show characteristics of both, dependent on what comes at hand.

4

Introduction

1.2 Trends in Teamwork: Practice-based Literature From the 1950s with the ‘discovery’ of sociotechnical teamwork in the British coalmines (Trist & Bamforth 1951) to the early 1980s, the sociotechnical approach grew steadily in popularity among a select group of practitioners and researchers within (predominantly) the manufacturing industry. Indian textile mills (Rice 1953), Norwegian power-plants (Emery & Thorsrud 1964), car factories like Volvo Kalmar (Blackler & Brown, 1978) and Volvo Uddevalla (Berggren 1994; 1993) are just a few of the famous examples on a long list of experiments with sociotechnical principles for improved working conditions and increased productivity and quality in industry (Van Eijnatten 1993). However, the ‘big-bang’ for teamwork maybe only arrived at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s. “Where the ‘semiautonomous work groups’ of the 1970s have remained a marginal phenomenon, the ‘self-managing teams’ of the 1990s have become a contemporary organizational ideal” (Van Hootegem, Benders, Delarue, & Procter 2005). This is the period of well-known and often cited books, usually written by businessconsultants, like The Wisdom of Teams (Katzenbach & Smith 1993), Empowered Teams (Wellins, Byham, & Wilson 1991), The Machine that Changed the World (Womack, Jones, & Roos 1990) and The Volvo Experience (Berggren 1993). Selfmanaging teams became high fashion and were said to boost business performance and quality of working life. Now, ten years later, the word “team” is still left and the words “empowered”, “selfdirected” or “self-managing” seem to have lost their glitter and glamour. With the current economic low-tide after the year 2000 and the continuous pressure on (Stock-Exchange listed) companies to further reduce costs, it looks like sociotechnical practices at the industrial workplace are exchanged for the wellknown recipes of line-production, centralization, standardization and old-fashioned cost-cutting, now often (unjustly) referred to as “reducing non-value added operations”.2 The focus is, more than ever, on the “hard outputs” of the organization, its units and its individuals. Lean Production is often said to suit these demands very well. In a recent special issue of IJOPM on the changes taking place within the former sociotechnically inspired Volvo production system, the editor compares LP with a steamroller. “Nothing much has been able to stand in the way of the juggernaut of “lean production” as it stretches its hegemony into more and more areas of organizational life” (Wallace 2004). Many organizations seem to follow each other on the path “back to the driven line” (Andersson 2002). However,

2

This clearly should not be confused with “Toyota’s strategy of conserving resources” (Johnson & Bröms 2000), which many organizations deem to follow. Johnson and Bröms specifically state that “cutting costs by eliminating nonvalue activity…is central to recently popular process improvement initiatives…none of which really captures the essential point of conserving resources by avoiding – not eliminating – waste” (2000: 32).

5

PART I

in the world of Karaoke Capitalism the following is said about such tendencies in today’s business: “Our world is full of karaoke companies. In business there are even names for this imitation frenzy: benchmarking and best practice – as if these fancy labels would make a difference. Let’s face it. No matter what the pundits say, benchmarking will never get you to the top – merely to the middle.” (Ridderstråle & Nordström 2004) The suitability of the LP versus STS concepts in the automotive industry has been elaborated in works such as those written by Womack, Jones, & Roos (1990) and Adler & Borys (1996), as well as in the NUMMI versus Uddevalla discussion between Adler and Cole (1993) and Berggren (1994). These authors discuss which of the two approaches is the best design for an automotive plant. Kuipers, de Witte & van der Zwaan (2004), however, note that they cannot adequately compare the outcomes of the design, since they do not compare the improvement in performance, let alone a comparison, over time.3 This brings me to my main criticism: so far the debate has mainly dealt with designs for teamwork (Adler & Borys 1996) while overlooking developmental processes as well as their outcomes. In other words, it has concentrated on the design of the production structure of either LP or STS and did not take into consideration the processes and products after the implementation. In short, my study does not focus on the question of which approach is the most suitable, but on the issue of development and the outputs of this development after their implementation.

1.3 Trends in Teamwork: Scientific Literature Contemporary management literature has made many promises to organizations concerning the successes that the implementation of work teams would bring. As the hype seems to have passed, the question rises whether teamwork has not been that successful as expected, or did not meet the promises made. To evaluate this we need to turn to the scientific literature that has brought forward a great deal of theoretical and empirical work on work teams from the early start to right after the hype today. With the increasing interest of managers for adopting quality circles and group work, Bettenhausen (1991) identified and reviewed 250 studies on “behavior in organizational work groups”, published between 1986 and 1989. He summarizes a large number of topics discussed in these studies, ranging from social-loafing to 3

Only Parker (2003) presented a study that tested for the LP-design effects in a longitudinal study, in which negative effects were observed for employees in lean production groups.

6

Introduction

group effectiveness, to “provide insight for the management of work groups” (Bettenhausen 1991). In 1997 Cohen and Bailey follow up on the work of Bettenhausen with an original selection of 200 articles in the period from 1990 to 1996. Their agenda and demands on the studies to be included in their review are already much more strict than those used by Bettenhausen (1991), and therefore they only “focused on 54 studies of teams in organizations that included measures of effectiveness” (Cohen & Baily 1997). Work teams, “the type of teams most people think about when discussing teams” (Cohen & Baily 1997), are represented in only 17 of the reviewed studies that meet their conditions for measuring effectiveness; the rest concerned parallel teams, project teams and management teams. An alternative review is provided by Sundstrom et al. (2000), who selected 90 field experiments and field studies between 1980 and 1999 that took place in “actual work settings” and that “measured some facet of work group effectiveness”. Of these studies 15 concentrated on production teams and 30 on service teams, while those remaining concerned other types of groups such as management teams and projects teams (Sundstrom, McIntyre, Halfhill, & Richards 2000). I will come back to these studies in later chapters. The overviews provided by these authors indicate the relatively small amount of “in-context” studies4 (McGrath 1986) during the past two decades conducted on work teams in relation to performance. On the other hand, they do show the wide variety in research topics within this field, ranging from groupthink to production structure design. A few aspects in the reviewed works need to be highlighted. The terms performance or effectiveness, for instance, are used very generally and often in relation to very different measures, ranging from satisfaction to perceived effectiveness. Dunphy & Bryant (1996) indicate that team performance is not a unitary construct. Nevertheless, many studies apply different performance measures to come to general conclusions like “teamwork is effective or not”, thereby disregarding that they might have fetched only a tiny bit of the overall perspective on performance. On the other hand, much more attention is paid towards the inputs to and the characteristics of teamwork. Again though, most of such variables concern conditions or structural aspects and only few studies include process variables over time. Coming back to the demands put on managers and organizations (not only nowadays), I believe there is a clear need to further develop understanding of the inputs, processes and outputs of work teams. Bettenhausen’s question (1991) to gain further insight in the management of teams still remains largely unanswered. Many of the contemporary literature, but also many scientific authors have been overemphasizing the design of work teams and teamwork. As Van Hootegem et al. 4

McGrath (McGrath 1986) defines “the study of groups in context” as one of the specific needs for studying groups at work. “…It is a far more complex question than the simple argument about whether to study groups in the lab or the field”. To study groups in-context e.g. means studying teams within time and embedded within organizations.

7

PART I

(2005) put it: “there is more to implementing teams than setting up the proper organizational structure”. Personally, I would like to add that the effectiveness of teams should receive full attention, and that the slowly growing idea in practice that teamwork is some kind of goal in itself should be tackled. Even more focus needs be put on the exact outcomes of work teams, so we can improve our knowledge and tools, and get from teamwork what we wanted to get in the first place: organizational success (Cohen & Bailey, 1997).

1.4 Trends in Teamwork: A Research Agenda Since the original input-process-output model of teamwork (McGrath 1964) several other models have been elaborating on McGrath’s baseline (Yeatts & Hyten 1998). McGrath (1964) originally approached the process aspect as a black-box yet many years later noticed that researchers still hardly paid attention to patterns in group behavior to gain better insight into this process (1986). Campion et al. (1993) say about process that it “describes the things that go on in the group that influence effectiveness”. Therefore I consider the team process as indispensable on my agenda, which aims to develop better knowledge about the outputs of work teams and the activities that can be employed to improve these outputs in organizations. As I see it, this agenda for teamwork consists of three basic issues around the inputs, processes and outputs of work teams: •

The management of work teams: deeper understanding is required of the management structures as input to the team processes.

•

The processes of work teams: further insight is required in the patterns of the team processes over time.

•

The results of work teams: more thorough knowledge of the team’s actual performances are required.

In other words, there is a need for an input-process-output model on teamwork that demonstrates the management needed to develop the team processes that provide clearly defined results. This overall model concerns team development in which both the process as well as the conditions and results of work teams play a central role. For this basic model I have used a different terminology. The inputs to teamwork consist of a set of conditions and structures, varying from task design to group composition and HR-tools. I am specifically interested in the management structure. Among other things, the managing structure shapes the maneuvering space of the team, i.e. the responsibilities of teams. The processes of teamwork, in terms of actions and behavior, reflect the ways in which teams respond to these given responsibilities. These processes will therefore be named responsiveness. The outputs of teams are the business performance (BP) and the quality of working life (QWL); they are the result of the team’s responsiveness. The overall basic model is but a simple input-process-output model, see Figure 1: 8

Introduction

Input: Team Responsibilities

Process: Team Responsiveness

Output: Team Results

Figure 1 Conceptual model of team development These three ‘umbrella’ terms will be used and further elaborated theoretically and empirically. The heart of this model is responsiveness. Earlier on I described the concept of group dynamics, which is closely related to responsiveness. One could say that responsiveness is a special application of group dynamics to work teams. It is important to properly define responsiveness before elaborating the inputs and outputs. In short, this dissertation aims to answer the following three research questions: 1

Team responsiveness: how can the team developmental processes be described?

2

Team results: what are the effects of the team responsiveness on business performance as well as on quality of working life?

3

Team responsibilities: what are the management structure’s inputs that generate team responsiveness?

These three questions will be answered with this study at a Volvo Trucks plant in the North of Sweden: Volvo Umeå. The next section will introduce the reader to this organization and its developments, an elaboration that is needed to understand the process and outcomes of this study.

1.5 Trends at Volvo In 1.2 I mentioned Volvo’s place in the history of the sociotechnical approach thanks to its famous work organization experiments. Volvo is well known for its experiments with teamwork in their former car division (Adler & Borys 1996; Womack, Jones, & Roos 1990). However, researchers are less familiar with Volvo’s similar work in their truck and bus divisions (Blackler & Brown 1978; Berggren 1993; Sandberg 1995; Thompson & Wallace 1996). With the publication of “The Machine that Changed the World” (Womack, Jones, & Roos 1990), a debate started between advocates of Lean Production (LP) and of Sociotechnical Systems (STS) ( for a brief description of this debate see: Kuipers, De Witte, & Van der Zwaan 2004). The debate mainly addressed the suitability of these approaches 9

PART I

in the automotive industry and died down after the dismantling of the Volvo Uddevalla plant, which was considered to be the prime example of sociotechnically based production. Thereafter, lean production practitioners and many manufacturers in the automotive industry took LP to be the more effective concept (cf. Womack, Jones, & Roos 1990; Sandberg 1995). This debate in the automotive industry apparently then came to a standstill; however, STS continued to be used in truck and bus production, a practice that received little attention in contemporary management literature. One of the truck plants that continued experimenting with semi-autonomous work teams and a sociotechnical-based production organization is the European cab-plant of Volvo in Umeå, Sweden. 1.5.1 The Volvo Umeå Site: Processes and Departments Descriptions Volvo Umeå is Volvo’s European manufacturer for all FL, FM and FH models of truck cabins (Kuipers & De Witte 2005a). This plant builds 55,000 cabs annually, mostly for the European market, from steel plate to completely fitted cabs, which are delivered to the Volvo Truck plants in Gothenburg and Gent. The plant contains five production departments, each responsible for a part of the cab-manufacturing process. The production process is supported by a number of other departments, of which logistics and engineering are the largest. A brief description of each of these departments, that together employ around 2200 people in the plant, follows below. The press and detail shop includes a press line, two door lines, a detail shop, a special cab dock and a spare parts division. In the highly automated press line all the cut steel is pressed into floors, fronts, sides, rooftops and doors. The door lines weld all sorts of doors for Volvo’s FL, FM and FH cabs. In the less automated detail shop and other shops, operators work at a variety of machines pressing parts or components, they produce special cabs (e.g. crew cabs), or pack spare parts and completely knocked-down cabs. These CKD cabs are sent to smaller assembly facilities of Volvo and Volvo partners all around the world. About one fifth of the total production of Volvo Umeå consists of such CKD-packages. The body-in-white department is the welding line of the Umeå plant and basically it consists of three main (product) flows. In the FM and FH lines the majority of the work is done by robots, while the FL line (with the lowest volume) is less robotized. The moderately repetitive work is divided into preparation, parts welding and complete cab welding. In order to escape the repetitiveness of the work, operators rotate on a weekly basis. The paint-shop receives the fully welded cabs from the body-in-white department. During a highly advanced production process the cabs are first cleaned, after which they receive a primer bath and, several sequential steps further, the final paint-layers (“in any desired color”). The painting-process shows typical characteristics of process industry: the sub-processes are highly interrelated, requiring perfect conditions of the product (body-in-white), the paint mixtures and the environment (totally dust-free and specific climate conditions). 10

Introduction

In the assembly area the complete cab is trimmed and made ready to be assembled at Volvo Gothenburg or Gent (Kuipers & De Witte 2005a; Thompson & Wallace 1996). Ninety percent of the work during this process is performed manually, and as a result over one third of the plant’s operators work in this area. Until the end of 2001, the shop floor for cab trimming consisted of about 20 shortflows and 10 dashboard-shops. The organization of the assembly area back then consisted of two identical departments, each responsible for about half of the production. The short-flow layout is a unique concept of entirely parallel short production lines in which a team is responsible for the trimming of an entire cab. In a well-trained team the workers are able ‘to follow’ the cab around the short-flow. With the introduction of new FM and FH models at the end of 2001, a redesign of the final assembly was carried out to improve the logistical system and to change the short-flow structure. The first two stations of the short-flow were transferred to newly built pre-flow lines. The work cycles per station in both pre-flow and shortflow were shortened, although even then taking up to 45 minutes per station, and the operators still ‘follow’ the cab through the entire flow. With the redesign the structure of the two departments has also been reorganized. One department is now called pre-assembly department and supplies dashboards, paddle-plates and pre-assembled cabs to the short-flows of the final assembly department. The logistics department is responsible for all in-going, internal and outgoing logistics of the plant. Most of the employees in this department are responsible for material handling by supplying all processes. Other parts include the shipping department, responsible for the transportation of cabs to Gent and Gothenburg, and the logistics development department, responsible for the design and development of the logistical system of the plant. The engineering department is a large supporting department, responsible for a variety of tasks. First of all there are a number of sub-departments responsible for the technical support and for the further development of each of the production departments. Most of the employees in the engineering department, however, work with maintenance, which requires for some sections in the process to be operating 24-hours per day. The remaining sub-departments of engineering involve quality, construction and facility services, as well as a special-projects department. The remaining supporting departments are predominantly administrative. The financial department takes care of controlling, accounting, inventory and invoices. The personnel department consists of the plant’s health-care team, PR and salary administration, besides the usual HR-officers. The latter team is responsible for the full range of Human Resource activities and thus supports and develops management and personnel in all the other departments. Finally, the planning department is a small department responsible for all the plant’s production planning and for fine-tuning production plans with the Volvo sales offices and Umeå’s direct customers: the Volvo production plants in Gent and Gothenburg.

11

PART I

1.5.2 Work Teams at Volvo Umeå Teamwork has been used for a long time at Volvo Umeå, although none of the experiments in Volvo’s former car-division served as a model until the beginning of the 1990s. During those years all Volvo’s cab-assembly activities were concentrated in the Umeå plant. On the worker-union’s initiative, work teams were formally introduced with an accompanying work organization, rotating team coordinators and a development and incentive program to give every individual operator the opportunity to become fully multi-functional in his or her department. The sociotechnical principle was applied furthest in the newly built assembly area with short-flows, where employees have a high degree of freedom to determine their own pace and working structure. The introduction of work teams took the usual route (cf. Van Hootegem, Benders, Delarue, & Procter 2005): the “proper organizational structure” was set up and teams were thought to be self-managing. In 1997, however, the plant management was changed and an organization development program (OD-program) was introduced to give teamwork a new impulse by providing a more systematic focus on performance issues. During yearly OD-sessions all teams in the plant had to formulate goals, which were followed-up weekly during team meetings with support of internal OD-consultants. Since then more activities were developed to further structure and institutionalize teamwork, with for example a leadership program and an employee program. Also, step by step, the number of managers was increased from one manager per 4-8 teams to one manager per 2-4 teams. Generally all teams at Volvo Umeå can be considered as work teams (Cohen & Bailey, 1997), while a further distinction can be made between production teams, present in all production departments, and service teams, present in all supporting departments (Sundstrom, McIntyre, Halfhill, & Richards 2000). Formally, one concept of teamwork exists throughout the plant. In Berggren’s terminology (1993) this is the strong group organization, with a high degree of decentralization, delegation of managerial and support tasks to the team, goal orientation, performance responsibility, and the team’s self-selected group coordinator. Concerning the latter I need to remark that coordinators selected by the team do not exist in the supporting departments, where only formal managers are present. In the production areas this team coordinator is indeed selected by the team in mutual agreement with the team manager. However, in practice the coordinator is not rotating, as intended at the introduction of the work organization in the beginning of the 1990s. The European and global truck markets appear to be sensitive to economic trends. Together with several important internal reorganizations, such as in the finalassembly by the end of 2001, Volvo Umeå faced radical capacity and personnel changes. In the period between 2000 and 2004 the plant experienced both periods of economic prosperity and declines. As a result hundreds of people have been hired and laid off during a rather limited period. All of these changes are reflected 12

Introduction

in the composition of teams, which indeed has not been stable for any team. This truly is a major challenge for team development.

1.6 Overview of Content This thesis is divided into 5 parts which do not follow the more traditional composition of a dissertation with first theory, then methodology and after that results. Instead, the parts are built around the three research questions that were presented earlier in section 1.4 1.4 of Part I. Part II relates to the first research question, in which a model for team responsiveness is developed. Chapter 2 outlines the theoretical framework of team responsiveness, after which the data, methods and results are described. Chapter 3 introduces the second research question: the relationship between team responsiveness and results. It provides the theoretical framework and describes the data and methods. Part III is more of a testing nature. It tests empirically the relationship of team responsiveness with business performance (Chapter 4) and, respectively, with the quality of working life (Chapter 5). Part IV is a more exploratory one. It elaborates the theoretical framework of team responsibilities (Chapter 6), and it attempts to trace its relationship to team responsiveness guided by a couple of hypotheses (Chapter 7). Part V contains the final chapter of this thesis. Chapter 8 summarizes the findings of this study, presents the overall model, describes the strengths and weaknesses of the research, and concludes with practical applications for team development.

13

PART II

PART II RESPONSIVENESS: Dimensions of Team Responsiveness and Their Relations to Team Responsibilities and Team Results

14

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

Chapter 2

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams In this chapter I will focus on the developmental processes of work teams. As Campion et al. (1993) put it “Process describes the things that go on in the group that influence effectiveness”. I will discuss some of the current approaches for such processes and further elaborate on their most important aspects in working towards a renewed approach.

2.1 Introduction to the Literature Group dynamics literature includes a number of approaches on group or team development, most of which are phase theories. As can be read in the voluminous work Group Dynamics by Forsyth (1999), most development theories concern the steps that groups go through from the early beginning: individuals come together, form a group, change to an effective group and (possibly) separate again after a certain period of time. A famous example of this is the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Theory by Schutz (1958; 1992). Most commonly used and cited in groupdynamics literature (Miller 2003) is the group development theory by Tuckman (1965), later extended by Tuckman and Jensen (1977), describing the five stages a group goes through: Forming. The initial group phase of orientation between group members and testing of interpersonal and task behavior. Storming. The second stage of the group process in which interpersonal conflicts and positioning are the basis of ‘group influence and task requirements’. Norming. Overcoming the resistances of the second phase are the inputs for group cohesiveness and developing norms and roles in the third phase. Performing. This is the fourth stage of group development and focuses on task performance. The roles and group structure developed in norming are the basis for accomplishing the task. 15

PART II

Adjourning. In this final phase the group separates and, in a new form, starts again with forming. Tuckman (1965) built his theory about the conception of “interpersonal stages of group development” and “task behaviors” on the “contention … that any group, regardless of setting, must address itself to the successful completion of a task. At the same time, and often through the same behaviors, group members will be relating to one another interpersonally”. He based his stages of group development on extensive literature concerning findings in therapy groups, training groups, and natural and laboratory groups. Despite the popularity of Tuckman’s model, there is also some fundamental criticism on phase theories like Tuckman’s. This criticism is fourfold. The first is that team development often deviates from the sequential steps in phase development (Forsyth 1999). Groups omit certain phases as defined by Tuckman, move through the phases in different orders or develop in ways that cannot be described by Tuckman’s phases (Seeger 1983). The second is that there is no exact demarcation between the phases, because certain group dynamical aspects do not occur timely nor in sequential order (Arrow 1997). Thus, teams in practice do not always develop according to clear distinguishable phases. Third, the theory is based on the temporal patterns of time-limited therapy and laboratory groups, and it is questionable whether these patterns well-describe the processes of work teams. As Cohen and Bailey emphasize: “The findings from studies of undergraduate psychology or business students are much less likely to apply to practicing managers, employees or executives” (Cohen & Baily 1997). Further, many of the studies performed in laboratories do not examine the organizational features external to teams (Cohen & Baily 1997). Fourth, Tuckman’s model tells us little about the relations to the inputs and outputs of the phases. The final phase makes a link to task completion, but this is a rather general description of performance. The model’s main concern remains to be the sequence by which group behavior occurs. I regard team development as the whole of inputs, processes and outputs of work teams. A first model has been depicted in the previous chapter, and in the following sections I will further elaborate the process element of this model, called responsiveness. I will use the definition of team responsiveness in terms of action and behavior instead of design and conditions. Another important aspect of my definition is that team responsiveness is a process of self-management, which changes over time depending on the (changes of) inputs to teams. It are the development and levels of these self-management processes that eventually lead to better team results. Team responsiveness is the group process of self-management in terms of actions and behavior in relation to given responsibilities (tasks, goals and challenges, desired outcomes). 16

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

Following Marks, Mathieu and Zaccaro (2001), I specifically do not refer to team developmental processes as “emergent states: constructs that characterize properties of the team that are typically dynamic in nature and vary as a function of team context, inputs, processes, and outcomes.” Such emergent states “tap qualities of a team that represent member attitudes, values, cognitions, and motivations” (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro 2001), whereas I am interested in the team’s processes of actions and behavior. I distinguish several streams in the literature that deals with the subject of developmental processes of teams. These I broadly define as: 1

Consultancy phase models

2

Sociotechnical phase models

3

Recurring phase models

4

Process models

In the following sections I will discuss the important literature for each of these streams. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, all of them provide valuable aspects. I have summarized and used these in my study of Volvo to answer the first research question: How can the team developmental processes be described? Therefore, in the sections after the theoretical discussion I will present the methods and the study’s results that will answer this question.

2.2 Phase Models and Process Models In this section I will discuss the key literature in each of the distinguished streams of theory. I will start off with the phase models developed within the American consultancy, since these are the contemporary models in practice and some of them belong to the “most commonly cited” and are used by both “full-time practitioners” and “academic practitioners” (Offerman & Spiros 2001). Together with the sociotechnical models, which will be discussed after that, these form the prescriptive streams. Next, I will introduce the basics of the recurring phase models which can be considered as descriptive. Having introduced these three types of phase theories, I shall subsequently discuss their received criticism, to then conclude by presenting the process models as an alternative to phase theories. 2.2.1 Consultancy Phase Models In the previous section I described some ideas on the development of groups in general. In the 1990’s, however, a huge interest emerged for teamwork in organizations, and with this “fashion” a number of theories on more applied phase models appeared. Two well-known approaches by American gurus are described in this section. Typical of these approaches are their message of best practice. Although clear similarities can be seen with Tuckman’s theory, the here described 17

PART II

approaches by Katzenbach & Smith (1993) and Wellins, Byham and Wilson (1991) pay more attention to team commitment, team goals, team responsibilities and team management as a practical way to reach so-called high-performance in organizations. Katzenbach & Smith (1993) basically describe a so-called team performance curve (see Figure 2) based on their impressions from management teams, project teams and teams of professionals (like marketing teams, R&D teams, and so forth). In their diagram they relate the horizontal axis, which describes team effectiveness in terms of how well the group or team works together, to the vertical axis, which shows the performance that the team reaches. They start explaining the difference between a working group and a team by saying that the working group is more a combination of individuals relying on the sum of “individual bests”, while there is no clear common purpose or performance goal that demands a joint accountability (Katzenbach & Smith 1993). Teams distinguish themselves from working groups by common tasks, goals and collective accountability, as well as by the necessity to work as a team to perform and reach these goals. Nevertheless, Katzenbach and Smith (1993) differentiate between team types starting with pseudo-teams, which are weaker than working groups because they have no performance focus or performance achievement, and ending with high-performing teams, which are characterized by a deep commitment to mutual growth and success and thus outperform all other teams.

Performance Impact

Team performance curve high perform ing team real team

w orking group

potential team

pseudo team

Team Effectiveness

Figure 2

18

Team performance curve (source: Katzenbach & Smith, 1993)

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

Wellins, Byham & Wilson (1991) focus more on work teams at lower levels in the organization and describe team development as the amount of group empowerment due to increasing levels of job responsibility and authority. They refer to this as the team empowerment continuum and explain how a team in the final level takes care of about 80% of the total possible job responsibilities. They use this maximum of approximately 80%, because they believe that even in the most autonomous organization there will always be leaders who are responsible for a certain share of managing tasks. Later on, Wellins et al. (1991) describe four stages, followed by recommendations on how teams need to be supported and developed in these steps to eventually reach the final level of maximum empowerment. The basics of these development stages show similarities with Tuckman’s stages (1965). In stage 1, getting started, teams are seen as a “diverse collection of individuals”. Team commitment or a feeling of interdependency between the team members is not present yet. Going in circles is what Wellins et al. (1991) call stage 2. The team members start to get a certain team-feeling, and by being more focused on the tasks to be performed, a process of role ambiguity begins. The authors compare the group at this stage with a maturing teenager. The stage also shows similarities with Katzenbach & Smith’s earlier mentioned “pseudo team”, in the sense of a “great letdown” (Wellins, Byham, & Wilson 1991) or “weak performance impact” (Katzenbach & Smith 1993). Stage 3, getting on course, is the phase of concentrating on the goals and dealing with new and crisis situations. Differences in team members, in terms of leadership capacity and expertise, become very clear but are also recognized as helpful for creative processes. In the final stage, full speed ahead, the team focuses on continuous improvement and becoming proactive. In this stage the group can be considered as self-directing and has reached the highest degree of empowerment. 2.2.2 Sociotechnical Phase Models STS, like the LP approach, does not include specific theories on group behavior or group process (cf. Kuipers, De Witte, & Van der Zwaan 2004). STS is rather to be considered as a design theory, except perhaps for some sociotechnical alternatives like the Democratic Dialogue (Van Eijnatten 1993; Toulmin & Gustavsen 1996). Criticism on the lack of attention for processes in STS comes for instance from Labor Process Theories (Huijgen & Pot 1995). Nevertheless, there are phase models that apply the sociotechnical principles. As an introduction to these phase models I will briefly discuss these principles as identified by Morgan (1993). He calls them “the principles of self-organization and the holographic organization”. At first Morgan (1993) defines the principle of redundancy of functions, by saying that any system requires some extra space to move. By providing a system with more capacities to act than strictly required for pre-determined actions, it gains in possibilities for self-organization. In a practical sense this means that extra functions are added to a system, like a team; and its members are becoming multifunctional and as a result can replace each other when necessary. The holographic 19

PART II

picture of redundant functions in this case means that any team member reflects the capabilities of the team as a whole. The second principle of self-organization is that of requisite variety, meaning that any system should be as diverse as the environment in which it acts. This principle is also known as Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (1958). A control system requires all possible capabilities to act, in order to cope with all possible changes in the environment and survive. The capabilities of a system in a simple and predictable environment, therefore, can be much simpler and less varied than the capabilities of a system in a complex and turbulent environment, where constant new actions are required. The principle of requisite variety also suggests that the redundancy of functions should be positioned there where the action takes place. Minimum critical specification (Morgan 1993), meaning that not everything should be defined into detail, is the third principle. Following this principle creates a large internal flexibility in a system, since many different forms of organizing are possible if only the absolutely necessary aspects of a job are defined. The idea is completely opposite to a bureaucratic design, which tries to control by detailed defined action, thereby removing the opportunities to act flexibly on undefined variances, and, as a result, reducing the possibilities for self-organization. Morgan (1993) warns how the principle of minimum critical specification can potentially create chaos by its extended possibilities for flexibility and therefore the principle of learning to learn is indispensable. Learning, both single-loop and double-loop, “allow a system to guide itself with reference to a set of coherent values and norms, while questioning whether these norms provide an appropriate basis for guiding behavior” (Morgan 1993). These coherent values and norms are required for giving guidance to the system’s members in situations where little structure is present. Based on these sociotechnical principles Van Amelsvoort and Scholtes (1994) developed a phase model for work teams (see Figure 3), which is also inspired by Katzenbach and Smith (1993) and Tuckman and Jensen (1977). In every phase, aspects of the sociotechnical concept are involved (Hut & Molleman 1998; Kuipers & De Witte 2005a; Van Amelsvoort & Benders 1996; Van Amelsvoort & Van Amelsvoort 2000): 1

Job enlargement implies the broadening of the types of tasks performed. It increases the job content by focusing on the redundancy of functions and multi-functionality. All members of the team must be able to perform the primary tasks of the team, also identified as ‘technical proficiency’.

2

Job enrichment implies empowering team members by adding more decisionmaking authority to their tasks, and thereby increasing the team’s responsibility. The principal characteristic of this phase is “minimal critical specification”. Managers, from production as well as from supporting departments, delegate some of their responsibilities to the team such as quality and planning activities.

20

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

3

Cooperation is described as the ‘self-reliance of the team’. In other words, the teams become ‘socially mature’. The team has to work as a team, and this involves teambuilding, working on communication, and joint decision-making. The team grows in autonomy independent of its supervisor.

4

Continuous improvement. The principles of this phase are ‘double-loop learning’, the capacity to solve most non-routine problems. Put differently, it concerns improving one’s own initiative, and ‘management of team boundaries’. This latter aspect is based on Katz & Kahn (1978) and has to do with the development of a ‘performance focus’, building relationships with other teams, customers and suppliers. Productivity and QWL Open team Team Group Bundling of individuals Focus

Figure 3

Multi-skilling Team meetings Feedback performance

Managerial tasks Analysis of performance

Team-building Productivity appraisal Individual appraisal Goal-setting

External relations Appraisal of team-leader and support staff

Time

Sociotechnical phase model (source: Van Amelsvoort & Benders, 1996)

Empirical support for the model by Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996) is very scarce. The authors mention to have investigated 267 teams by a “quick-scan”, but the items of this scan and the methods of measurement remain unclear. However, they report that 26% of the teams were just established (1996), 63% were in phase two, 8 % entered phase three and none of them reached the fourth phase. Hut and Molleman (1998) further developed the previous model by integrating it with the theories of Wellins, Byham, & Wilson (1991) and Campion, Medsker & Higgs (1993). Their article presents the outcomes of a small survey measuring these four successive phases. Though the sample was rather small (four teams only), the results are nevertheless interesting. They show that the measured teams cannot be positioned in one single phase at a time. Instead, teams develop in all 21

PART II

four phases at the same time. Nevertheless, for three of the sampled four teams the first phase had been developed the most, followed by the second, the third and finally the fourth phase; this overlapping pattern of the phases suggests that teams move from “simple to complex” tasks (see Figure 4). Level of empowerment

stage 4 – developmental learning, boundary management stage 3 – teamwork

stage 2 – job enrichment

stage 1 – job enlargement

Time

Figure 4

An alternative sociotechnical phase model by Hut & Molleman (1998)

2.2.3 Recurring Phase Models Criticism regarding Tuckman-like successive phase-theories lead to another perspective on phases of teamwork. Many scholars in this field argue that the developmental process is much more complex than a number of sequential phases. Seeger (1983) notes, for instance, that groups move through phases in different orders or develop in ways that cannot be easily described by Tuckman’s model. Gersick (1988; 1989) studied the development of groups and introduced two main phases, instead of four or five (Tuckman 1965; Tuckman & Jensen 1977). Her punctuated equilibrium model describes an initial phase, which in the mid-point of the group’s time-span undergoes a transition, after which the team comes into a certain action phase to reach its deadlines. Gersick’s model is an accepted alternative to Tuckman’s phase-theory (Miller 2003) and as such has delivered input to other models, such as the recurring phase theory by Marks, Mathieu and Zaccaro (2001). Marks et al. (2001) define team processes as “members’ interdependent acts that convert inputs to outcomes through cognitive, verbal, and behavioral activities directed toward organizing task work to achieve collective goals”. Their much more descriptive approach is based on the “idea that 22

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

teams perform in temporal cycles of goal-directed activity, called ‘episodes’” (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro 2001). They describe ten sub-processes that are part of a transition and action phase, called episodes, and interpersonal processes occurring “throughout both transition and action phases, and typically lay the foundation for the effectiveness of other processes”. These ten sub-processes are divided over the two episodes and the interpersonal process. Transition phase: mission analysis, goal specification, and strategy formulation and planning. Action phase: monitoring progress toward goals, systems monitoring, team monitoring and backup, and coordination. Interpersonal processes: conflict management, motivation and confidence building, and affect management. Both the theories of Gersick (1988; 1989) and Marks et al. (2001) can be labeled as recurring phase theories, with transaction and action taking turns through time for different tasks or sub-tasks. 2.2.4 Critics to Phase Models for Work Teams In this section I will summarize the criticisms towards the three types of phase models. Katzenbach & Smith (1993) and Wellins et al. (1991) use the, by origin descriptive, stage approach of Tuckman (1965) as a normative one. Its tools and methods can be very helpful to improve teamwork, but its definition of the phases is rather vague and so is its connection to performance. The approaches give little help to measure the stages of team development and the empirical basis is rather poor. Stronger defined but also with little empirical basis are the sociotechnical models, such as the one by Van Amelsvoort and Benders (1996). The few empirical studies performed with these models do not support the idea of phases. Hut and Molleman (1998) present the outcomes of a small survey, which shows that teams develop in all four phases at the same time and therefore they suggest a pattern “of complexity in main themes”. A longitudinal study among a larger number of teams showed that even such a pattern could not be discovered (Kuipers & De Witte 2005a). A study of SMWT’s in eleven companies by De Leede and Stoker (1996) also could not find any linear developments as were described by Van Amelsvoort and Scholtes (1994). They conclude that the normative character of phase theories might partly explain this. De Leede (1997) claims also that Van Amelsvoort and Scholtes (1994) connect structural change, changing and extending the tasks of teams with each phase, with a group dynamical change, going from a group of individuals to a clear distinguishable self-steering team. He wonders if the transitions of the structural change can take place at the exact same time as the transitions of the group dynamical change. Despite all criticism to these theories, their role in team development practice should not be underestimated. Offerman and Spiros (2001), for example, report that Katzenbach and Smith’s “The Wisdom of Teams” (1993) is the “most 23

PART II

commonly cited” book used by both “full-time practitioners” and “academic 5 practitioners” in the United States. More nuanced, more carefully theoretically constructed and to some extent empirically founded, are the recurring phase models. Though interesting and rather promising, there is a problem with these theories for the study of work teams. Both Marks et al. (2001) and Gersick (1989) describe their process models as general for groups or work teams. However, the characteristics they describe seem to be more suitable for groups with a limited, often pre-defined, lifetime, such as project teams, groups of students et cetera. A superior problem is that the empirical basis of their theories comes mainly from studies carried out among groups of students in laboratories. The nature of such groups is difficult if not impossible to compare to that of work teams (cf. Cohen & Bailey, 1997). Work teams, in production or service, most often do not have a predefined lifetime or a clear deadline for a larger task. Instead, they often exist for many years, undergo many changes internally and externally during their life span, have relatively short working cycles and repetitive smaller tasks, and need to deliver a constant stream of products or services. A clear beginning and end with two phases, as Gersick (1988; 1989) defines, cannot straightforwardly be translated to work teams. Marks, Mathieu and Zaccaro (2001), in that respect, provide a less specific model by introducing the concept of episodes, which constantly recur for each task. This too has a downside for work teams: it is not an easy job to measure every episode for every task or sub-task of an average work team on the shop-floor of a manufacturing site, especially not when these episodes can in turn be broken down into ten processes. This implies that recurring phase theories are theoretically interesting, but less appropriate for real work teams. Overall, the phase theories lack a clear empirical basis stemming from real work teams and are often poorly defined for scientific use. 2.2.5 Process Models Although not explicitly labeled as a separate stream of literature, a fourth approach can be distinguished, so-called process models (Stoker & Kuipers 2005). I will discuss two examples of such models that clearly distinguish themselves from the previously introduced phase theories and recurring phase theories. Both are embedded in theory and empirical work in the field of work teams. The major distinction between these process theories and the phase theories is the order of appearance of team process characteristics. Process models claim that the different processes they present are not specifically ordered in phases. Instead, 5

A similar status might have been reached in the Netherlands for the approach developed by Van Amelsvoort.

24

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

these are merely simultaneous processes that occur during the existence of a team. Dunphy and Bryant (1996) come from a different tradition than the consultancy based phase theories. They define three team attributes that are “…creating an agenda for team development”. Their three team attributes are: 1) technical expertise, 2) self-management and 3) self-leadership. The content of the first two are quite similar to the earlier defined first two phases of the sociotechnical model (job enlargement and job enrichment). In technical expertise “team members may broaden their technical skills through multi-skilling to enable them to perform a wider subset of the team’s task” (Dunphy & Bryant 1996). Self-management concerns the delegation of “operational responsibilities” from the manager to the team. Self-leadership involves both elements of cooperation and continuous improvement (phase three and four in the models by Van Amelsvoort & Benders 1996; and Hut & Molleman 1998). Teams developed in this attribute are regarded as the self-governing basic units of the organization, playing a strategic role and providing “better and faster communication both within and outside the team’s boundaries” (Dunphy & Bryant 1996). Although the content of the three attributes corresponds with the description of several phases in the phase theories, there are a number of differences between the two approaches. Firstly, Dunphy and Bryant (1996) do not connect their team attributes to successive group dynamical phases. Secondly, unlike the authors (Katzenbach & Smith 1993; Van Amelsvoort & Benders 1996; Wellins, Byham, & Wilson 1991) who mention high-performing teams without clearly identifying its meaning or the type of performance, Dunphy and Bryant (1996) clearly link their team attributes to different elements of team performance. Another important distinction is that Dunphy and Bryant (1996) introduce the idea that teams can develop each of the attributes simultaneously, and that this development relates to performance. However, their focus on intra-group relations, such as cooperation issues, is underexposed. The other theory I would like to introduce in this context is Gladstein’s concept of group processes (1984). In her study among 100 small sales teams (2-4 persons), she showed that her measurement of group processes was clearly dividable into an intra-group process and a boundary management process. The first includes aspects such as open communication, supportiveness, conflict management and discussion of strategies. All of these can be found in both phase theories and recurring phase theories as well. The concept of boundary management on the other hand, which she defines as the “degree of misunderstanding with external groups” (Gladstein 1984), does not receive attention in the theories by Gersick (1988) and Marks et al. (2001), and only to some extend in the final stages of the phase theories. Gladstein (1984) stresses the importance of the difference between the two types of processes: “Clearly, in organizational settings many groups cannot work in the isolation enjoyed by groups in a laboratory setting. 25

PART II

These groups need to manage their boundaries and adapt to their organizational environment” (Gladstein 1984). Another strength of Gladstein’s theory, is that it intends to describe the processes occurring in teams without trying to order what comes first and what comes last. Gladstein (1984) considers the intra-group processes and boundary management as parallel processes. Another revenue of Gladstein’s concept is that it clearly recognizes the interaction with the environment, which cannot be found in the recurring phase theories by Gersick (1988; 1989) or Marks et al. (2001). Like Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Gladstein (1984) emphasizes the relationship between processes and team performance. However, unlike Dunphy & Bryant (1996) she does not pay attention to aspects like technical expertise, neither does she regard the concept of self-management in her study. A disadvantage is that the empirical data that Gladstein uses, originates from small sales-teams, instead of from semiautonomous work teams as observed in this study. Summarizing, the most important contribution of the studies by Dunphy and Bryant (1996) and Gladstein (1984) is the idea of processes occurring simultaneously as teams develop. In their theories, each of those processes simply contributes differently to the outputs of teamwork. This clear connection to results and the possibility to consider various processes as simultaneous, instead of as phases, makes this approach very flexible and suitable for the purpose of my research. Another advantage in relation to my study is that the processes they suggest are complementary: where Dunphy and Bryant (1996) focus on the technical aspects of work processes and those of self-management, Gladstein (1984) stresses the importance of both intra-group relations, and relations between groups. I will use these two advantages of process models for my model of team responsiveness, which therefore can also be regarded as a process model. The empirical basis of process models, however, can still be strengthened further by a study of semiautonomous work teams, to which I hope to contribute in the following sections and chapters.

2.3 Towards a New Model for Team Responsiveness and Team Development Despite some important criticism summarized in the previous sections, there are clear and important similarities across all streams of literature that can be referred to as key-aspects of actions and behavior in work teams. In this section I will summarize these in an overview table. Following, the process models, as I will call them here, shall provide new insights on the developmental processes taking place within teams. By integrating the key-aspects from the overall literature and applying the process models’ ’thinking’, I will come towards a renewed approach for both team responsiveness specifically and team development in a broader perspective. I will do this by formulating each aspect in terms of team actions and team behavior, which teams can develop more or less simultaneously over time. I need 26

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

to stress that these key-aspects are not emergent states (cf. Marks et al., 2001) and that neither aspect forms a condition for another aspect, such as suggested by phase theories. Table 2 summarizes the key-aspects as I found them throughout the previously discussed literature. I want to stipulate that aspects have been taken from all four streams, and as such all have contributed to this overview. I used terminology and descriptions that lie as closely as possible to the ones that are used in the conventional literature. Besides referring to the authors, for the sake of completeness, the types of models in which each key-aspect can be found are also referred to. Table 2

Key-aspects of Actions and Behavior in Work Teams

Key-aspects

Definition

Authors

Model type

Goal orientation

Determining team goals

Katzenbach & Smith (1993), Marks et al. (2001), Wellins et al. (1991)

1,3

Planning activities

Team planning of work and support activities

Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,3

Feedback

Motivation, Marks et al. (2001), Gladstein (1984), assessment and Hut & Molleman (1998) constructive feedback in task performance

2,3,4

Conflict management

Handling cooperation and behavior problems

Marks et al. (2001), Gladstein (1984)

3,4

Multi-functionality Task flexibility and & job rotation appliance of multiskilling

Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

2,4

Delegated management & support tasks

Carrying out and arranging routine production support activities

Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,4

Work communication

Sharing work-related information

Gladstein (1984), Wellins et al. (1991), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996)

1,2,4

Decision making & control

Joint performance of managerial tasks

Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,4

27

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Key-aspects

Definition

Authors

Model type

Performance management

Actions to improve the team’s performance

Katzenbach & Smith (1993), Marks et al. (2001), Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,3,4

Improvement activities

Initiating and supporting product and process improvements

Katzenbach & Smith (1993), Marks et al. (2001), Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,3,4

Customer & supplier relationships

Maintaining relations with internal and external customers

Gladstein (1984), Katzenbach & Smith (1993), Wellins et al. (1991), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998)

1,2,4

Advanced management & support activities

Carrying out and Wellins et al. (1991), Dunphy & Bryant 1,2,4 arranging non-routine (1996), Van Amelsvoort & Benders (1996), Hut & Molleman (1998) production support activities 1 Consultancy phase models; 2 Sociotechnical phase models; 3 Recurring phase models; 4 Process models

My review of the literature suggests that there is little consensus on the overall definition of developmental patterns in work teams. Although most authors agree that semi-autonomous teams develop in some way towards more selfmanagement, there is by no means agreement on the process. As was shown, both prescriptive models and descriptive theoretical models co-exist. Their approaches seem to be on completely opposite ends of the scale, in terms of prescribing or describing. Moreover, the type of teams these theories refer to is diverse and often incomparable. However, one thing the different perspectives clearly have in common is their lack of empirical basis, because, except for the work of Gladstein (1984), very few studies were performed in ‘real’ team settings. These different perspectives stress the necessity to review some of the ideas concerning processes in work teams and improve our understanding of team development. Therefore, I shall look for dimensions underlying the twelve aspects. I base this on the ideas brought forward by the process models, indicating how teams are developing on different processes simultaneously. In doing so, I suggest using the term dimensions of team responsiveness. For the elaboration of this approach I will use: • 28

the previously defined twelve key-aspects

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

•

the idea of simultaneous processes

Whereas I criticize: •

the often suggested idea of sequential steps

•

the lack of empirical evidence from work teams

2.4 Methodology and Results This section will present the operationalization of my responsiveness concept and the data collection. Next I will discuss the data analysis and its outcomes. 2.4.1 Data and Sample The main source of data used in this study was a questionnaire filled out by all employees in the five production departments and five supporting departments of Volvo Umeå. The questionnaires were handed out by the team or department manager during one of the weekly team meetings and answered during work time. Three measurements have taken place between 2001 and 2003, each in the period March-April, with an intermediate period of one year. For my data collection I used questionnaires containing items for all twelve keyaspects as defined in Table 2. The five-point Likert scale items were selected from questionnaires developed by Hut and Molleman during their research at Philips (1998), the Work Groups Effectiveness Model by Campion et al. (1993), other research at Philips by De Leede (1997) and items previously developed for research at Volvo (Kuipers & De Witte 2005a). These items (table 3) cover the previously defined twelve key-aspects. The table provides an overview of the number of items used for each aspect, example items, and the Cronbach’s Alpha’s calculated for each aspect (showing sufficient reliability) per year of measurement. I have specifically used items that reflect actions and behavior of teams, in other words, no items refer to emergent states (Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro 2001) or actions and behavior of individual team members. A total of 46 items were used to measure responsiveness. Table 3

Items for the Twelve Key-aspects of Actions and Behavior in Work Teams (alpha’s are subsequently for 2001, 2002 and 2003)

Key-aspects

No. of items

Example item

Cronbach’s alpha’s*

Goal orientation

2

Team goals are formulated by the team and based on the company’s goals

.76, .76, .74

Planning activities

4

The team formulates its own weekly production .79, .76, .78 plan

29

PART II

Key-aspects

No. of items

Example item

Cronbach’s alpha’s*

Feedback

3

The team members address to each other in case of mistakes in the task performance

.70, .63, .67

Conflict management

4

The team members solve internal cooperation problems without management interference

.78, .77, .81

Multi-functionality 5 & job rotation

The team members often interchange tasks

.78, .77, .79

Delegated management & support tasks

4

The team carries out the routine maintenance

.74, .75, .75

Work communication

2

The team members share information about the work

.64, .70, .66

Decision making & control

6

The team divides the tasks

.76, .84, .86

Performance management

3

The team acts on mistakes

.68, .67, .70

Improvement activities

4

The team members often take initiatives for improvement

.76, .76, .77

Customer & supplier relationships

4

The team solves problems with internal customers

.87, .86, .88

Advanced 5 The team arranges back-up and support when .69, .72, .73 management & necessary support activities * The samples range between n=1293 (in 2001) and n=1507 (in 2002)

During the three years of measurement more than 150 teams have been ‘followed’ with this questionnaire. Descriptions of these teams and the departments and processes in which they operate have been provided in 1.5. The total sample of 2001, 2002 and 2003 is summarized in table 4. The numbers of teams and individuals, as well as the response rates are mentioned for each year of measurement.

30

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

Table 4

Data Sample of Teams and Individuals for Team Responsiveness, Research Period 2001-2003 2001

2002

2003

Press & Detail Shop Teams Individuals

23 (282)

25 (265)

26 (238)

Body-in-white Dept. Teams Individuals

17 (263)

20 (272)

20 (245)

Paint Shop Teams Individuals

22 (339)

22 (361)

21 (348)

Pre-Assembly Dept. Teams Individuals

15* (183)

37 (369)

38 (405)

Final Assembly Dept. Teams Individuals

39* (630)

26 (442)

25 (365)

Engineering & Technicians Teams Individuals

11 (284)

14 (278)

13 (274)

Material Handling Dept. Teams Individuals

14 (168)

12 (183)

12 (186)

Supporting Dept.’s Teams Individuals

11 (66)

12 (63)

12 (64)

Total teams

152

168

167

Total individuals

1561 (73%)

1715 (76%)

1547 (68%)

Department

* Departments reorganized by the end of 2001 (see section 1.5 )

2.4.2 Results of Factor Analyses To explore the dimensions underlying the twelve key-aspects, a so-called factor analysis is carried out. Simply put, this analysis groups the items that highly correlate in factors that do not correlate with each other. These factors are also 31

PART II

called latent variables. With factor analysis one pursues factors that explain the maximum amount of variance with the smallest number of explanatory concepts (Field 2000). The exploratory factor analysis was carried out on the 46 items of the questionnaire, for each year separately. Factor loadings ranged between .320 and .840. The outcomes of the KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy can be considered as ‘superb’ (Field 2000), since all were above .9 (.94 in 2001 and 2002, .95 in 2003). Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity showed highly significant results for all three years (p< .001), which allows continuing the factor analysis. First the scree-plots with eigenvalues were analyzed for 2001, 2002 and 2003, to understand the relative importance for each of the factors. In all three years the point of inflexion of the curve (cf. Field, 2000) lies with three factors, while for the remaining number of factors there are relatively low eigenvalues. Also the theoretical interpretation of these three factors (which will be discussed in the next section) appeared to be the easiest. As a result, a Varimax rotated factor analysis has been performed to provide three factors for each year of measurement (see Appendix A). It is not allowed to combine the data of different years in the same factor analysis, since data depends on the data of the year before. Therefore, first the analysis had to be carried out for each year separately and then a congruence test was used to determine the extent to which factors were comparable for each year of analysis. For this test the formula of Gorsuch (1974) has been applied6. To test this congruence the factor loadings for each year were compared; 2001 with 2002, 2002 with 2003 and 2001 with 2003. In order to claim replication of the factors for each pair of years the factor congruence should be above .9. This requirement is met for each of the factors, with .95 for 2001-2002, .99 for 20022003 and .95 for 2001-2003. The explained variance for each of the factors lies between 10 and 20 percent per year, with a total explained variance between 41 and 45 percent for all three factors together (table 5). The Cronbach reliability per factor had alpha’s ranging between .85 and .93 per year, implying sufficient reliability (see also Appendix A). Table 5

Percentage of Total Variance Explained (rotation sums of squared loadings)

Factor

2001

2002

2003

1 2 3 total

19.238 11.998 10.879 42.115

15.853 13.653 11.966 41.472

19.310 13.430 11.871 44.611

6

Jeremy Miles, Regression Theory at the Essex Summer school 2003, kindly provided an SPSS Syntax file and all possible help to perform this congruence test.

32

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

2.4.2.1 The Three Factors at Two Other Organizations To have a first check of the “external” validity of the three factors, I obtained data of two other organizations7. Both studies used the same items for team responsiveness as I used at the Volvo study. The first study was at a Dutch production facility of a large automotive manufacturer, where data was collected of 23 production teams (Peppelman 2003). A total of 435 employees in this organization answered the questionnaire. The second study was at a waste management and transportation company in the Netherlands, where data was obtained on nine teams by 52 respondents (Bozon 2004). With the combined datafile of these two organizations, I carried out a Varimax rotated factor analysis for three factors. The factor loadings were tested for congruency with the factor loadings of Volvo in 2003. The congruency appeared to be .88, which is slightly below the suggested .9 required for claiming congruence (Gorsuch 1974). Deeper analysis of the single item congruencies, however, showed that two items for factor 3 (comparable to factor 3 in table 5) have a rather low score. After removing these items the total factor congruence improves to the required .9. I concluded that the same three factors are found as for Volvo, with the exclusion of two items. The Cronbach reliability alpha for factor 1 is .91, as it is for factor 2, while factor 3 has an alpha of .85. The explained variance for the three factors is respectively 22%, 14% and 10%, with a total of 46%.

2.5 Three Dimensions of Team Responsiveness Figure 5 shows the three dimensions of team responsiveness, which are the result of the factor analysis. The dimensions, with their subsequent aspects are discussed with support of the literature. I call the first dimension (factor 3, in table 5) of actions and behavior in work teams joint management, which is comparable to the internal process dimension of Marks et al. (2001) and to Gladstein’s intra-group process (1984). Joint management can be defined as the extent to which the team manages internal processes and common accountability. Joint management includes all activities that potentially connect the members as a team. The team can be seen as a clear, more or less independent unit. As such, it defines team goals based on the overall organizational goals, plans its own activities, and takes care of the internal processes of feedback and conflict management. Important elements of these aspects related to this dimension are the internal relationships and the group oriented attitude. Scores on this dimension show to what extent there is real teamfocus within the team. Marks et al. (2001) note that “…interpersonal processes, typically lay the foundation for the effectiveness of other processes…”.

7

Thanks to the valuable work of two of my students: Diedrik Peppelman and Karlijn Bozon.

33

PART II

Joint management Conflict Management

-

Goal orientation Planning activities Feedback

-

Job management Multi-functionality & job rotation Decision making & control Work communication Performance management Delegated management & support activities

-

Boundary management Improvement activities Customer & supplier relationships Advanced management & support activities

Figure 5 Three dimensions of team responsiveness The second dimension (factor 1 in table 5) is most related to Dunphy and Bryant’s (1996) attribute for technical expertise and partly to the attribute of selfmanagement, since it is also clearly related to increased responsibilities. This dimension I call job management, which stands for the extent to which the team manages the broadening and deepening of its function. It includes characteristics of both job enlargement and job rotation; such as multi-functionality, job enrichment with the aspects of decision-making and control, and delegated managerial and support tasks. The reason why the characteristics of these two theoretically different concepts are combined into one factor of team responsiveness is most likely related to the work and the worker. An operator in, for instance, the assembly, sees the entire job he or she needs to do (consisting of manual assembling, planning ones tasks, carrying out small maintenance required to fulfill ones duties, rotating with other team members and helping them where necessary). For someone’s work, it is not an explicit issue whether he or she is developing enlargement or enrichment, technical aspects or managerial aspects; this rather is an abstract division, which in daily work practice is a complex combination of tasks and sub-tasks related to the full performance of the operational function. The other aspects of this dimension are work-related communication and performance management, which are crucial to tuning the team and having it perform its broad and responsible tasks both together and properly. 34

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

The third dimension (factor 2 in table 5) is most related to Dunphy and Bryant’s self-management (1996) and Gladstein’s boundary management (1984). I call this dimension boundary management, meaning the extent to which the team explores and develops its boundaries. As such it is broader defined than Gladstein’s concept of boundary management. She defined it as the degree of misunderstanding between the team, individuals and groups outside. I, on the other hand, see boundary management as the relation of a team with its customers and suppliers rather than a question of understanding; moreover, it also includes all improvement activities as well as the team’s advanced managerial and support functions. On the one hand, teams on this dimension are managing relationships beyond their physical boundaries, such as those with other teams, customers or suppliers. On the other hand, they are challenging virtual boundaries by initiating new solutions to improve products and processes and to master and perform advanced tasks that previously belonged to management.

2.6 Team Responsiveness at Volvo Umeå In the previous section I defined three dimensions of team responsiveness. In this section I will look at the team responsiveness at Volvo Umeå with the help of Figure 6. The general trend in this figure indicates how the Press & Detail shop as well as the supporting departments show especially higher levels of responsiveness on all three dimensions. The Press & Detail shop is clearly the most developed production department. The lowest figures for job and joint management can be found for the body-in-white department. The assembly departments initially showed better results for these two dimensions, but in 2002 these went slightly down. The reorganization of this department (see 1.5 ) at the end of 2001 provides a possible explanation for this decline (Kuipers, De Witte, & Van der Zwaan 2004). The overall development between 2001 and 2003 of the three dimensions on plant level are not really impressive (see table 6). There is a slight curve for joint and job management of going down first in 2002 and going slightly up again in 2003. On the other hand, boundary management shows an upward trend over the years. I should clearly note here that these are the trends on the higher aggregation levels of department and plant. Individual teams (too many to show here), even within the same department, show very different developments. Teams appear to go up and down in responsiveness, and not in any predictable phases. Apparently ‘team development’ is not just an upward trend in phases; it is a dynamical pattern, with one dimension of responsiveness showing better levels than another dimension in the same team. This is another indication that phase theories are not suitable to describe processes of work teams. Teams rather develop on dimensions simultaneously, either up or down.

35

Body-inwhite

Final assembly

Material handling

Paint shop

Pre-assembly

Press & details

Supporting

PART II

2003

2002 2003

2002

2003

2002 2003

2002 2003

2002 2003

2002 2003

2002

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50 joint

Figure 6

36

2.00 job

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

4.50

5.00

boundary

Job, Joint and Boundary Management at Department Level at Volvo Umeå

Responsiveness: Processes of Work Teams

Table 6 Averages of Team Responsiveness at Volvo Umeå at the Highest Aggregation Level Dimension Joint Job Boundary

2001 (n=152) Mean 3.53 3.94 3.10

s.d. 0.39 0.34 0.48

2002 (n=168) Mean 3.42 3.90 3.11

s.d. 0.35 0.34 0.53

2003 (n=167) Mean 3.44 3.91 3.16

s.d. 0.38 0.34 0.51

2.7 Conclusions Reviewing the literature on group dynamics provided twelve key-aspects of team responsiveness. Next, an exploratory factor analysis indicated that these aspects can be divided into three dimensions of team responsiveness, consistent over time at Volvo Umeå and two other organizations. Teams simultaneously develop backwards and forwards in responsiveness; they do so on these three dimensions: joint, job and boundary management. Both the literature and the empirical results of this study show that the development of teams does not take place in phases. However, and most importantly, team responsiveness is not a goal in itself. Therefore it is crucial to find the relationships between team results and each of the dimensions, which will be the subject of the following chapters.

37

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Chapter 3

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results In chapter one I discussed the theoretical perspective on teamwork. Subsequently, I detailed an approach to team responsiveness in chapter two, which forms the heart of both the model and the research. In this chapter, I will further elaborate on the conceptual model by relating responsiveness to team results, following my second research question. I will define a number of hypotheses and discuss the methodology to test these.

3.1 Introduction to the Literature A number of publications provide overviews about the effects of teamwork on team results, of which the most important ones have been referred to earlier (Bettenhausen 1991; Cohen & Baily 1997; Sundstrom, McIntyre, Halfhill, & Richards 2000). The types of research on this subject are various. In an earlier publication, Kuipers and De Witte (2005a) made a characterization of types, which I will briefly summarize here. Type A: Generally assumed relationships between teamwork and performance. Much of the literature on teamwork is limited to generating assumptions about expected team performance. The phase theories referred to earlier, such as the ones postulated by Katzenbach and Smith (1993), and Van Amelsvoort and Benders (1998), are good examples. They describe how teams develop and what can be done to support teams developing in steps (in other words, by adjusting leadership style to the current phase of the team). Suzaki (1993), introduced the concept of “mini-companies”, which can be described as self-managing teams with a clear performance responsibility. These companies define their own goals and business plan, and can be regarded as small companies in the overall organization. Structured and regular performance feedback is expected to create an impetus to continuously improve the team’s products, services and processes. De Leede (1997), carried out an empirical study, which did not emphasize actual team performance but rather closely examined the contribution of these mini38

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

companies to continuous improvement (product and process-development). This study suggested that the teams made a clear contribution to the continuous improvement of the organization in terms of observations, ideas and suggestions towards improving production, quality (of both product and process) and quality of working life (QWL). However, concrete improvement in production, quality and QWL was not studied. Type B: Relationships between teamwork and subjective performance. Cohen and Ledford (1994) carried out an extensive study on the effects of self-managing teams at an American telecommunications company. This study showed that selfmanaged teams had significantly better outcomes on QWL than traditional working groups, particularly concerning different defined types of satisfaction. Group functioning and performance were also perceived to be much higher for the selfmanaged teams compared to the traditional groups. By asking the team managers about the actual performance criteria, the researchers also believed that they had identified significantly higher performance levels within the self-managing teams. Similar methods were used in a study among 6000 organizations within Europe, called the EPOC Survey by Benders et al. (1999). The participating organizations were divided into different grades of team organization from weak ‘groupdelegation’ to ‘team-based’. The conclusion of the study stated that “the reported economic effects are significant and are stronger the more intensely groupdelegation is applied”. These figures represent the management’s perception of the economic effects; they concern reductions in costs and throughput time as well as improvement in quality and increased output. Within the area of QWL, lower illness and absenteeism rates were reported within team-based organizations compared to organizations with lower degrees of group delegation. Type C: Small-scale studies of the relationships between teamwork and objective business performance. The Social Economic Advice Council for the Dutch government carried out a study at nine production companies in the Netherlands COB/SER (1991). This study revealed that organizations working with a production system based on sociotechnical principles have a better QWL compared to organizations with a more traditional production system. The study also indicated that these organizations have good opportunities to improve flexibility and controllability, “especially when they aim at shortening through-put time and improving delivery precision” (COB/SER 1991). Similar conclusions were drawn by Vink et al. (1996) regarding the relationship between teamwork and business performance (BP) at the Dutch postal service. This study compared the organization of two different postal sorting facilities (one applying teamwork, the other applying traditional working methods) on the effects on QWL and productivity. Besides QWL, BP was influenced by teamwork when compared to traditional working methods: productivity significantly increased within the team environment. In addition, the teams were better at utilizing machine capacity and handling fluctuations within the production process, and even showed increasing improvement in the latter. 39

PART II

Another overview, although more of team models in general, is presented by Yeatts & Hyten (1998). The authors base their model on an extensive literature study of other models. Many variations of input-process-output models are reviewed in this book, although none explicitly applies a concept of team developmental processes; also, the number and type of team results used is very vague. Dunphy & Bryant (1996) do connect their three team attributes multi-skilling, selfmanagement and self-leadership to three sets of performance outcomes. These performance sets, which they adapted from Hilmer (1991), are all related to socalled business performance. Dunphy and Bryant argue that “there have been too few quantitative studies, even in the manufacturing sector, and these have concentrated mainly on attitudinal and job satisfaction as output measures…” (1996). They connect multi-skilling to costs (labor costs, overheads, cost of capital and materials): lower costs are the result of greater workforce flexibility. Selfmanagement is connected to adding value, such as quality, discretionary behavior and reliability, based on the idea that goal clarity and delegated decision-making focus the team on improvement of these indicators. Innovation, such as operational and strategic flexibility and product design, is connected to self-leadership, which involves defining and solving complex problems. Despite the limited amount of studies available on team results, it is clear that the definition of team results in itself is not very consistent. Moreover, the relationship between team developmental processes (responsiveness) and results is hardly defined and has little empirical basis. Before going into further detail on the relationship between team responsiveness and team results, I will first have to discuss the definition of team results.

3.2 Models for Team Results Both sociotechnical theory and lean production by origin use different perspectives on results. Sociotechnical theory has long been, and still mostly is, very much focused on QWL (Van der Zwaan 1999). By enlarging and enriching people’s jobs people get better working conditions and a higher satisfaction, and that, in turn, improves the performance of the company. Lean production, on the other hand, has a different philosophy: employees are said to be clearly involved in the improvement process of the company, improving both products and processes, and by reaching better quality and higher efficiency they take more pride in their work and get more satisfaction (Adler & Cole 1993; Womack, Jones, & Roos 1990). Nevertheless, Parker (2003) reports a decline of “job autonomy, skill utilization, and participation in decision making”, resulting in “reduced organizational commitment … and increased job depression” after the introduction of LP practices. One could say that lean production is more business performance (BP) oriented, than STS. 40

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

However, when studying results of teamwork, a very practical problem arises: how to determine and measure BP and QWL? Generally two types of measurement can be distinguished: self-reported measures of results and objective, often mathematical, measures of results. The former involves perceived results, often measured on an interval or ordinal scale, like a person’s rating of satisfaction (QWL) or experienced effectiveness (BP). The latter involves an objective measure on ratio scale, for instance the number of sick days (QWL) or number of quality defects (BP). This difference between subjective and objective measured results and the difference between QWL and BP is of importance to the theories in which these are applied. Gladstein (1984), for example, reported that “90 percent of the variance of team satisfaction and self-reported effectiveness” were explained by the factors in her model, whereas none of the variance of actual team performance could be explained by these same factors. There are several publications, which study team results only from a subjective perspective (Dunphy & Bryant 1996; Kuipers & De Witte 2005a). The need for today’s managers, however, is to focus much more on business performance and customer orientation, despite the lack of empirical evidence of how exactly teamwork affects these types of results. For this reason it will be necessary to include all types of results in research on team development: both subjective and objective, and both QWL and BP. The literature on team effectiveness (the general term used for all types of measures) provides a number of approaches that characterize the different types of BP and QWL measures. The first one is the division in Cost, Value and Innovation by Dunphy and Bryant (1996), introduced in the previous section. These authors define all team results in terms of BP, without paying attention to what they call “attitudinal output measures”. The second approach originates from the lean production tradition. Suzaki (1993) describes the QCDSM concept. To paraphrase Suzaki’s words, one can only survive in business by satisfying customers and to do that one needs to clearly define the five key items of customer satisfaction. “…We can satisfy customers continuously with high-quality (Q) products or services, at less costs (C), and with shorter and more timely delivery (D) than competitors…since all employees in the organization may be viewed as customers from the total company’s point of view, their needs must also be satisfied. Therefore, if we add safety (S) and morale (M) to address employee concerns, QCDSM become the major criteria for an organization’s success” (Suzaki 1993). Suzaki uses this approach for the concept of mini-companies. In other words, in Suzaki’s view each team (mini-company) is responsible for the total set of QCDSM related to the team’s work and goals. QCDSM, therefore, should be measured for each individual team and be known by each of the teams. BP can be expressed by 41

PART II

QCD (Quality, Cost, Delivery), while QWL can be expressed in terms of the broadly defined S and M (Safety and Morale). Cohen and Bailey (Cohen & Baily 1997) distinguish three main kinds of effectiveness. The first is “performance effectiveness assessed in terms of quantity and quality of outputs”. Examples of such measures are product quality, delivery precision, innovation and customer satisfaction. The second is attitudinal outcomes, such as involvement and commitment, and the third is behavioral outcomes, such as safety and absenteeism. For my concept of team results I will use all of the above discussed measures. They are grouped in table 7 by similar themes and measuring method (objective or subjective). Only the concept of “performance effectiveness” (Cohen & Bailey, 1997) has been left out, since it can be considered synonymous with the term BP. Table 7 Measure type Objective Subjective

Types of Team Results Business Performance Suzaki (1993) Quality Costs Delivery

Dunphy & Bryant (1996) Value Costs Innovation

Quality of Working Life Suzaki (1993) Safety

Cohen & Bailey (1997) Behavioral

Morale

Attitudinal

3.3 Relating Team Responsiveness to Team Results Sociotechnical studies have a long empirical tradition in explaining the effects of teamwork on QWL and self-reported measures of performance. However, as discussed, the relationship with BP as an objective measure has less empirical basis in large-scale studies. There is more attention for objective performance measures in the wider field of teamwork, involving work teams, project teams, management teams and so forth, although the total amount of available studies is still low. Cohen & Bailey (1997) report that half of the 28 studies they included in their review of 54 studies “featured objective measures of (work and parallel) team performance”. In total, the available literature on team results shows two weaknesses. The effects of teamwork are rarely related to specific indicators; they mostly relate to terms like team effectiveness, output, performance, or to outcomes referring to team results in general, involving various kinds of aspects. The other problem is that there are no specific theories relating team developmental processes to specific team results. Both make it somewhat difficult to formulate hypotheses for this study. For one, it makes it problematic to hypothesize the effects of each of the three responsiveness dimensions, because there is no literature on the specific effects of such dimensions; furthermore it makes it hard to hypothesize for each performance 42

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

indicator how it is affected, because there is no literature about how specific measures are dependent on team processes. Despite these difficulties I will present my basic assumption along with a set of hypotheses regarding the relationship between team responsiveness and team results, divided into QWL and BP. 3.3.1 Hypothesizing Cross-Sectional Effects of Responsiveness on Results Based on the various theories of developmental processes and the promises they make, as discussed in the previous chapter, my general assumption is that all team responsiveness dimensions positively affect team results, both QWL and BP. The next step is to formulate specific hypotheses regarding the three dimensions: joint management, job management and boundary management. Conform to my general assumption, I will now first focus on the effects of joint management. In Wellins et al. (1991) ‘stage 2’ and Katzenbach & Smith’s (1993) ‘potential team’ we can find several aspects related to the concept of joint management, such as common purpose, team goals, interaction processes, work planning and team meetings. All of these can be considered as the evolvement of group synergy, including both aspects of QWL, such as team involvement, and aspects of BP, such as synergies in costs and productivity. Marks, et al. (2001) state that “interpersonal processes … typically lay the foundation for the effectiveness of other processes”. They argue that these processes occur throughout the transition and action phases of teamwork. Although I do not distinguish between such phases in my approach, I believe it is useful to see joint management as an important condition for all types of team results. The relations found by Gladstein (1984) between intra-group processes and self-reported group effectiveness support this idea; Campion et al. (1993) also report “the importance of proper group processes to the functioning of effective work groups”. In line with these arguments, joint management can be considered as a basis for team results, and therefore my first hypothesis is as follows: Hypothesis 1: There is a positive (cross-sectional) relationship between a team’s joint management and its quality of working life and business performance Historically, job related aspects have always been connected with the quality of working life (QWL). Hackman and Oldham (1980) reported positive effects of job enlargement and job enrichment on motivation, quality of work, satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism (Slack, Chambers, & Harland 1998), and so did hundreds of other studies (Yeatts & Hyten 1998). Yeatts & Hyten report that, in all those studies, especially enriched work environments have consistently had positive effects on employee satisfaction (1998). Several authors from the sociotechnical school (De Sitter, Den Hartog, & Dankbaar 1997; Van der Zwaan 1999; Van Eijnatten 1993b) also report positive effects of sociotechnical-based work on QWL. Likewise, Parker (2003) shows the positive effects of “job autonomy, 43

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skill utilization and participation in decision making” in a longitudinal study on the well-being of employees. On the other hand, maintaining customer and supplier relationships, initiating improvement activities, and applying responsibilities for advanced management and support activities can be considered as necessary inputs to improved products and better customer service. Boundary management, therefore, might be the most important determinant for BP. Its aspects share similarities with the elements of Dunphy & Bryant’s self-management and self-leadership (1996), which they relate to important BP indicators such as value, innovation, and, to lesser extent, cost. The normative approaches also suggest that high performing teams, such as continuous improvement units, increase customer satisfaction, profitability, and process and product quality (Katzenbach & Smith 1993; Wellins, Byham, & Wilson 1991). Nevertheless, both job and boundary management are expected to relate positively to all types of results. After all, my general assumption is that all team responsiveness dimensions positively affect team results. However, from the literature some implicit differences can be found between the two, which I want to express in two distinctive hypotheses. I expect that, given the earlier hypothesized relationship of joint management with team results, job management first and foremost affects QWL, whereas boundary management first and foremost affects BP. Hypothesis 2: Given the effect of joint management, job management has a positive (cross-sectional) main effect on QWL. Subsequent to my general assumption, boundary management is expected to only have a small additional, though positive, effect on QWL to that of job management. Hypothesis 3: Given the effect of joint management, boundary management has a positive (cross-sectional) main effect on BP. Likewise subsequent to my general assumption, job management is expected to only have a small additional, though positive, effect on BP to that of boundary management. Each of these three hypotheses refers to a so-called direct effect of team responsiveness on team results, meaning that cross-sectional analyses are expected to report the here hypothesized effects. Figure 7 depicts these relationships between team responsiveness and team results. The figure indicates how joint management positively relates to both BP and QWL, after which boundary management is expected to have a strong effect on BP and job management is expected to have a strong effect on QWL.

44

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

Boundary management

Business Performance

Joint management

Quality of Working Life Job management

Figure 7

The positive relationships between team responsiveness and team results

3.3.2 Hypothesizing the Longitudinal Effects of Responsiveness on Results Although a number of authors emphasize the importance of longitudinal studies on teamwork and team results (McGrath 1986; Adler & Cole 1993; Berggren 1994; Grütter, Field, & Faull 2002) very few are carried out longitudinally. “Most studies still do not address how teams change over time, and subsequently fail to capture the impact of these changes on team effectiveness” (Cohen & Bailey, 1997). The idea is that changes in the process of teamwork have longitudinal effects. This means that these changes only show in the results on a later point in time, after a “significant time lag”, as Gladstein (1984) calls it, like there is some delayed effect. The implicit assumption of authors like Gladstein and Grütter et al. is that longitudinal models are more in line with reality than cross-sectional models of team results. However, very few studies indeed concern a longitudinal effect and, as far as I know of, no study on team developmental processes concerns longitudinal effects. Therefore, I simply test the same hypotheses as defined in the previous section again, although now specifically formulated as a longitudinal effect. Hypothesis 4: There is a positive longitudinal relationship between a team’s joint management and its QWL and BP. Hypothesis 5: Given the effect of joint management, job management has a positive longitudinal main effect on QWL. 45

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Hypothesis 6: Given the effect of joint management, boundary management has a positive longitudinal main effect on BP. Additionally, I formulate a hypothesis which is based on the premise that when the relationship between team responsiveness and team results is considered longitudinally, cross-sectional (or direct) effects will play only a minor additional role. In other words, the longitudinal effects are expected to have an important main effect on team results and the cross-sectional effects are not expected to explain much extra variance of team results. Hypothesis 7: Adding the cross-sectional effects of team responsiveness to the longitudinal models of team results does not explain much extra variance. 3.3.3 Summary of Approach Having lain down my hypotheses, I will proceed as follows. First, I will use three cross-sectional models to test the relationships between job, joint and boundary management with BP and QWL. Thereafter, I will test my three hypotheses longitudinally and, finally, my seventh hypothesis, saying that cross-sectional relationships do not improve the longitudinal models for team results. In other words, the cross-sectional model does not add extra explanatory power to the longitudinal model.

3.4 Methodology and Measures The consequences of the previously presented hypotheses for the research model will be revealed in the following sections. I shall describe the required statistical analyses, the measures for team results and the sample. 3.4.1 Methods for the Statistical Analysis For the analyses of the longitudinal relationship between team responsiveness and team results, I use a regression model that predicts the results in one year by the responsiveness in an earlier year. This shows, to speak in terms of Gladstein (1984), whether team responsiveness affects results after a “significant time lag”. Figure 8 illustrates schematically the measurements of both responsiveness and results for each of the years. 2001

2002

2003

t1

t2

t3

Figure 8

46

Timeline

Timeline of measurements for responsiveness and results

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

For each year I perform a cross-sectional analysis to test the direct effect of team responsiveness on team results. Cross-sectional analyses are conventional in the literature and, besides, most of the Volvo data is useful for cross-sectional analyses only, as I will show later on. The consistency of results of these analyses for the different years of measurements will show how durable the relationships between team responsiveness and team results are. After that, I will test for a longitudinal effect for t2 and t3, by adding the long-term input variables of t1 and t2 into the same model, where possible, and finally add the short-term input variables of either t2 or t3. This longitudinal analysis is approached by a hierarchical multiple regression model (Field 2000; Miles & Shevlin 2001)). I will use regression analysis, because this “is a technique for modeling the relationships between two (or more) variables” (Miles & Shevlin 2001). “In regression analysis we fit a predictive model to our data and use that model to predict values of the dependent variable from one or more independent variables” (Field 2000). The method is called multiple because more than one predictor is used (in fact, three dimensions of team responsiveness and each through time) and it is called hierarchical because certain predictors are expected to have higher effects than other predictors (see my hypotheses). The model starts with the earlier responsiveness (xt-1) as input, implying that the results (output) of today are first and foremost dependent on earlier responsiveness and that the later responsiveness (xt) contributes extra to these earlier responsiveness. Hierarchically, first the longitudinal sections of the model are entered, with team responsiveness in 2001 as input to the results in 2002 and team responsiveness in 2002 and/or 2003 as input to the results of 2003. Eventually, in the final step of the model, the cross-sectional section is added. Furthermore, the three dimensions of responsiveness are entered in a hierarchical order. In doing so, I follow the order suggested by the hypotheses. As a “basis for team results” (Campion, Medsker, & Higgs 1993; Gladstein 1984; Marks, Mathieu, & Zaccaro 2001) joint management will be entered first into the models for BP and QWL. Boundary management is expected to be the main effect for BP, while job management is expected to be the main effect for QWL. Additionally, job management will be added in the model for BP and boundary management for the model of QWL, since it is expected that both will have a positive (minor) effect as well. In total there are three possible cross-sectional models and a maximum of nine longitudinal models, depending on the availability of data (table 8 and 9). Model 1 predicts team results by joint management, model 2 predicts BP by boundary management and QWL by job management, and model 3 predicts BP by job management and QWL by boundary management. Model 4, 5 and 6 add team responsiveness in the same order to model 1, 2 and 3, however, predicting team results by team responsiveness from the previous year. Model 7, 8 and 9 add team responsiveness in the same order to model 1 to 6, however, predicting team results in 2003 by team responsiveness in 2001. 47

PART II

Table 8 Model

Overview of Statistical Models of Team Responsiveness Dimensions of team responsiveness

Model 1 Joint management Model 2 Job management* Model 3 Boundary management* Model 4 Joint management xt-1 t-1 Model 5 Job management x Model 6 Boundary management xt-1 Model 7 Joint management xt-2 Model 8 Job management xt-2 Model 9 Boundary management xt-2 * The here presented order of entering job and boundary management is used for testing QWL models, whereas job and boundary management are entered in opposite order for all models that are used for testing the relationship with BP

Table 9 Results

Overview of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Models of Team Responsiveness 2001

Responsiveness 2002

Results 2001

Cross-sectional models 1, 2 and 3

Results 2002

Longitudinal models 4, 5 and 6

+

cross-sectional models 1, 2 and 3

Results 2003

Longitudinal models 7, 8 and 9

+

longitudinal models 4, 5 and 6

Responsiveness 2003

+

cross-sectional models 1, 2 and 3

3.4.2 Measures of Business Performance Suzaki’s Quality, Costs and Delivery (1993) and Cohen and Bailey’s “performance effectiveness assessed in terms of quantity and quality of outputs” (Cohen & Baily 1997) cover the measures for business performance (BP). These BP measures are only available for teams in the production departments (see table 10). However, due to the process structure of the paint-shop, no BP data are available on team level for this department either. Teams from supporting departments and the paintshop are therefore excluded from the analysis of the relationship between responsiveness and BP. For business performance I only use objective measures. Volvo’s measure of socalled “Direct OK” is used for product quality. “Direct OK” means the percentage of products or parts produced right directly, the first time around. In case of the paintshop, these figures are only available on department level. Therefore, they are not 48

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

of interest for this study; I am interested in how the team’s responsiveness contributes to the team’s performance. In the press and detail shop and for most teams in the final assembly these data are available and therefore useful for this study. For some teams, data are only available on the level of sub-department (a number of teams belonging to the same team manager). In such cases I have randomly picked only one of the teams to use for the analysis. For all other departments, like supporting departments, no measures are available for quality. Quality in these departments is often difficult to measure. One could measure the quality of the financial department of course, for example by measuring satisfaction of internal customers (if possible to determine exactly), but such measures are hard to compare to those used in the production. For the overall concept of costs both cost-index and capacity utilization are used as measures. Cost-index (shortly referred to as costs) relates to the percentage by which a certain unit, like a team or department, exceeds the budget it has been granted with for a certain period of time. Each month the financial department calculates for each cost center to what extent this budget is exceeded. The cost centers can be compared, because an index figure is used. The cost indices are not available on team level for the majority of teams, therefore one team was picked randomly from each cost center for the analyses. Utilization stands for the used capacity of man-hours per team per week. If a pre-flow team consists of six people, who each work eight hours a day, the capacity of that team for that day is 48 hours. If the pre-assembly on a cab takes four hours in total, the pre-flow team should produce twelve cabs during a day to have 100 percent utilization. If the team produces less, the utilization rate is lower. For each cab it is pre-calculated what the production time should be, based on its specific requirements. In other words, there is a variation in production time. The system to calculate the utilization considers these differences, but it also considers the differences per team. That is, if a team member is absent for a certain time, the available capacity in hours for that team also is lower. For each team, every day the available number of manhours are calculated and compared to the number of cabs that are produced. For innovation (Dunphy & Bryant 1996) no objective data were available, while for delivery precision (Suzaki 1993) unfortunately too few data were available on team level to be of use for this study. In table 10 I summarize the data of the three specific BP measures on plant level.

Table 10 Product quality

Data on Business Performance (average per team) n M s.d.

2001

2002

2003

54 95.72 3.48

73 91.96 4.79

53 96.36 2.70

49

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Cost-index

n M s.d.

2001

2002

2003

32 111.06 12.14

13 96.62 15.77

20 99.85 9.83

n M s.d. n = number of teams; M = mean; s.d. = standard deviation Utilization

56 67.94 8.28

3.4.3 Measures of Quality of Working Life Quality of Working Life (QWL) measures are described in a number of ways. Earlier, I introduced the QCDSM concept of Suzaki (1993), in which Safety and Morale refer to the working life effects of the (production) process. Cohen and Bailey (Cohen & Baily 1997) introduced the terms “behavioral outcomes” and “team member attitudes”, which are comparable to Suzaki’s terms. For both types, which I put under the heading of QWL, it is possible to use objective and subjective self-reported measures. However, for this study I use only objective measures for behavioral outcomes or safety and self-reported measures for attitudinal outcomes or morale. These measures are available for all departments (see table 11), both the production and supporting departments; all except for the paint shop, where no data are available for behavioral outcomes. Although measures like employee turnover and accidents are included within the concept of safety or behavioral outcomes, I focus on indicators for absenteeism that were supplied by Volvo. The first indicator is for short-term sick leave and is calculated as the average number of sick-occasions per employee per team, over a one-year period. The second indicator is for long-term absenteeism and is the percentage of people in a team that is long-term absent during a one-year period. This long-term sick-leave is determined by the health-care department of Volvo and concerns employees that are in rehabilitation for a long period or those who have an industrial disability, due to the work or other circumstances. Both measures are based on data provided by Volvo over a one-year period. This period ended at the same time as the data of team responsiveness was collected and goes back to exactly one year before. The choice for considering a whole year, instead of just the month of the survey period, is to even out possible seasonal influences (and influenzas) and taking into account all long-term absenteeism that has occurred during an entire year. For the concept of morale or attitudinal outcomes, Stoker’s variables (1998) for the concepts of satisfaction, involvement and burnout are used. These measures are aggregated at team level, in order to enable statistical testing of the relationships between team responsiveness and attitudinal outcomes. Satisfaction, often referred to as labor satisfaction, concerns the general feelings of enjoyment and enthusiasm related to the work and the work content (Le Blanc 1994). Team satisfaction in this case, refers to the level of work-related enjoyment and 50

Concepts and Methodology for Responsiveness and Results

enthusiasm within the team. Involvement is the commitment of individuals to the organization and is mostly seen as “effective commitment”, which means that people want to belong to an organization (Allen & Meyer 1996). Team involvement, or actually involvoment in this study, is therefore seen as the level of commitment in the team to belong to the organization. Burnout, not to be confused with stress, contains three components “emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment” (Wright & Bonett 1997). When a team is de-motivated by its work and tired of this work, it is called team burnout. For each variable, Stoker (1999) formulated two Likert-type items; these items have been translated to Volvo’s situation. An example item for satisfaction is “My work gives me a lot of satisfaction”, for involvoment, “I prefer working at Volvo, above working at another company”, and for burnout, “I feel de-motivated due to my work”. In table 11 I summarize the data of the five specific QWL measures on plant level. Table 11

Data on Quality of Working Life (average per team) 2001

2002

2003

Short term sick-leave

n M s.d.

43 2.10 1.32

61 2.32 1.50

57 2.39 1.70

Long term absenteeism

n M s.d.

43 1.10 2.31

61 1.19 2.27

57 1.25 2.43

Satisfaction

n M s.d. α

150 3.08 .61 .91

163 3.07 .71 .93

163 3.08 .64 .93

Involvoment

n M s.d. α

150 3.73 .47 .74

163 3.72 .54 .77

163 3.70 .55 .81

n 150 163 163 M 2.75 2.69 2.70 s.d. .45 .49 .43 α .70 .67 .69 n = number of teams; M = mean; s.d. = standard deviation; α = Cronbach’s reliability Burnout

3.5 Further Specification of Hypotheses and Methods In section 3.3 I introduced seven hypotheses for this study. These hypotheses were not specified for different measures of QWL and BP, but now that I have 51

PART II

defined these eight measures I can break down each hypothesis into 40 subhypotheses (table 12). Table 12

Overview of the 40 Specific Sub-hypotheses

Result

Joint Management

BP: Product Quality

1a/4a: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

BP: Utilization

1b/4b: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

BP: Costs

1c/4c: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

QWL: Sickoccasions

1d/4d: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

QWL: Long- 1e/4e: Positive (longitudinal) term absenteeism relationship QWL: Satisfaction

1f/4f: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

QWL: Involvoment

1g/4g: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

QWL: Burnout

1h/4h: Positive (longitudinal) relationship

Job Management

2a/5a: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 2b/5b: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 2c/5c: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 2d/5d: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 2e/5e: Positive (longitudinal) main effect

Boundary Management

Longitudinal Relationship

3a/6a: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 3b/6b: Positive (longitudinal) main effect 3c/6c: Positive (longitudinal) main effect

7a: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7b: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7c: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7d: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7e: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7f: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7g: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects 7h: Without much extra explained variance from cross-sectional effects

Depending on the availability of data for each of the eight measures, a direct effect will be tested by carrying out three cross-sectional hierarchical multiple-regression models for 2001, 2002 and 2003; and one longitudinal model will be used for testing a long-term effect on results in 2002 or 2003. Based on the outcomes for each of the measures and each of the years, the 40 sub-hypotheses will be rejected or confirmed. Next, the seven main hypotheses can only be confirmed when a majority of the sub-hypotheses is confirmed. 52

PART III RESULTS: Effects of Team Responsiveness on Business Performance and Quality of Working Life

53

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Chapter 4

Team Responsiveness and Business Performance In this chapter, I will present the analysis of the relationship between team responsiveness and business performance (BP). I shall test the hypotheses formulated in the previous chapter. First I will carry out the cross-sectional analyses to test the hypotheses for a direct effect on BP. Secondly, the longitudinal models will be discussed. In the first analysis, that of product quality, some extra attention will be paid to further explaining the steps and interpretation of the statistical analyses. In the final section, I will draw general conclusions regarding the relationships between team responsiveness and BP.

4.1 Direct Effects on Business Performance The following sections refer to hypotheses 1 and 3, stating a positive (direct) relationship between responsiveness and results, in support of BP. These hypotheses, concerning job, joint and boundary management, are tested in relation to the available BP measures. In section 4.1.1 I will first take the opportunity to explain some statistical details of the analyses for the less introduced reader. In section 3.4.2 I described the measures for BP which are used in this study. As many literature suggest (Dunphy & Bryant 1996; Parker 2003), it is hard to get hold of good objective measures for business performance: different organizations use different measures, within the same organization different measures are used, the ways of measuring are changed over the years, the levels of measurement are changed over the years, old measures are thrown away and new measures are introduced. All this together makes you wonder about the meaning of performance management, and I have faced all of these problems at Volvo. For this reason it became evident that not all measure types were available within each department and for each team. In a number of cases data were only available on the level of sub-department, which is a team manager with two to five teams. In such cases one of the teams from these sub-departments was picked randomly for the analyses, whereas the other teams were left out. It was also impossible to carry 54

Team Responsiveness and Business Performance

out longitudinal analyses for each measure, because data were simply not available for each year. 4.1.1 Product Quality In this first analysis, I look at the effect of team responsiveness on product quality. Product quality at Volvo is expressed in the percentage of “direct OK products” (DOK), which means the percentage of parts or complete products that leave a certain process without faults the first time around. My hypotheses (see table 12) are that joint management reports a positive relationship with product quality (hypothesis 1), and that boundary management reports a positive main effect on quality (hypothesis 3). Subsequently, job management is expected to have a small additional effect to the model by means of a positive relationship. In Chapter 3 (see tables 8 and 9) I explained the idea behind the hierarchical multiple regression model, which practically means that in every analysis for BP I first enter joint management to the model (model 1), before I enter boundary management (model 2) and job management (model 3). For the cross-sectional models, I follow this procedure for each year.

Table 13

Cross-sectional Regression Analysis’ Results for Product Quality Standardized coefficient Beta

2001 (df=53) Joint management Boundary management Job management R² R² change 2002 (df=72) Joint management Boundary management Job management R² R² change 2003 (df=52) Joint management Boundary management Job management

model 1

model 2

model 3

-.173

-.107 .409**

-.115 .324* .191

.030 .030

.193 .163**

.223 .029

-.169

-.123 .482***

-.116 .432*** .293**

.029 .029

.259 .231***

.342 .083**

-.020

-.001 .239¹

-.066 .181 .362**

55

PART III

Standardized coefficient Beta model 1

model 2

model 3

R² .000 .057 .181 R² change .000 .057¹ .124** *p