TEAM TYPOLOGIES: What is the direction?

TEAM TYPOLOGIES: What is the direction?
Chantal Savelsbergh, assistant professor of management, Open university of the Netherlands*
Anne Delarue, PhD, Department of Sociology, Section Work and Organization, Catholic
University of Louvain, Belgium**
Abstract
Authors from various disciplines pay attention to teamworking with a very specific focus.
Often they use a certain typology based on critical determinants to analyse whether different
sorts of teams are linked with other variables, including performance indicators. The aim of
this study is to go more deeply into the existing variety of team typologies. A literature review
on team typologies has been executed to find answers on the leading questions: What criteria
are the typologies based on? Have the different typologies been empirically tested? The
results show many different grounds of categorization. Furthermore these grounds of
categorization are often based on just one aspect of teams. The authors present an integrated
model for a team typology, with a focus on team performance, which combines various
dimensions of categorization in order to facilitate the application of empirical findings for
research and practice.
Keywords: Teamwork; Team typology; Team taxonomy, Literature review
Introduction
The importance of teams for organizational success in the modern economy is emphasized
continuously in the management and academic press (Banker et al., 1996, 867; Cohen &
Ledford, 1994, 13-15; Glassop, 2002, 226; Appelbaum et al., 2000, 13). Some studies argue
that the empirical evidence regarding team effectiveness is limited and often has the form of
anecdotes or descriptive case analyses. However, since 1990 a vast body of research emerged
that aims to evaluate the benefits of teams for work organizations in a more systematic way.
In 2004 we made a critical examination of studies that analysed the team-performance link by
using large-N surveys (Delarue et al., 2004). A remarkable finding was that uniformity is
lacking within this specific type of research. The studies use different definitions and
classifications of teams and employ various research designs, with particular strengths and
* P.O. Box 2960, 6401 DL Heerlen, the Netherlands; e-mail: [email protected]
** E. Van Evenstraat 2B, 3000 Leuven, Belgium; e-mail: [email protected]
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limitations, resulting in inconclusive findings. We are confronted with a conceptual problem,
because there seems to be an imbalance between the singing of teamwork’s praises on the one
hand and defining uniform concepts and variables to measure teamwork and its effects in an
appropriate way on the other.
Furthermore, an explorative study on teamwork among HR officers in the Netherlands shows
that findings from scientific research on team effectiveness are not often applied in their
practices. One of the reasons HR officers do not use previous results is their doubt about the
applicability of the findings in their own typical team situations. The teams are often
described in detail in previous studies that took place in laboratory settings. Those laboratory
settings however are seen as much too simplified compared with the real context in which
teams are functioning. Academic publications on field research often do not make it clear to
what extent findings can be generalized to other types of teams. Mostly the authors even
explicitly refer to the limited validity of their findings for other teams in other contexts.
Although many classifications schemes relevant to workgroups have been offered in the last
decades, none has been widely adopted by organizational scholars or practitioners (Devine,
2002). The aim of this study is to go more deeply into the existing variety of team
classifications. Which typologies exist? Which variables are used to assign a team to a
particular type? Are the classification schemes empirically tested? Can they be combined in
an integrated model? A move towards more conceptual exhaustivity might be useful to find
explanations for the divergent results in the teamwork-performance debate. More insight in
the different team typologies that are used can also be a first step towards building a bridge
between research and practice. A team classification based on criteria that are recognizable
for both practice and science will help teams to learn from teams of the same kind.
The paper will mainly consist of a literature review, bringing together different classifications
that were used in studies on teamwork in different academic fields. The article is divided into
4 sections. In the first, some general principles and advantages of working with typologies are
outlined. In the second, we describe the methodology of the literature search. The third
section forms the core part, as we present here an overview of team typologies in which all
the studies of the review are positioned. Based on the findings, an integrative typology will be
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offered and some requirements will be formulated to improve the working with team
typologies in the future.
About classification as a basic conceptual exercise
Classification is a very central process in the social sciences but it seldom receives
methodological exposition, perhaps because it is so ingrained in research practice and in all
facets of our lives. Yet, as typologies are the central topic of this article, it can be useful to
pay particular attention to some general principles and definitions. To do this, we rely on a
volume of Bailey (1994) on typologies and taxonomies.
In its simplest form, classification is merely defined as the ordering of entities into groups or
classes on the basis of their similarity. Grouping objects or persons by similarity, however, is
not as simple as it sounds. Alternative classifications are possible, depending on the
dimensions or variables on which they are based. Crucial to successful typology development
then, is the ability to ascertain the key or fundamental characteristics on which the
classification will be based. Unfortunately, there is no specific formula to do so, which means
that prior knowledge and theoretical guidance are required in order to make the right
decisions.
Bailey discerns two essential approaches: typology and taxonomy. The former implies
conceptualization, along one or more dimensions. The latter begins empirically, with the goal
of classifying cases according to their measured similarity on observed variables. In practice,
the conceptual accuracy is far gone and most authors use the terms classification, typology
and taxonomy interchangeably. Here we will reserve the term taxonomy for a classification
that starts from empirical entities. A basic rule for classification is that the classes formed
must be exhaustive and mutually exclusive. This means that there must be one (and only one)
class for each of the N persons of objects. Classification can either be unidimensional, being
based solely on a single dimension or characteristic, or multidimensional, being based on a
number of dimensions. Dimensions are generally categorical data, such as nominal or ordinal
variables. Each dimension comprises a number of categories (for example: the dimension
intelligence can be dichotomized in the categories intelligent/unintelligent). Different
dimensions can then be combined to construct a more complex, multidimensional
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classification. The (combined) categories can be defined as cells in a table. They are the
resulting types or type concepts, which can be labelled.
The role of typologies in scientific development is to help organize and make sense of
complex phenomena (Bell & Kozlowsky, 2002). First of all, classification is a descriptive
tool, but another goal is to reduce complexity and achieve parsimony, which is essential if one
wants to analyse the reality. It allows on the one hand to recognize similarities among cases,
and group similar cases together for analysis, and on the other hand to differentiate between
different cases, so that dissimilar cases can be separated for analysis, rather than remaining
mixed together (Bailey, 1994). Typologies are especially useful in new areas of inquiry that
are little explored and characterized by a variety of diverse but related phenomena. By
creating a schema that establishes similarities and differences, the scientist endeavours to
classify the phenomena into distinct types. Classification, however, stays merely the first step.
Ultimately, the scientist hopes to identify new and unexplored aspects of the phenomena that
are ripe for research.
Because there are such wide differences in the sorts of teams and there doesn’t exist a
consensus on an empirical method for classifying team types, it is easy to understand why
there has been difficulty in arriving at generalizations about teams (Sundstrom et al., 1990).
Further, mixed empirical findings when examining teams as a generic set offer another reason
why a distinction among different types of teams is useful. A good classification can also be
an answer to the potential problems that managers have in translating scientific findings into
issues such as team staffing, team training, team leadership, and assessing team effectiveness
in their own practice.
What we will do in this article, is in fact presenting the existing team typologies in a coherent
framework. We will make an attempt to group objects (in this case: the studies of our review)
by similarity and we chose to use the dimension on which typologies are based as the
distinguishing criterion.
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Methodology
A literature search was conducted to identify both published and unpublished studies of
teamwork which decribe a certain typology from 19801 to the present. Following Webber and
Donahue (2001), this time span was chosen because of the surge of interest in the study of
teams in the work place from the 1980s forward. Different strategies were employed to search
the relevant literature. First, a computer search was done of EBSCOhost, Picarta, Science
Direct, Emerald, Sage and Google Scholar. The specific words used to search these databases
included
team/group/unit/teamwork
in
combination
with
typology/types/taxonomy/
classification. Second, we conducted a kind of manual search by checking the sources cited in
the reference lists of literature reviews, articles and books on this topic. Third, we manually
searched the conference programs and abstracts of the International Workshops On
Teamworking (IWOT) which were yearly organized since 1996, this mainly to identify any
relevant research that was unpublished or had not completed the publication procedure.
Finally, we contacted some prominent researchers in the area to request interesting studies.
These strategies finally yielded 35 studies. At this point, we agree with Devine (2002) who
states that this kind of review necessarily stays selective in that a broad interpretation of the
term “classification” would yield hundreds of publications containing casual references to
different kinds of teams. Instead, we focused only on studies that explicitly distincted
different groups of teamwork. The retained articles are listed in the different tables in the next
section.
Team typologies until now
The insight that what is called a ‘team’ can cover different realities and that what is found for
one type of teams not necessarily counts for every other type is not new and some authors
already discussed previous taxonomic work on workgroups (Benders & Van Hootegem, 1999;
Devine, 2002). This article can contribute to the discussion by reviewing the existing team
typologies through a coherent framework. Referring back to the concepts of Bailey (1994),
we are especially interested in the dimensions which are used to build a certain typology.
Focusing on these classification grounds, we identified four primary groups of team
typologies: typologies that categorize teams based on their (1) functional role or mission, (2)
structural features, (3) maturity and (4) diversity of the team members. In what follows, the
1
The book of Thompson (1967) is an exception, as it was published earlier. Because the typology is still used
quite often, we included it in the review.
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articles of the review will be presented within this framework comprised of four subgroups.
For each typology we indicate the labels of the team types, the dimensions which are used to
classify the teams, whether the classification is deductive or inductive and whether it was
empirically validated. A typology is scored as deductive when it was derived from theory.
When a typology is based on an attempt to cluster different sorts of teams that were
encountered in practice, we speak of an inductive typology.
Team typologies based on the mission of the team
A first group of typologies is formed by scholars in management and organization studies
who categorize workgroups found in actual organizations based on their functional role. Here,
the mission or goal of the team is the central distinguishing feature. What is a group doing,
what is the reason of its existence, what is the type of ‘game’ the team members are playing?
This is a classification ground that appears in numerous studies.
Devine (2002) developed an integrative team taxonomy which can help understanding team
effectiveness. In his article he summarizes a lot of functional classifications, by saying that
many of them include team types charged with improving organizational effectiveness,
solving problems, handling specialized projects, producing basic goods or services,
integrating the activities of multiple functions or managing the organizations.
Table 1 Team typologies based on mission
Auteur
Antoni (2004)
Labels
teams which are part of the
regular work organization;
teams which complement the
regular work organization
Bell & Kozlowsky virtual teams with complex
(2002)
tasks; virtual teams with simple
tasks
Cannon-Bowers
context driven team
(1995)
competences; team contingent
competences; task contingent
competences; transportable
competences
Devine (2002)
executive; command;
negotiation; commission;
design; advisory; service;
production; performance;
medical; response; military;
transportation; sports
Dunphy & Bryant teams with a focus on skilling;
(1996)
teams with a focus on
Variables
In- / Deductive
position within the organization,
team task, duration of collaboration
deductive
Emp.
validated
no
a continuum differing in task
complexity
deductive
no
team competences
deductive
no
fundamental work cycle; physical
abilities; temporal duration; task
structure; active resistance;
hardware dependence; health risk
inductive
yes
team task differing in need for:
inductive
yes
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Glassop (2002)
Hackman (1990)
Recardo et al
(1997)
Katzenbach &
Smith (1993)
McGrath &
O’Connor (1996)
operational responsibility
previously performed by
managers; teams with an
emphasis on problem solving
innovation and strategic
decision making
problem solving groups
(quality circles); self-managing
or natural work groups; crossfunctional teams (committees,
project teams)
top-management groups;
taskforces; professional support
groups; human service teams;
customer service teams;
production teams
simple problem solving teams;
taskforces; cross functional
teams; self-directed teams
teams that recommend things;
teams that make or do things;
teams that run things
taskforces; teams; crews
Mohrman, Cohen
& Mohrman
(1995)
Sundstrom et al.
(1990)
work teams; integrating teams
(subtype: management teams);
improvement teams
advice & involvement teams;
project & development teams;
production & service teams;
action & negotiation teams
Webber &
Klimoski (2004)
West (1996)
crews; other teams
Devine et all
(1999)
simple decision making
workgroups; complex decision
making workgroups
ad hoc project teams ; ongoing
project teams ; ad hoc
production teams ; ongoing
production team
1. breath technical expertise
2. degree of self-management
3. degree of self leadership.
team task; duration; hierarchical
level of the team members;
deductive
yes
team task
deductive
yes
commitment to and importance of
team goal
inductive
yes
team task
inductive
yes
member / roles; technology; tasks /
projects
deductive
no
mission of the team
inductive
yes
degree of differentiation (i.e.
specialization and autonomy),
integration (i.e. degree of
integration/interaction with the
larger system outside the team) and
work cycles (i.e. length and
novelty)
member / roles; technology; tasks /
projects
decision making complexity
deductive
no
deductive
yes
inductive
yes
inductive
yes
team task; composition and
structure
Team typologies based on structural features
A second group of typologies involves classifications based on the structural design of the
work group. This has to do with the way the work is organized within the team, without
taking into account the individual characteristics of the team members, fulfilling the functions
in the team. Central structural characteristics of a team are the division of labour and the task
design. The number and the sorts of tasks that are delegated to the team members are crucial
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here and indirectly, aspects such as degree of autonomy, role of the team leader, dependency
on technology, control structures or inter team relations are linked to this. This classification
approach also seems to be often used in literature. Table 2 presents an overview:
Table 2 Team typologies based on structural features
Authors
Team types
van Amelsvoort & Japanese, lean or just-in-time
Benders (1996)
teams: the HAN; Swedisch,
German, sociotechnical or
selfdirected workteams
Bacon & Blyton
high road teamworking ; low
(2000)
road teamworking
Dimensions
In- / Deductive
autonomy and the number of
hierarchical levels.
deductive
Emp.
validated
yes
deductive
yes
deductive
no
deductive
yes
deductive
no
inductive
yes
deductive
yes
deductive
yes
deductive
no
deductive
yes
degree of change (fundamental vs.
less significant); systems of task
allocation; job responsibilities
Banker et al.
traditional work groups; quality team autonomy
(1996)
circles; high performance work
teams; semi-autonomous work
groups; self-managing teams;
self-designing teams
coverage of group delegation
Benders et al.
weak group delegation;
(proportion of employees involved);
(1999)
medium group delegation;
intensity (number of decision
team-based
rights)
Berggren (1993)
Japanese; Swedish
production arrangement;
dependencies between groups;
supervision and control; work
intensity; role of the unions
Delarue et al.
lean directed; lean selfdivision of labour within the
(2004)
directed; sociotechnical
organization; division of labour
directed,; sociotechnical selfwithin the team; role of the
directed
teamleader
Doorewaard et al. hierarchical teams; shared
variety of the job regulation tasks;
(2002)
responsibility teams
nature of the division of
responsibilities
Jürgens (1992)
German; Japanese
degree of time autonomy;
hierarchical structure; degree of
standardization; functional
flexibility; training
Task design, organization principle,
Kuipers (2005)
sociotechnical, Western,
organization structure, leadership,
(mostly European) teams;
improvement focus, improvement
Lean, Japanese, (partly
philosophy, production set-up
American) teams
interdependence in work
Thompson (1967) pooled/additive; sequential;
arrangement
reciprocal and intensive;
interdependent work;
arrangement teams.
It’s remarkable that most of the academic efforts to develop categories of teams based on
structural features, have directly or indirectly been informed by the sociotechnical notion of
‘autonomous work groups’ (e.g. Pasmore, 1988; De Sitter, 1994) or by work design theory
(Hackman & Oldham, 1976). At the same time, it should be pointed out that most of these
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studies were carried out in work teams at the executing level in organizations, mostly in a
production environment. This specific setting as such already determines a lot of factors (type
of activities in the team, kind of responsibilities, stability,…) which can be a possible
explanation for the fact that these kind of typologies are unidimensional, only focusing on
structural characteristics as categorization ground.
Team typologies based on maturity
Some authors try another tack in using a process approach. Their typologies address the
maturity of a team by indicating the developmental stage it is in or the competences that are
acquired. The decision to implement teams in an organization can be considered the starting
point of a trajectory in time in which combinations of individuals must develop into well
cooperating results-oriented teams by means of an internal growth process.
Although
peripheral in most research, time is a crucial factor here. Ancona, Goodman, et al. (2001)
make a call to sharpen the temporal lens in conducting organizational research. Putting time
front and centre, one begins to think not just about processes and practices but also about how
fast they are moving, their trajectories over time, the cycles they align with and the historical
positions they take on the continuum of time.
Different evolutional models were traced out, with the assumption that whatever variant of
formation each team exhibits, all groups pass through some sequential stages of development.
These stages may vary in duration for each team, but all teams will need to experience them
in order to grow into an effective performing work unit. However, following Scholtes and
Van Amelsvoort (1994) we want to stress the fact that the order and duration of the phases is
not rigid: overlaps and reversions are part of the team reality. In practice, team members leave
the team and others join it. A change in the composition of the team often means a regression
to an earlier stage of development.
Table 3 Team typologies based on maturity
Auteur
Labels
Van Amelsvoort et al.
(2003)
bunch of individuals;
group; team; open team
West et al. (1998)
fully functional team;
social team; disfunctional
Variables
Inductive
Empirically
Deductive
vallidated
skills or professionalism; deductive
organising capacity;
cooperation; result
oriented work
the extent of social
inductive
reflection and task
yes
yes
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Katzenbach & Smith
(1993)
team; cold efficiency team
reflection
working group; pseudo
team; potential team; real
team; high performing
team
team performance
inductive
yes
Team typologies based on diversity of team members
In the fourth group of typologies, the composition of the teams and the interpersonal relations
of their members play a central role. This approach should be situated in the context of
organizational psychology and theories of group dynamics. The central idea behind this kind
of typologies, is that the characteristics of the team members determine the variety between
teams. The degree of diversity between the team members has to be assessed, which can refer
to age, gender, race, educational level, functional status, etc. It has to be noticed that diversity
in tasks or processes is explicitly left out of consideration here.
Table 4 Team typologies based on diversity of team members
Auteur
Labels
Variables
Ancona & Caldwell
(1992)
tenure homogeneous
groups ; tenure diverse
groups
coefficient of variation
of team members’ tenure
in the organization;
amount of functional
diversity
Campion et al. (1993)
functional homogeneous
groups; functional diverse
groups
degree of heterogeneity
areas of expertise,
backgrounds and
experiences, skills and
abilities
race, ethnicity, sex, age;
attitudes (job
satisfaction,
organizational
commitment, values of
the team members
readily detected
attributes of diversity
versus underlying
attributes; task-related or
relations-oriented
attributes of diversity.
gender, race, age, tenure
Harrison et al. (1998)
surface level
(demographic) diversity;
deep level (attitudinal)
diversity
Jackson S.E. (1996)
homogeneous teams;
bipolar teams
Mayo et al. (1996)
index of demographic
group heterogeneity (0=
low heterogeneity, 1= high
heterogeneity)
race/ethnic background,
diversity in observable
nationality, age, gender;
attributes; diversity in
values, skills and
underlying attributes
Milliken & Martins
(1996)
Inductive
Deductive
deductive
Empirically
vallidated
yes
deductive
yes
deductive
yes
inductive
yes
inductive
yes
deductive
no
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Webber & Donahue
(2001)
knowledge, cohort
membership
less job-related diversity;
age, gender, race/ethnic;
highly job-related diversity functional, educational,
occupational
deductive
no
Towards a combination model
Our review makes clear that grouping the different typologies based on the classification
grounds works well. A variety of typologies, from different theoretical backgrounds could be
positioned within this framework. Remarkable is that most typologies are based on only one
dimension, of which mission and structure are the most applied. These are very general
classifications, and in a lot of articles it is stated in the conclusions section that the findings of
the research should only be considered for the organizations that were studied and that
generalizations cannot be made. This makes it hard for practitioners and other researchers to
translate research results to their own settings. It is the aim of our study to work towards a
typology that can help future research to be build on existing knowledge on teams and make
research results more applicable for practice. To realize this, it is necessary that a team can be
described with a typology that gives enough information on the team and is user-friendly. If
there could grow a consensus on the use of such a typology, it would become easier to look
up all the relevant findings in the academic studies on teamwork for a certain context.
Until now, we only looked at the dimensions and variables which are used to develop team
typologies. In most studies this only considers the independent variable in an effect model. A
different and complementary approach is looking from the other side: is there also a
dependent variable in the study? What is the focus of the team typology? Why does the author
make a difference between teams? In other words, what is the purpose that the team typology
is build for? This focus of team typologies varies. Some studies want to assess the impact of
the type of team on team performance. Others want to asses the impact of the type of team on
individual knowledge development or personal job satisfaction. Our interest is on team
typologies that focus on team performance in general. Can teams be categorized to team types
that differ on certain team characteristics in their reaching for optimal performance? Because
team effectiveness is our focus, we will continue working with the team typologies that were
used to study team performance. Team performance, as we define it, can be measured as
performance outcomes at the operational (productivity, flexibility, innovation) and financial
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level (profit, liquidity, costs), as well as the attitudinal (motivation, commitment, satisfaction)
or behavioural level (absenteeism, turnover).
Although most of the articles of our review present a one-dimensional team typology, we
found some which combined different dimensions. Mohrman et al (1995) for example, use
two additional categorization grounds, namely the relationship of the team to the formal
structure and the duration of the team. Combining different dimensions in an integrative
typology is the strategy that we will follow here as well, since we believe this is the only
possible way to give adequate descriptions of teams. With such a combination or integrative
model, we want to facilitate the assessment of teams that differ on some variables which have
an influence on team effectiveness.
For this integrative team typology, we brought together the four dimensions that formed the
structure of our literature review, in a multi-dimensional typology. For each dimension, we
selected some crucial variables and developed different types, which should be exhaustive
and exclusive. This implies that we made choices, to receive a parsimonious model. The first
step in identifying a team in our typology is related to the nature of the team task or the
mission, because this already partially can determine the score of a team on the next
dimensions. We distinguish 5 categories of teams on the basis of the nature of the team task.
The first category refers to operational teams. These teams are continuing work units
responsible for producing goods or providing services to internal or external customers. In
literature they are also called work teams (Mohrman et al., 1995; Cohen & Bailey, 1997).
Within this group, we make a sub-classification of knowledge work versus routine work. The
second team category refers to management teams. These are teams that are responsible for
coordinating the management of a number of subunits that are interdependent in the
accomplishment of a collective output, such as an entire process or product. Their main task is
to give direction to other persons and managing the capabilities and performance of a unit
based on goals and policy. The third team category refers to project teams. These are teams
that produce one-time output and exist a limited time, because if the team has taken care of
this task, the team will be dismissed. The fourth category refers to co-ordination teams. They
are established to make sure the work across various parts of the organization fits together,
but their power does not stem from hierarchy. And finally the fifth category refers to
specialist teams. These teams are established to exchange and develop knowledge among
colleagues from different work units or jobs
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The second step in our model to identify different types of teams is concerned about the
structure of the team. Three variables are crucial in defining the structure of the team: the
task design, the degree of autonomy in the team and the degree of interdependency within the
team. According to Doorewaard et al. (2000), we consider the nature of the division of
responsibilities and the variety of the job regulation tasks as crucial variables to indicate the
task design and the degree of autonomy in a team. The first has to do with the role of the team
leader: is there a formal leader position, what are his or her tasks, is there delegation to the
executing team members? The second, variety of the job regulation tasks, refers to the width
of the decision latitude for the team. If the regulation tasks are restricted, we speak of a small
task variety. If a team can decide itself on aspects of their tasks (division, order, method,…),
the task variety is called medium. Only if the team is authorized to decide on extended aspects
such as selecting and hiring new members, controlling the budget or regulating breaks and
holiday periods, the task variety is considered to be broad. The third criterion we added to
determine the team structure, is the degree of interdependency within the team. When the
interdependency is high, the team members are in their functioning dependent of the work of
the other team members and performance is the result of the common efforts. The
interdependency is low if the team members can do their individual task within the team,
without taking into account the work of the others.
When we know why a team exists (mission) and how it is organized (structure), we arrive at
the third step in identifying the team type. Therefore the team maturity is assessed. Focus is
needed on the competences a team needs to perform well. Three aspects are important here:
knowledge, skills and attitude. The last includes competences such as learning capacity,
adaptability, connection and result orientedness. It’s important to note that the necessary
competences have to be obtained at the team level. Concerning skills for example, it is often
not appropriate that every team member learns every operation which is done in the team.
‘Everyone has to know or to be able to do everything in a team’ is not a good device. What
matters is ‘Can we do it as a team?’. We discern three stages with regard to the competence
level of a team: a starting up team, a potential team or a fully functional team. Again, we want
to emphasize that this should not be considered as an irreversible evolution, but that during
the existence of a team relapses or leaps are possible.
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Finally we arrive at the fourth step in identifying the team type. Focus is shifted from the team
to the team members. In this last step, the diversity of the team functions as a classification
ground. Most authors who work with this kind of typology, distinguish two groups of
characteristics which can be looked at. The first group refers to personal features (also called
relations oriented, surface level, observable or less job-related attributes) such as age, gender,
race. The second group is twofold: sometimes it stands for job-related characteristics
(education, function, occupation, knowledge, skills) and sometimes it stands for more
underlying (also called deep level) attributes such as values, satisfaction or commitment. We
decided to work with a dichotomy as well and to discern two groups of characteristics, jobrelated and relations-oriented features, which both can be homogeneous or heterogeneous
among the members of a team.
This integrative model should be considered as a decision tree. If academics do research on
work groups and want to test certain hypotheses by collecting empirical data, they can make it
very clear to fellow researchers, practitioners and all the interested readers which type of
teams that were involved in the study. For each of the four dimensions, the team needs to be
scored, which results in a clear label of this type: a project team, with shared responsibilities,
medium task variety and low interdependency, that is fully functional and heterogeneous.
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Table 5 Integrative team typology
MISSION
Variables:
Team task
STRUCTURE
Variables:
- nature of division of responsibilities
- variety of job regulation tasks
- interdependency within the team
MATURITY
Variables:
Team competences (at the team level)
knowledge, skills, attitude
DIVERSITY
Variables:
- relations-oriented characteristics
- job-related characteristics
Operational teams
Knowledge Routine
Management teams
Project teams
Coordination teams
Hierarchical teams
Shared responsibility teams
Small task variety
Homogeneous team
Broad task variety
Medium task variety
Low interdependency
Starting up team
Specialist teams
High interdependency
Potential team
Heterogeneous on
relations-oriented
Homogeneous on jobrelated
Homogeneous on
relations-oriented
Heterogeneous on jobrelated
Fully functional team
Heterogenous team
15
Conclusions
In this article, we have attempted to come to an integrative model for classifying team types.
The conceptual framework offered here was designed for two reasons. The first is to build a
bridge between team types recognized in research and in practice, in order to make findings
more easily applicable in concrete settings. The second reason is to streamline team research
from now on by encouraging the use of one common team typology, which can make findings
on the link between teamwork and performance more easily interpretable.
From our literature review on team typologies we conclude that most authors work with an
unidimensional team typology. A majority only focuses on the mission of the team or on the
structural features. However, to facilitate a proper classification of teams by practitioners as
well as academics, combining several team dimensions in a step-by-step method of
categorizing teams could be a better strategy.
This is what we worked out in this article, by developing an integrative model. Although we
combined the four general dimensions which appear from the literature, we have to recognize
that the presented model only should be considered as one possible example of an integrative
model. For each of the four dimensions, we constructed the different categories which results
in a kind of decision tree. The number of the categories and the labels for the types emanate
from the reviewing work and the analyzing of the existing team typologies. Further research
can aim to refine these and to work towards more exhaustiveness and exclusiveness.
By emphasizing the need for more accurate team typologies and especially more adequate
information on the typologies that are used, we hope that both communities of academics and
practitioners can be stimulated by our model. As a team is not just a ‘team’, but a very
specific reality with different effects on various outcome variables, it is crucial to include a
clear passport of the team in research reports of academic articles.
16
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