An examination of supervisors’ perspectives of teamwork in a federal agency: promising practices and challenges using a gap analysis framework

2016-04-15This study utilized a version of the gap analysis model created by Clark and Estes (2008) to understand the impact that supervisor support has on teamwork as a contributor to employee satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to examine the barriers to, and facilitators of, supervisor support for effective teamwork at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), a sub-unit of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This study also sought to identify the promising practices that supervisors throughout other organizations could adopt to improve teamwork and the ways that such recommendations could be evaluated for their effectiveness. Results from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (EVS) and from a literature review were used to identify assumed causes of barriers and facilitators to effective teamwork. Focus group observations, interviews with supervisors, and document analysis were utilized to validate the assumed causes and analyzed for the related knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors. Of 24 supervisor behaviors that influence effective teamwork, as identified in the literature, only four behaviors were validated, three as facilitators of and one as a barrier to effective teamwork. The validated facilitators included supervisor knowledge of the organizational mission, providing recognition and feedback for team members’ work, and providing effective communication between supervisors’ teams and management. The validated barrier was related to supervisors not taking punitive or corrective action for poor performance. All other behaviors did not have sufficient evidence to be validated. The lack of evidence for the other behaviors suggested fostering teamwork among their subordinates is not prominent in the minds of CDER’s supervisors. The lack of evidence also indirectly demonstrated the limits to using the current EVS to understand the relationship of supervisors to teamwork as a contributor to employee satisfaction in federal agencies