The effects of dynamic team behavior and task complexity on team performance

Teams have become a permanent part of the industrial work place. Semi-autonomous work groups are in place to staff production systems; executive teams are working together to lead organizations; cross-functional teams are solving a myriad of problems at various levels within companies. The purpose of this research is to better understand how cross-functional project teams work together to successfully complete their assigned task(s). In order to accomplish this purpose, the relationship between dynamic team behavior and team goal attainment was investigated. The influence of task complexity on this relationship was also explored. Dynamic team behavior is explained as a joint function of interaction among team members, flexibility of team members to handle changes, unity of team members to maintain group solidarity, and involvement of the team leader in the day to day activities of the team. Fifty-five cross-functional project teams from a variety of industries, government laboratories, and not-for-profit organizations were studied. Several new reliable measures were developed in this work, including measures of team flexibility, team culture, and task complexity. The attainment of cost goals was found to be negatively influenced by team flexibility, and this relationship was stronger as the number of task alternatives increased. Ambiguous tasks were found to negatively influence the attainment of timing goals and attainment of organizational goals. Other exploratory findings and future research opportunities are also discussed