The influence of team members on team performance

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie 

Published: 2nd June 2015

Introduction

Understanding the individual performance of people in companies especially when they work as a team is very vital. This is because the team wouldn’t be performing to its best level if the individuals in the team are not committed and giving in their best output. The influence of team members on the team performance is the main focus of this paper.

While the notion presented above is that team has high influence on the organizational performance, it is also important to understand what a team is all about. The research by Sheard and Kakabadse (2004) illustrated the need to understand what a team is all about in order to have the right knowledge towards understanding the management approaches in a team. Katzenbach and Smith (1993) presented a good working definition of what a team is all about and it will be adopted in this paper as the background for understanding what a team is all about. The general definition for a team is a small unite of people that work together for the same goal and purpose.

On that note, the focus of this paper is to understand effective team management in the case of Electron with reference to how the company adopts effective team management in order to ensure that the main focus of the team is geared towards increased productivity and the profitability of the company.

Employee performance appraisal in Electron Teams

Understanding how performance appraisal is defined would serve as the right foundation for capturing the concept and what it is all about. Alo (1999) presented a definition of performance appraisal as a process that involves deliberately talking about the contribution that an individual yielded on the growth of the organization, in relation to how the individual might have achieved the designated task that he or she has been given within the specific period such task was expected to be completed. This is a serious call to understand how the individual has been doing over the period in relation to the task that he or she has been designated to undertake.

Atiomo (2000) agrees with Fajana (1997) by defining performance appraisal as a system of approach in the organization in which the a means if created to identify not only the performance of the individual in their respective works, but also their general contribution towards the improvement of the company and maximization of the human resource available within the company’s workforce. There is a need for all organization to ensure that its workforce is clearly aware of what the functions and responsibilities expected of them are, and how they are expected to undertake such responsibilities (Atiomo, 2000). Performance appraisal has also been viewed as the process by which an organization takes into account the current performance of its workforce – in relation to the aptitude and interest of each person, his or her strengths and weaknesses and the person’s potential for growth.

Basically, the analysis from the above statement is that for every individual, there is a designated task the person is expected to undertake, and performance appraisal involves taking into account whether the person has undertaken the designated task, how the performance went about the task and the outcome from such task. In cases where all factors seem to be positive, then the company will deliberately talk about the person’s performance and present rewards wherever necessary. The reason for such reward is to help encourage the person to keep up their good work as well as serve as a motivation for other employees because they will generally me motivated as they will potentially increase their earnings and gain more respect as well as reward by improving their performance.

Types of appraisal

Confidential appraisal

A confidential appraisal is also known as secret appraisal, and as Murthy (1989) defined it, it is a form of appraisal in which the individual is not involved in the exercise and the outcome of such appraisal is not communicated in any way to the person being appraised. As such, the person will not be allowed to know his or her strengths or weaknesses.

Open appraisal

This is a form of appraisal in which the employee is openly applauded by the team in order to ensure that his or her commitment and productivity is fully noticed by all members of the team (Mukundan, 1989). In an open form of appraisal, the good performance of the employee are made public for other employees to see, and the employee is usually rewarded publicly in front of other employees.

From the above analysis, it can be seen that employee performance appraisal have a direct influence on the continued productivity of the employees and the overall performances of the employees as well. In Electron, employee performance appraisal is done in an open way and this is also the same approach adopted for critiquing employees’ wrong doings. In that case, the employee is openly appraised for work well done and also open criticized for jobs that were not done in the right way or for other misbehaviors in the company. Such an approach has both positive and negative influence. The positive influence is that appraising employees openly will increase the level of internal completion between the employees which will evidentially increase the overall performance of the whole team as a result of increase in individual performance.

Team size

The size of the team is also very important in team management as the relatively small a team is the better the leader is well positioned to understand all members in the team and adopt the right approach for managing each member. Size is also important in the case of measuring performance and transferring learning. This is because, when the size is all transparency and accessibility is enhanced between the supervisors and the team members as compared t when the size is big. In the case of Electron, the size of the team is well planned in the sense that all teams are made up of 10 members and the small size means that the team leader is well positioned to enhance the team through equal distribution of works and easier management approaches.

Team membership

Considering the fact that every individual have their own strengths and weaknesses and these qualities can sometimes contradict with what is expected in a team, it is important that the selection of members in a team is such that is done in a way that it doesn’t influence the performance of the team negatively. Electron has the right answer to this issue by adopting a team “agreed” strategy which involves employing the new member for a temporal time and having the team decide whether the member should be employees permanently or not. This is very significant in the sense that it allows the team members to select new members into the team. Such a freedom is s very necessary in order to ensure that members coming into the team are those which the team has viewed as having the potentials to contribute significantly towards the development of the team.

Team culture in Electronic

The modern day business is very complex in nature and this complexity has been linked to the reason why organizational designs are changing (Galbraith, 2002). In order to ensure sustainability, organizations are constantly forced to get used to new business approaches that better meets the demands of customers. This constant change influences the performance of organizations and the end product is not always positive, as certain changes that results to subsequent change in organizational design can yield negative impact on product quality as staffs might not be familiar with the new design.

In order to meet the requirements for changing organizational design from the traditional concept to a more flexible configures, companies put certain factors in the organization into consideration (Tomislav, 2009). Such factors like increased level of competition, increased cost of production, quality and services, as well as changes in technical requirements forces organizations to go adopt a new outlook that drops the old ways of undertaking organizational functions and adopts a revised version to such functions (Crosetto and Macazaga, 2005) – that allows the organization to main sight on the flow of activities within its system, as well as process orientation and new management paradigm.

Culture has been linked by many academicians to something that has to do with people, unique quality and an organization’s management style (Kilman et al., 1985), the way things are done in any given place (Deal and Kennedy, 1982), or the non-rational and expressive qualities of an organization (Siew and Kelvin, 2004).

Pettigrew (1979) laid the foundation for writing on organizational culture. He introduced cultural anthropology and demonstrated how similar concepts such as symbolism, myth and rituals can be used to analyze an organization. Dandridge et al. (1980) supported this idea by illustrating how the study of these myths and symbols help in revealing the core structure of organizations. Recent studies (e.g. Denison and Mishra, 1995; Schein, 1985, b; Siehl and Martin, 1988, 1990 and Wallach, 1983) have defined the culture concept in different ways.

These differences in the definition of culture are result of different research frameworks adopted by the researchers. Smircich (1983) noted four ways through which culture research can be viewed. This includes culture as an external variable, conducted by supporters like Ouchi (1981) and Pascale and Anthony (1981) and culture as an internal variable of an organization, which is the most common definition adopted by researchers like Collins and Porras (1994) and Peters and Waterman (1982). In the anthropological school, culture is defined as a system of shared cognitions (Rossi and O’Higgins, 1980).

The fact is that the culture adopted by an organization directly influences its performance because the culture determines the production process and productivity level in the organization. Additional, culture communicates to employee what is expected of them and how they can pioneer the organization towards glory.

The team based culture in Electron can be described as a functional culture. This is because, every member of the team is designated to certain task in the organization and give clear directions as to how such tasks will be handled. Additionally, there is an open criticism for tasks done by individuals as discussed above. As a support for this argument is the cases where employees have openly been criticized and directed to follow strict rules as it noted in the production unit where a new employee was folding four foils at a time instead of one at a time, and the team leader pointed a finger at him and directed that he stops folding four foils at a time.

How strategic team management in Electron influences organizational politics

Organizational politics is becoming a common topic in management studies. This is mainly because of the high negative influence it has on the workforce. As managers struggle to find new realms for improving overall productivity, factors such as perceived organizational politics is a worry to most managers. This is because; the way an employee perceives organizational politics can directly influence his level of commitment and job performance (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992; Vigoda-Gadot, 2003). The main reason behind such influence has been attributed to the fact that, organizational politics is normally perceived in situations that are related to power and sharing. That is, employs can easily view abuse of power or denial of worthy appraisal as neglect for their commitment to the organization, and this will reduce their overall commitment and performance.

As a support to the above statements are recent studies which have found organizational politics and political perceptions as having a negative influence on both workers and their working environment (e.g., Ferris et al., 1989; Ferris et al., 2002; Kacmar & Baron, 1999; Mayes and Allen, 1977; Porter et al., 1981). Studies (e.g. Witt, 1998; Kacmar et al., 1999) have indicated that there is an existing negative relationship between job performance and perceived organizational politics. Organizational politics can also be a product of cultural differences.

Considering the fact that the management approaches in the company is directly influenced by the team and also determined by the team member, there is a high chance or organizational politics in the company. This is because, some members of the team can gang up against a specific member, and since the decision of whether to sack or retain an employee and the level of appraisal due for an employee is determined by all the members, there is a high chance of that particular employee being subjected to activities in the company that will eventually reduce his performance or led to the employee being denied due rewards. As such, it is important to understand that the form of management adopted in the company is such that has a high level of inducing organizational politic in the teams and as such reducing the overall performance of the team.

The team blue leader also noted that there have been a recent increase in the level of direct and confrontational words between employees during team meeting, and this is a clear indication of organizational politics that is slowly building in the system. The end point will be employees intentionally giving poor rating for works that have actually been done perfectly by other members, or employees refusing to exchange and/or transfer knowledge within the system, which will also influence on the overall performance of the team negatively.

How emotional performance can be used to mitigate the outcomes of organizational politics in Electron

The most common way for describing job satisfaction is the level of desired outcome expected from the job process as compared with the actual outcome that was obtained from the job process (Cranny et al., 1992). It can be summarized to mean the degree to which people like their jobs (Spector, 1997). A number of reasons exist to serve as the need for employers to be concerned about the level of job satisfaction experienced by their employees as it can have a direct influence on their performance through a subsequent influence in their citizenship behavior (Rowden, 2002). A situational approach to job performance (Hackman and Oldman, 1980; Herzberg, 1966) views it as being influenced by organizational conditions.

The view of job satisfaction can come in the form of specific attitudes that are related to a specific job, or it can be in the form of a combination of different attitudes with respect to a job process (Spector, 1997). The specific view aspect is used to understand the factor that influences job satisfaction or dissatisfaction, while the combined view is used to study other factors in the job process. Generally, a single item measure can be used to assess overall job satisfaction (Wanous et al., 1997). Although questions exist as to whether the adoption of single item measure is right to determining the factors that influences job satisfaction and dissatisfaction; but findings exist (Wanous and Reichers, 1996; Wanous et al., 1997; Ganzach, 1998).

There are empirical studies that have also analyzed the relationship between job satisfaction and emotional intelligence. Bar-On (1997) reported a direct relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. Abraham (2000) however reported a different approach, by stating that emotional intelligence is related to job satisfaction, but it is moderated by the level of environmental control experienced in the job.

The direct relationship reported by Bar-On (1997) can be explained by sample of individuals in higher level occupations such as teachers, nurses, marketer, in cases where their abilities is mollified by environmental conditions. In summary, when their individual ability is modified (increased) by environmental conditions, they tend to have higher level of job satisfaction. This explanation is also supported by literatures that suggest that people seek environments that match their characteristics (O’Reilly et al., 1991), and with goal choice theories which states that people’s choice of goal depends on their ability (Locke and Latham, 1990). Similarly, Ganzach (1998) proposed a model of relationship that exists between job satisfaction, job complexity and (rational) intelligence. It states that intelligence has a direct negative effect and an indirect positive effect on job satisfaction, and the effect is a product of job complexity.

Other authors such as Zeidner et al. (2004, p. 382) are also of the opinion that the extent to which an employ employees emotional intelligence can influence their attitude and level of empathy and altruism towards order, but it can also be of negative influence in their job performance especially in cases whereby the job demands strictness and toughness as a result of the fact that EI will not allow them to apply such measures because they seek to satisfy their fellow colleagues. .

Figure (1): models of the relationship between emotional intelligence and job performance

Sources as adapted from: Ricardo and Joaquin (2007)

The figure (1) above illustrated the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. While some of the models show an indirect relationship, the general idea is that emotional intelligence is capable influences job satisfaction. This can be demonstrated to be through because job satisfaction is defined as the degree to which a person likes the job he does, while emotional intelligences is the understanding of our emotions and other people’s emotion, and using it in decision making.

On that account, it can be stated that emotional intelligence plays significant role in the performance of an employee as well as the level of job satisfaction experienced. There is also the need to understand that such influence can be either positive or negative depending on the kind of job and level of toughness or rigidity needed. In most cases however, the influence are normally positive as it is geared towards keeping other employees in the job stream motivated and as such improving the overall performance of the company through a subsequent increase in the individual performance of these companies.

In the case of Electron, it can be seen that emotional intelligence will have high influence on the individual performance workforce and subsequently on the team performance. This is because emotional intelligence deals with creating the right atmosphere to ensure that everybody in the workforce are well treated and attended to. On that account, if the employees exhibit a high level of emotional intelligence, then the cases of organizational politics as discussed wouldn’t be an issue because their main focus will be on the overall performance of the company and not for their own individual benefit as expressed in the context of organizational politics.

Recommendation and conclusion

From the above analysis, it is clear that the standards set by the company with respect to recruitment have both positive and negative effects. Well, this is common of any business strategy as it is hard to visualize any business strategy that is all about positivity and no atom of negativity. In the context of this paper, it can be seen that the case is no different as the idea of employing the staffs on temporal bases with the option of permanent employment being decided by the team has its own influence.

On the side of positivity, the employees will be motivated and team work will be enhanced as they are together with those they so desires to be with. A sense of understanding that is built through such platform means that the employee are better positioned to enhance their individual performance as a result of cooperative operations that exist in the team, and then it will directly influence the performance of the company positively.

On the negative side, organizational politics will be prevalent in such cases and it can result in talented applicants not being employed on a permanent bases. This is because some people with the necessary talents and skill as well as expertise might miss out on employment because of the fact that they are not chosen by the team.

On the account of this paper, it is however recommended that the company should focus more on satisfying the employees and if allowing them to choose their own team members is the best approach, then it should be allowed in the system. In any case, the company should ensure that such approaches are well coordinated in order to eliminate any chances of the employees yielding high influence on the management structure and potentially bringing down the company with organizational politics.

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