Outward Bound: Strategies for Team Survival in the Organization

Using the external perspective as a research lens, this study examines team-context interaction in five consulting teams. The data show three strategies toward the environment: informing, parading, and probing. Probing teams revise their knowledge of the environment through external contact, initiate programs with outsiders, and promote their team achievements within the organization. They are rated the highest performers, although member satisfaction and cohesiveness suffer in the short run. Results suggest that external activities are better predictors of team performance than internal group processes for teams facing external dependence. Teams are in the midst of a renaissance (Goodman, 1986). Although teams(l) are hardly new organization phenomena, the recent emphasis on teams as a fundamental unit, of the organization structure is different (Drucker, 1988). Perhaps we finally are taking groups seriously. Whether it is newly created teams to service financial accounts at Goldman Sachs (Maister, 1985), or to develop new products at General Motors and Procter and Gamble, or to implement new manufacturing strategies in the aerospace industry (Kazanjian & Drazin, 1986) this new and different form of group is proliferating (Gersick, 1988). One difference is in the increased amount of autonomy and responsibility granted to the team in an attempt to achieve flexibility in a competitive, rapidly changing marketplace (Ancona & Caldwell, 1989; Kanter, 1983). A second change is the increased use of cross-functional teams, groups put together to accomplish a particular task through part-time members who have concurrent commitments to other parts of the organization (Galbraith, 1982). Finally, in response to new environmental challenges, teams are called upon more and more to span traditional boundaries both inside the firm (providing a closer coupling among diverse functional units) and outside the firm (providing a link to customers, suppliers, or competitors) (Clark & Fujimoto, 1987; Von Hippel, 1988). This study tracks the development of some of these new, part-time, more autonomous, and externally-oriented, teams. Using a framework called the external perspective (Ancona, 1987), this research examines the on-going relationship between five consulting teams and their environment. The environment includes both the organization in which the teams are situated and those outside the organization that are serviced by the teams. A secondary interest is examining the relationships among external activity, internal team activity, and subsequent team performance.