Readings:

Barry, B., & Stewart, G. L. (1997). Composition, process, and performance in self-managed teams: The role of personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 62-78.

Jones, R. G., Stevens, M. J., & Fischer, D. L. (2000). Staffing in team contexts. In J. F. Kehoe (Ed.), Managing selection in changing organizations. (pp. 210-241). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

**Campion, M.A., Medsker, G.J., & Higgs, A.C. (1993). Relations between work group characteristics and effectiveness: Implications for designing effective work groups. Personnel Psychology, 46, 823-850.

Overview:

With the reductions in workforce during the last two decades, both as a result of “downsizing” and as a result of demographic changes, many companies have placed their hopes on team structures as more efficient ways of accomplishing organizational goals. Amazingly, there is still a shortage of research concerning team selection. That is, this is one area where more research is needed, if you’re interested…

In their chapter, Jones, Stevens, and Fischer (2000) tried to shed some light on problems of staffing teams during transitions and for intact teams. Their first working title for the chapter was “Staffing A Moving Target”, since teams change in important ways during their life cycles. They also wrote the chapter as a “reference” so that practitioners could use the index and reference list to help make important decisions about how to do their jobs when confronted with “team staffing” problems. However, you will see that there are still many questions raised which the current Principles for Validation don’t address. So, this is really a “new” problem in many practitioners’ experiences.

Important terms:

Team, members, tasks, and tools, task work, team work, and representation, heterogeneity, levels of analysis, sociometric selection, team work analysis

QUESTIONs:

Please answer any two of the following questions. This assignment is worth 15 points – 7.5 points per question.

1.Define the term “work team” according to Jones, Stevens, and Fischer (2000). How would you identify a work team, according to these authors?

2.Try to identify a difference between staffing teams and staffing for individual positions. Use the Heneman & Judge model of the staffing process to inform your answer.

3.Barry and Stewart (1997) chose personality as their construct of interest in examining team selection. What other constructs might you choose and why? How would you measure these constructs?

4.Several years ago, Barrick et al. (1998) defined the criteria for teams as “performance” and “viability”. Performance is the extent to which the team accomplishes what is expected of it and viability is whether the team is likely to stay together of lose people. How might the stage of the team’s “
life cycle”, as defined by Jones et al., affect the emphasis placed on each of these criteria? Be sure to define the three life cycle stage in your answer.

5.How does teamwork relate to contextual performance? In what ways is team selection similar to selecting for individuals who would likely be high contextual performers? Think about construct-method distinction as you answer this.