ABSTRACT
Working in groups and teams is common in the workplace and membership of these formations comes with an awareness of ways of doing and ways of being. Teams are often assembled around a project either through direct assignment or open recruitment. The role of the team in both endorsing/sanctioning self/other behaviour and performance, and the emphasis on communication as a process and reference to 'acceptable interaction patterns' and matches the issues raised by workplace discourse analysts. Work by conversation analysts has shown how teams are formed in interaction through a process of dis/alignment and change in the positions the members take, moving from an individual position to the status of a "single interactional party". Becoming part of a team is subject to the individual claiming membership and the team projecting member status to the newcomer and this process is related to a negotiation of power between the established and new members of the team.
