ABSTRACT
The benefits of teams in organizations are undeniable in this day and age. While the trend toward teams in a variety of settings can be traced back decades, the current environment is even more receptive to team-based systems at a number of levels. Savoie (1998) reported that teams have risen dramatically, with reports of “team presence” by workers rising from 5% in 1980 to 50% in the mid 1990s. In fact, an American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) survey (1993) of over 1200 organizations reported that more than 80% of workers were a part of some work team within their organization, and over 84% of workers surveyed were a part of multiple teams throughout their organization (Fiore et al., 2001; Stough et al., 2000). With the influx of teams in the 1980s, managers and workers assumed that, with a collected group of people, there are more skills and resources available to solve complex problems. However, as the use of teams increased, it became evident that they are not automatically effective and that putting a group of workers together does not necessarily make a team. Therefore, the potential benefits of teams often were not realized. While there are numerous benefits to be gained by the implementation of teams, there are also a number of reasons teams fail. These failures can often be traced back to errors in team implementation and training.
