Team Characteristics & Diversity

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 Team Characteristics

• A team consists of two or more people who work

interdependently over some time period to accomplish
common goals related to some task-oriented purpose
• A special type of “group”
• The interactions among members within teams revolve around
a deeper dependence on one another than the interactions
within groups
• The interactions within teams occur with a specific task-related
purpose in mind

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 Types of Teams

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 Variations within Team Types

• Virtual teams are teams in

which the members are
geographically dispersed,
and interdependent activity
occurs through electronic
communications—primarily
e-mail, instant messaging,
and Web conferencing
• Teams also vary in how
developmentally mature
they are

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 Team Interdependence

• Task interdependence refers

the degree to which team
members interact with and
rely on other team members
for the information,
materials, and resources
needed to accomplish work
for the team

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 Team Interdependence

• Goal interdependence exists when team members have a

shared vision of the team’s goal and align their individual
goals with that vision as a result

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 Team Interdependence

• Outcome interdependence
exists when team members
share in the rewards that the
team earns

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 Team Composition

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© 2017 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in any
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 Team Diversity

• Degree to which members are different from one another in

terms of any attribute that might be used by someone as a
basis of categorizing people
• Value in diversity problem-solving approach
• Similarity-attraction approach
• Surface-level diversity
• Deep-level diversity

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 Team Size

• Having a greater number of

members is beneficial for
management and project
teams but not for teams
engaged in production
tasks
• Team members tend to be
most satisfied with their
team when the number of
members 4 or 5

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 How Important are Team Characteristics

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