TEAM DEVELOPMENT STAGES

Team Development Stages and Applying to a Multicultural Team Environment in a Hyper Growth Environment

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction3

Background of the Study3

Problem Statement4

Purpose of the Study4

Rationale of the Study5

Significance of the Study5

Chapter 2: Literature Review7

Theoretical framework7

Boundary-Spanning Nature Of Sales Teams10

Organisational readiness for change11

Organisational factors13

Elements of organisational culture14

Elements of organisational climate15

Facilitative leadership16

Sales team learning19

Turbulence21

Sales team outcomes23

Chapter 3: Methodology26

Research Design26

Literature Search26

Keywords26

References28

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background of the Study

Sales organisations are continuously developing new ideas and approaches to be more competitive. One of the approaches taken by most successful organisations is the move from individuals to boundary-spanning, cross-functional teams. Sales teams are being employed to counter efforts by buying organisations to form buying centers. It is proffered in this paper that organisations that are ready for change are conducive to enhancement of sales team learning. Organisation readiness for change is a condition impacted by a variety of organisational antecedent variables such as culture and climate.

Management consultants and theorists have long emphasized the need for firms to alter their traditional approaches, experiment with new organisational structures, production processes, and marketing programs, and learn from the successes and failures they encounter when implementing new and different approaches (Fiol & Lyles, 1985). As the rate of business change continues to accelerate, sales organisations face challenging situations like rapid new product developments, corporate restructuring, emerging technologies, and globalization. The demands for handling change are rapidly increasing. One of the approaches taken by many successful sales organisations is the move from individualism to cross-functional, boundary-spanning teamwork (Perry, Pearce, & Sims, 1999). Moore (1994) suggests that such a change helps organisations because the very nature of a formal team allows for the accessibility to ''pooled intelligence.'' This approach is of particular interest in the area of business-to-business selling. As products and services become more technologically advanced, organisations are moving toward the formation of selling teams that help them stay competitive (Moon & Strong, 1994).

Problem Statement

A change-ready organisation includes skill-based centers of excellence (Clark, Cavanaugh, Brown, & Sambamurthy, 1997). As sales organisations grow in their use and understanding of teams, it is imperative that they learn how the organisation influences sales teams, how sales teams function, how sales teams play a learning role for the sales organisation, and what makes sales teams effective. Understanding of learning in teams is a burgeoning but still limited focus of study. However, the growing reliance on sales teams in times of change beckons for understanding of the factors that enable team learning. For example, Edmondson (1999) found that for a team to consistently achieve high levels of performance, its members must actively ask questions, discuss errors, engage in experimentation and reflection, and seek external feedback. In other words, the team must learn. She predicted that teams that were effective at learning would attain better performance. As such, one broad goal of this paper is to address the question ''what are the organisational features that will enhance team learning and the corresponding outcomes associated with learning?''

Purpose of the Study

This paper will propose that ...