Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior - Soltanieh ...

COMPOSE TEAMS TO ASSURE SUCCESSFUL BOUNDARY ACTIVITY
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full - time basis. A group of three managers from one of the geographic organizations was
created to oversee the team ’ s efforts.
Although there was initial skepticism from some of the team members, the group
quickly developed effective processes for working together. The team held several seminars
and went on field excursions together to observe the geological area they were investigating.
As is true of many large teams, alpha team members worked on different parts
of the task in cross - functional subgroups and used a common database to track the status of
the numerous activities. There was a great deal of informal communication between team
members and although they had limited experience working in teams, they soon found
that combining their knowledge led to solving key problems. Team members developed
strong ties with one another.
Other than bi - weekly meetings with the steering committee and informal contacts with
other experts in their respective fields, the team had little external contact. In fact, team
members spent so much time with one another and so little with their functional departments
that others outside the team commented that the team had a tendency to isolate
itself from the rest of the company. The team leader took on nearly all the external activities
of the team, particularly those with management. Team members primarily confi ned
their external activities to exchanging technical information with others.
How successful was the alpha team? The two goals of the alpha team were to
develop new exploration technologies and to apply these technologies to exploration of a
new field. As might be expected, based on the points we have made previously, the team
was very successful in finding new and effective ways to evaluate potential hydrocarbon
prospects but was not as successful in getting their ideas accepted and utilized within the
organization.
In the oil industry, companies may submit competitive applications to the government to
obtain a license to further explore and develop a field. Once a license is obtained there is further
exploration, and potentially, the development and the construction of a site. Deciding
when to bid on a site and gaining government approval requires careful analysis of the site
and accurate projections of the oil that can be extracted from it using various technol ogies.
Once technology decisions were made, the alpha team left it to the steering committee to
“ transfer ” the conclusions of their work to top management and the other groups who
were responsible for developing and submitting competitive applications. Unfortunately, the
transfer was problematic and it took a very long time for the results of the team to disseminate
within the organization. Because of the delays and lack of broad support, the company
was never able to obtain licenses for the areas the alpha team studied and for which they
developed the technology. Some good did come out of the alpha team. Once the team was
disbanded and members transferred to other teams, some consulted on a similar project. On
this new assignment the old alpha team members were able to bring information and contacts
into the new team that allowed the alpha technology to be successfully applied. The
old alpha team members filled critical boundary roles in the new project.
The role of composition in the oil industry – beta team
At about the same time the alpha team was formed, a second team, the beta team,
also came into being. Like the alpha team, the beta team was created to come up with
innovative ways to explore new areas. The beta team differed from the alpha team in two