The Effectiveness of Health Care Teams in the National Health Service

Pritchard, Jones, Roth, Stuebing and Ekeberg (1988) tested some of these ideas by
measuring the effects of team feedback, goal setting and incentives on productivity.
Five organisational units in the military were studied. One, a maintenance section,
repaired a variety of electronic equipment used for aircraft communications. The
other four sections together made up a material storage and distribution branch.
Productivity baselines were established before each team received new "treatments"
(i.e., performance feedback eight months after the study began, goal setting five
months later, and incentives a further five months later) to determine the incremental
effects of these "treatments". First, the level of performance of the teams was
measured over a period of eight months and then information on their performance
was given to each unit for five months. The teams next set clear targets in addition to
the performance feedback, and their performance was measured for another five
months. Feedback was in the form of computer-generated reports, given monthly to
the personnel of each unit. Finally, incentives were offered for high performance, in
the form of time off from work. Using these approaches, the average increase over
baseline productivity was 50% for feedback, 75% for goal setting and 76% for
incentives. The results showed a major increase in productivity among the teams,
though the unique contribution of each component of the intervention is difficult to
estimate accurately. Both goal setting and feedback had powerful effects on
performance.
Transition of organisations to teamworking
One of the most exciting developments in the field is the new emphasis upon the
development of team-based working in organisations (Mohrman, et. al., 1995;
Markiewicz & West, 1996, 2001). This reflects a concern amongst practitioners with
how team-based working can be effectively introduced into organisations. Mohrman
et. al., studied 25 teams in four companies using a grounded research methodology,
involving managers and internal customers. In the second phase of their research
they surveyed 178 teams across seven corporations, involving team members,
managers and customers. In this way, they developed a five stage design sequence
for the transition to a team-based organisation:
1. Identifying work teams and the nature of the task
This involves process analysis to determine essential work activities that have to be
conducted and integrated to produce products or services; deliberations analysis
which identifies dialogues about issues that have to be repeatedly resolved in order