2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

592
Background
Team Effectiveness and Boundary Management:
The Four Roles Preconized by Ancona Revisited
Prof. Dr MSc Jacques Mylle
Psychology Department
Royal Military Academy
B1000 Brussels – Belgium
jacques.mylle@rma.ac.be
A lot of tasks during peace support operations (PSO) have to be performed by small military
units (say from 4 to 10 people). It is often contended that these tasks are characterized by the
necessity of teamwork and a high level of autonomy, due among others to the large distances
between the (sub)unit executing a task and their superior at the one side, and the potentially
quickly evolving situation at the other side .
The issue addressed in this paper is to be situated in the framework of a study aiming at
measuring team effectiveness of small executive teams, more specifically the contribution of
autonomy and boundary management in turbulent situations.
By teams we mean groups of people working together on a task with a high interdependency
of team members in fulfilling their job and who work together for a longer time period in their
real work environment. Thus we do not consider one-time groups in laboratory situations.
The scope on the subject is a so-called external perspective or ecological perspective, because
the team is considered as a living system that, at the one side, adapts to the demands of its
environment but, at the other hand, causes changes in the environment too.
Until the mid eighties researchers took an internal perspective and focused on what was
happening inside the group; e.g. how cohesion evolves.
The seminal work of Gladstein (1984) was the start for a paradigm shift: studying team
behaviors directed outwards the team; among others, towards other parts of the organization
and other groups evolving in the same setting. The core question relates to how the team
deals with the external influences on their performance and how they (try to) influence the
outer world themselves. In other words we are looking at what happens on the boundaries of
the team.
Gladstein observed in interviews that the subjects – as members of sales teams – frequently
spoke about the importance of their interactions with other teams of the company, such as the
installation teams and repair teams.
Another important finding was that they did not distinguish between the classic task-related
processes and team-related behaviors but instead between internal and external oriented.
External oriented behaviors are for example seeking information or molding an external
opinion.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003