Creating effective teams by means of mathematical modelling

Created by Rune Huntley Andersen, February 2022

The use of teams in organisations has enlarged rapidly the past 30 years, in correlation with the vast amount of more complex tasks in almost any industry. This development has augmented the requirements in management, since additional factors have altering influence on the work process, compared to individuals working solitarily. It requires insight in the process of people collaborating, to achieve a common goal. Nonetheless there’re scarce information about the process of achieving a high performing team, or effective team, from a managerial perspective.

A lot of literature and theories about group creation, group dynamics and group development has been utilized over the years, which widens the scope of the subject. Though, much of the literature available erects from the same origin, which can therefore be summed to a more general model for team effectiveness. [1] This article intends to review the relevant literature to outline the current knowledge of creating teams and examine the factors influencing on team effectiveness. This is outlined through the general model, which describes the determining factors in team effectiveness.

Even though the literature illuminates a lot of factors determining team effectiveness, the applicability in practice is not so clear. Devine & Phillips [2] developed a meta-analysis to investigate the link between cognitive ability in teams and the performance of the team, to create a hands-on scheme for predicting team effectiveness. This study is focused on the abilities on the team members as individuals, and are therefore not considering the context, which, in the team effective model, is stated to be a huge factor for team effectiveness. A study by Kolodny & Kiggundu [3] claims the importance of the interactions among the different factors influencing the team effectiveness as a necessity, when predicting the performance. T. Meridith Ross & Eric C. Jones [4] have conducted a study combining the aforementioned studies, which has led to a more substantial mathematical process for predicting team effectiveness. These studies constitute the aim of the discussion for this article.

Table of content:

Annotated Bibliography

[1] Robbins, Judge, & Campbell. (2010). Organizational behaviour (13th ed.). Pearson Education.

[2] Devine, D. J., & Philips, J. L. (2001). Do Smarter Teams Do Better. Small Group Research, 32(5), 507–532. https://doi.org/10.1177/104649640103200501

[3] Meredith Ross, Jones, & Adams. (2008). Can team effectiveness be predicted?, 248–268. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235307866_Can_team_effectiveness_be_predicted

[4] E. McGrath, Arrow, & L. Berdahl. (2000). The Study of Groups: Past, Present, and Future, 4(1), 95–105. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258180855_The_Study_of_Groups_Past_Present_and_Future

[5] Ilgen, D. R., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M., & Jundt, D. (2005). Teams in Organizations: From Input-Process-Output Models to IMOI Models. Annual Review of Psychology, 56(1), 517–543. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070250

[6] Y. Wang. (2018). Overview on the Team Interaction Process. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2018.612001