This chapter offered an insight of the research groundwork which included six sections. In the beginning, the research background, purposes, questions, as well as research significance were elaborated. It was then followed by listing the delimitations and limitations of the research, along with definitions key terms. All of these were to provide a comprehensive focal point of the entire research.
Background of the Study
Teamwork was already presented since the beginning of human history and will continue to be the essence of human living and development. People have been working together to achieve a common goal. According to Forsyth (1990), there are reasons why people form a team. First, it is for a functional perspective which suggests that people join team because teams are able to accomplish things that individuals cannot complete when they work alone. The second is more interpersonal in nature that by joining teams, it helps people to fulfill social needs.
In the 20th century when the industrial revolution was begun to give impacts in workplace, a traditional approach called scientific management was used to organize people to perform tasks (Yeatts & Hyten, 1998). The task was then divided into small activity units and performed by individuals who worked separately to complete entire task, which in recent years, we called this activity as group work. By focusing on productivity while ignoring the quality and customer service concern, scientific management indeed had resulted in efficiently producing standardized products in mass amount, which was the goal of the organizations of that time. However, the shortcoming of the management was the group work could neither quickly adapt to changes in the environment nor satisfy many of social needs of workers.
As a result of globalization, advance in technology and education, organizational management and system had to be shifted accordingly. They have certainly changed the characteristics of people and jobs (Levi, 2001). As people demanded more meaningful work, and jobs became more complex and interdependent, these made organizations to realize that they needed to be more flexible. A new system was developed along that corner, where self-managed work teams (SMWT) were introduced in order to respond to those emerging needs.
A SMWT is a group of employees who are responsible for managing and performing technical tasks that result in a product or service being delivered to an internal and external
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customer (Yeatts & Hyten, 1998). Unlike the group work in which all of those responsibilities are reserved for higher-level manager, the member of teams are typically manage themselves, assign jobs, plan and schedule work, make decisions, and take actions on problems (Wellins, Wilson, Katz, Laughlin, Day, & Price, 1990).
SMWTs were so popular among the United States private sectors in the late 20th century. The use of teams among US companies had expanded rapidly as studies suggested that 85% of companies with 100 or more employees used some type of work teams (Cohen &
Bailey, 1997). Moreover, some companies were using teams as a central system in order to integrate various parts of the organizations (Mohrman, Cohen, & Mohrman, 1995).
Companies have stated that they use work teams in order to improve productivity, quality, morale, and to reduce costs (Cotton, Vollrath, Froggatt, Lengnick-Hall, & Jennings, 1988;
Lawler, 1986; Lawler, Mohrman, & Ledford, 1992; Macy, Peterson, & Norton, 1989;
Wellins, Byham, & Dixon, 1994). Prior statistical academic researches were also conducted to find out the relations of teamwork on performance. Researches have shown that there was a strong link between teamwork and job satisfaction (Cohen & Ledford, 1994; Wall, Kemp, Jackson, & Clegg, 1986) and organizational commitment (Corderey, Mueller, & Smith, 1991;
Pearson, 1992). These reasons support the reasoning before that indeed team have brought the tasks to new level and fulfilled the social needs of people.
Today, SMWT is also popular not only in United States but have already become a common system used by organizations all over the world, either profit companies or non-profit organizations. This is because the pressure of global competition, the need to align business models with complex environments, and the urgency in continuous innovation have led to the critical use of teams as a key element of basic organizational design (Kozlowski &
Bell, 2003). There are many leading companies across industries that have shown a remarkable achievement for the use of work teams. For example, Motorola, Southwest Airlines, Timberland, Levi’s, Google, P&G, GE, Ford, AT&T, Federal Express, W.L. Gore
& Associates, Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Apple, and many others. By this, it is can be concluded how teamwork becomes so important over the years and the popularity of teamwork is still rising as the foundation of the organization system.
In the context of NGOs, many have exercised teams as their central management to carry out projects. Some NGOs that have been employing teamwork as the fundamental of the organization’s system and process are Greenpeace, World Wide Fund, Tzu-Chi Foundation, Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa (YCAB Foundation), etc. However, even though mentioned above all the advantages of teamwork, not all teams are effective. Less constraints
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and pressures compared to the profit organizations, NGOs usually lack of team management therefore unable to fully utilize the teams’ capabilities.
Since the Asia economic crisis in 1998, many private companies became extra conscious of their financial, cutting down those extra budgets especially for charity and donors. Many NGOs were affected by this since their finance was depended on the donations.
NGOs were competing with each other in order to win the aids from limited donators. These challenges forced the non-governmental sector to improve their competitive advantage.
NGOs need to change and adopt the private sector’s management in order to develop their competitive advantage and to secure their survivals. One way is to increase the effectiveness of their teams. By having effective teams, NGOs can show remarkable assets, capabilities and achievement which are parts of the requirements for donators to make contribution in those NGOs. Further studies about teamwork in NGOs are then necessary to provide investigation for significant factors that influence their organizational performance and survival. YCAB Foundation realized the effectiveness of their teams as the big issue for their survival and has agreed to participate in this study for further analysis and to contribute academically for the holistic knowledge of teamwork in the non-governmental sector.
Purposes of the Study
The purposes of this research were as follows:
1. Examined and analyzed the effect of team characteristics on team effectiveness.
2. Examined and analyzed the effect of team effectiveness on organizational performance.
3. Examined and analyzed the effect of team effectiveness on an organizational survival and competitiveness.
4. Examined and analyzed the effect of organizational performance on an organizational survival and competitiveness.
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Significance of the Study
This present study was significant for both practitioners and academics. There were five primary points of significance for this study. First, it added to the existing teamwork knowledge more a complete picture on the relationship between team effectiveness to the organizational performance and survival and competitiveness of an organization. The study of teamwork has begun since 1980s. Within three decades, hundreds of studies have been investigated and contributed to the holistic knowledge of teamwork. Many models of teamwork have presented to see the characteristics of team that can enhance the team effectiveness. However, not many studies have investigated the big picture of relations of team effectiveness and the organizational performance and organizational survival and competitiveness. The present study tried to link the three variables and explore the relations.
Therefore the present study was significant for the academics as it provided the new perspectives of team effectiveness, organizational performance, and organizational survival and competitiveness.
Second, it added to the existing teamwork knowledge the relationship between team effectiveness to the organizational performance in the context of NGOs. Many studies have conducted the relations between team effectiveness and organizational performance, in which organizational performance was only measured by job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and productivity. However, limited empirical study has been found to examine the relations between team effectiveness and organizational performance, which was based on the Balance Scorecard with indicators of customer satisfaction, innovativeness, and financial performance. These three measurements for organizational performance were specifically requested by the YCAB Foundation as they were the critical points where benefactors stressed on. Therefore, the present study was significant for the academics as it provided the specific study of relationship between team effectiveness and organizational performance within the NGOs context.
Third, it added to the existing teamwork knowledge the relationship between team effectiveness to the organizational survival and competitiveness in the context of NGOs.
Since the Asia financial crisis occurred in 1998, the competition to attract donators became heightened among NGOs. Many donators inquired the organizational performance as their requirement to bequeath their money for NGOs. Winning benefactors was necessary for the survival and competitiveness of the NGOs. Therefore, the new concept of survival and competitiveness of an organization from knowledge management theory was used as it was
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seen as important to study on. The present study tried to measure the relevant of team effectiveness to the survival and competitiveness of the organization. Teamwork, as part of organizational learning criteria, was seen as one of the significant factors that might affect the survival and competitiveness of an organization. Therefore, the present study was significant for the academics as it provided the specific study of relationship between team effectiveness and organizational survival and competitiveness from knowledge management theory within the NGOs context.
Fourth, this integrated model of team effectiveness was proposed particularly to the NGOs context, where there was a deficiency of researches involving these variables in non- governmental sector in Indonesia. The present study was significant for the academics as it added to the existing knowledge of teamwork in focus of Indonesia NGOs.
Fifth, the model helped to provide significant variables that point out the major factors that contributed to the team effectiveness, and subsequently the organizational performance and survival. These factors helped the practitioners for their strategies development, in which they could put emphasize on dominant factors that improved effectiveness. The findings of this study also have the potential to assist and investigate team effectiveness within NGO, and hence gave reliable feedback about the teamwork inside the organization. Therefore, the present study was significant for the practitioners in relations of teamwork.
Delimitations and Limitations
Delimitations of the study are the scope of the investigation in order to make research feasible; while limitations are barriers of the study including restrictions of time and resources.
Delimitations
There were some delimitations of this study. First, it was delimited to Indonesia.
Second, it was delimited to Yayasan Cinta Anak Bangsa (YCAB Foundation). Third, this study only explored the relationship among variables of team characteristics, team effectiveness, organizational performance, and organizational survival and competitiveness.
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Limitations
The sample only included employees of the YCAB Foundation; therefore the results could not be generalized to all non-governmental organizations or even profit organizations.
However, given the amount of time and resources available, a single case study helped to narrow down the scope of the research in order to facilitate a more manageable research process and provide a detail observation.
Definition of Key Terms Team Characteristics
Team characteristics referred to teams’ distinguishing traits, qualities, or properties (Kwak, 2004). Team characteristics were measured using 12 variables adapted from Robbins and Judge (2013), include the following: adequate resources, leadership, climate of trust, reward systems, abilities of members, personality, allocating roles, diversity, common purpose and specific goals, team efficacy, conflict levels, and social loafing. These variables were divided into three categories, contextual factor, team composition factor, and team process factor.
Team Effectiveness
Team effectiveness referred to the output production of the team, which should meet or exceed the performance standard, and the work that should maintain or enhance the capability of team members to work together (Hackman, 1987). The assessment of team effectiveness consisted of the criteria of team performance and member satisfaction, which used by most team effectiveness models before (Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Cohen, 1994; Gladstein, 1984; Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Hackman, 1987; McGrath, 1964; Pearce &
Ravlin, 1987; Sundstrom, De Meuse, & Futrell, 1990).
Organizational Performance
Organizational performance referred to the degree to which organizations achieve their business objectives (Elenkov, 2002). This definition held for both profit organizations as well as NGOs. The assessment of organizational performance was based on Balanced Scorecard which consisted of the criteria of customer satisfaction, innovativeness, and financial performance.
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Organizational Survival and Competitiveness
Organizational survival and competitiveness referred to the organization’s effort to respond to changes in market and social conditions by developing the most appropriate and adaptive structure that could allow it to maximize its resources and meet organizational goals (Chan, 2011). Organizational survival and competitiveness was measured using 9-item scale adapted from Knowledge Management by Lin (2009).
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