How do we measure the effectiveness of team building? Is it good enough? Team Management Systems ‐ a case study

Abstract

Looks at the use of the Team Management Index (TMI) as a team building intervention in a programme of organizational development (OD). Attempts to assess the instrument’s effectiveness using a variety of measures (including the taxonomy of De Meuse and Liebowitz, 1981). In so doing, raises wider methodological and epistemological issues as to the whole nature of data collection, validity and proof in measuring the effectiveness of OD interventions. Discovers that, according to the measurement criteria, set out by De Meuse and Liebowitz, the TMI can be considered to be an effective OD instrument. However, finds that these measurement techniques are “blunt” and, by their very nature, lacking in academic rigour. Argues, therefore, that all levels of data collection and evidence gathering can never constitute 100 per cent proof of a causal link between OD interventions and resultant changes in the organization. Concludes that what will be deemed to count as adequate evidence or proof of an intervention’s effectiveness ultimately will be a personal choice; that in concentrating on comparing before and after measures of a team’s effectiveness theorists have ignored the change process which is taking place as a team begins to become effective, and have treated teams at the end of a team building intervention as if they were finished products; and finally that research time should be devoted to studying the process of change which a team undergoes during its development (of which team building is just the beginning) in order to highlight the ways in which an organization could nurture, support and facilitate this process to ensure the effective development of its work teams.