Review of Remaking teams: The revolutionary research-based guide that puts theory into practice.

Abstract

THERESA KLINE Remaking Teams: The Revolutionary Research-Based Guide That Puts Theory Into Practice San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 1999, xxii + 152 pp., disk incl. (ISBN 0-7879-4648-6, US$39.95, Hardcover) Reviewed by SHAUN NEWSOME The utility of the Scientist/Practitioner model in Industrial/Organizational Psychology has received much attention in the I/O literature. Equally balancing the roles of scientist and practitioner is a challenging task. While practitioners have been criticized for interventions lacking theoretical substance, scientists have been criticized for the proliferation of research lacking practical application. Theresa Kline provides us with a good example of how well the scientist/practitioner model can work. The author's goal was to provide practitioners with useable information concerning techniques and processes for increasing team effectiveness. She uses her own research and that of others to achieve this goal. The book contains 142 pages of text divided among 12 chapters in which the author presents many of her own case studies. The book includes a disk containing team development exercises and assessment tools. Human resource practitioners and training consultants will find the book to be a useful guide for developing team interventions. As with most books, the usefulness of each chapter will be a function of the reader's needs and experiential background. My own perspective is that of the human resource staff with which I currently work. In the opening chapter, Kline presents her descriptive model of team effectiveness. This provides the structure for the remainder of the book. Needed resources, organizational contextual variables, team characteristics, and individual dispositions are posited as influencing member satisfaction, team viability, and effectiveness. A brief history of teams and accompanying research is also presented in the opening chapter. Treatments of these later topics are very brief, and will be appreciated by even the most action-orientated practitioner. The focus of Chapter 2 is on clarifying the different types of teams along with defining the characteristics and functions of the various types. Kline suggests that the selection of a team intervention must be based on team type. Unfortunately, the remaining chapters contain little guidance in this regard. A more detailed discussion concerning the need for the creation of a team would also have been useful. Chapter 3 presents a discussion of the resources a team might need if it is to function effectively. This is an important chapter. Organizations and individuals chronically underestimate needed resources and thus a chapter devoted to this issue is vital. Kline presents three working examples of how a team might plan for its resource needs. Also included on disk is a resource need-planning template. Chapter 4 is the longest chapter in the book and focuses on the organizational context of teamwork and addresses the question of how the team and its outputs are integrated and supported within the broader organizational context. Kline discusses the importance of the team having a strong identity and a clear view of how it contributes to organizational performance. The importance of external team leadership in achieving this is also stressed. Ample advice is provided on all of these topics. Team characteristics such as goal clarity and adoption, role clarity, and team efficacy are presented in Chapter 5. Although these constructs are not new, Kline provides a very practical discussion of them. Through examples of her own interventions she demonstrates how organizations can address these important issues. The topic of member dispositions and their relationship to team performance is introduced in Chapter 6. Kline correctly points out that research has found little support for the popular belief that team member dispositions influence team performance. …