Team Building and Appreciative Inquiry in Research and Development Teams

Abstract

The changing nature of work has given rise to team-based organization structures. For making teams effective, organizations should train their employees in teamwork skills regularly. Team building is one of the training interventions often used by practitioners. The present study aims to assess the impact of team-building and appreciative inquiry training interventions in a controlled experimental setting. The impact of the interventions was assessed on the following dependent variables: group communication, group decision making, group performance, and group membership satisfaction. The sample comprised of 90 scientists of a Research & Development organization, randomly allocated to experimental conditions. The results revealed a significant impact of both the interventions. The Mean scores of participants exposed to either of the interventions were more than control group except in group membership satisfaction, where mean scores of only the appreciative inquiry group participants were higher than the control group. The results highlight the importance of both interventions in organizations. The study has wide implications for organization development theory and practice.