Team cultures, stress and health

Abstract

The article describes a method for in-depth analysis of team cultures. Culture may be defined as the way in which a group of people solve problems, ie team culture represents the coping repertoire of a given team in its specific operational domain. As such, culture influences the way the team deals with stress and consequently affects the overall health of the team. Culture comprises a pattern of shared basic assumptions, which operate on more or less unconscious levels and, thus, are not easy to identify during tranquil periods. However, various cultural patterns become visible in critical situations. The present method investigates team cultures by simulating critical incidents via dilemmas. The method analyses four cultural dimensions—adaptation, goal attainment, integration and pattern maintenance—and uses neural networks for data processing. Cultural ‘maps’ obtained by applying this method to six middle management teams in an industrial enterprise reporting excellent to average health are presented. The ‘maps’ can be used for identification of areas where the existing culture can be enriched to improve the coping capability of the teams. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.