From Team Structure to Team Performance: A Framework

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical framework that links the organizational structure of a team to the team's performance through intervening factors such as the need for coordination, the need for communication, the extent to which the team's mission can be pre-planned, and the team's mutual awareness of each other's tasks. We suggest that the organizational structure of a team interacts with the nature of the team's mission (in particular, the interdependence among the tasks to be performed) to generate the need for coordination in order to successfully accomplish the mission. The need for coordination and the extent to which the mission can be pre-planned drive the need for communication during the mission. The efficiency of that communication is, in turn, affected by factors such as the team's level of mutual awareness. The paper presents several innovative measures for components of the suggested framework, and summarizes empirical evidence for the framework.

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