The Destructive I mpact of a Positive Team-Building Intervention

Abstract

Team-building interventions seek to build competent, collaborative, and creative work teams by removing the barriers to effective group functioning and by helping participants better understand and utilize the group processes associated with effective group behavior. This article examines a confron tation-team-building intervention that was highly successful in building the supervisors into a cohesive, trusting, and unified group. However, the team became the most important variable, with little consideration given to the rest of the organization. As a result, the whole organization was severely crippled and had to be completely rebuilt. Lessons are drawn from this excellent example of a lopsided intervention.

Conducting Team building research in the context of sport and exercise

“…Behavioral changes, such as work-group performance (Boss & McConkie, 1981). m o v e r (Beckhard & Lake, 1971) and examination of critical incidents following the intervention (Bigelow.…”

“…m o v e r (Beckhard & Lake, 1971) and examination of critical incidents following the intervention (Bigelow. 1971;Boss & McConkie, 1981) have been used. This type of information was often accessible to researchers by accessing company records, however, there were times that observational techniques were also used (DeMeuse & Liebowitz, 1981).…”

Evaluating OD Evaluations: A Status Report

“…The Boss and McConkie (1981) study is also the demonstrator example that this recommendation has received some attention.…”

“…In their study, Boss and McConkie (1981) describe the negative effects that a positive team-building intervention with one group in an organization had on that organization as a whole. Thus at least some attention has been paid to this recommendation.…”

“…According to Cook and Campbell, quasi-experimental designs are &dquo;not in any way qualitatively different from the ones we labeled 'generally uninterpretable,' they merely make it possible to rule out more threats to internal validity&dquo; (1979, p. 103). Six of the reviewed studies were classified as quasiexperimental designs: five of them (Adams & Sherwood, 1979;Boss & McConkie, 1981;Cohen & Turney, 1978-Phase 1;Nadler, Cammann, & Mervis, 1980;and Paul & Gross, 1981) utilized nonequivalent control group designs, and one (Porras & Wilkins, 1980), used a multiple time-series design. For the most part, these studies overcame many of the weaknesses found in the studies utilizing preexperimental designs; however, selection interactions and selection by treatment interaction were still generally judged to be plausible threats to their validity.…”