How important is interdependence to team success?

Teams are common structures within many organisations and are often central features of the deployment of resource to satisfy strategic need. However, simple descriptions of what constitutes a team based on size and qualities of the team members would do well to consider the highly nuanced organisational environment where the team is deployed. Interestingly, the writing which can help organisational scholars understand the team environment has a long history.

Most notably, Thompson’s (1967) very influential work proposed an early form of contingency theory. Contingency theory suggests that organisations (or units of) are responsive to organisational environmental conditions as proposed in the seminal work of Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) and echoed more recently in Senge’s (1990) concept of the learning organisation. This thinking points towards the very topical notions of business agility which brings with it a requirement that the business has the necessary capacity within its structure to adapt to conditions and adopt new practices.

Thompson (1967) proposed a number of forms of interdependence that help to make sense of the team process in light of the operating environment.

• Pooled interdependence – which considers social process as it might apply where groups of people have shared responsibility for goals but work independently toward the achievement of those goals. An example of this might be a sales team where the overarching goal is to drive overall sales revenue up. The process between the members of the group is perhaps unlikely to be based on collaboration and cooperation. Indeed, in this situation, the best outcome for the business might be based on a competitive process that pushes individual striving toward the achievement of the larger organisational goal.

• Sequential interdependence – which proposes a social structure that relies on the completion of tasks in a set order and the required collaboration that comes with such an environment. Production lines are obvious examples of this. Perhaps less obvious is this requirement in many business settings where process is central to success. For these environments, the challenge for the manager is to effectively manage the interactions between the steps in the process.

• Reciprocal interdependence – this form of interdependence is perhaps most consistent with some of the more romantic notions of teamwork. Reciprocal interdependence arises from the need for ongoing collaboration. Importantly though, the need to collaborate is inherent to the task at hand. Within this approach, organisations may be expected to have access to a diverse skillset that is a fit with the task being attempted.

There are variations on these themes too from other scholars such as Wageman (1995) and Shea and Guzzo (1989). However, the point to be made here is simple – look to the immediate environment in which the team functions for a clearer understanding of what drives the behavioural expectations for the team and also for an understanding of what can be expected in terms of performance.