Teamwork
Teamwork, group decisions and leadership by executives are considered in Chapters 11 and 12. The use of teams and decision groups in organizations is a growing phenomenon. The leadership required for building and facilitating team learning and decision-making are considered. Yukl describes and discusses the merits of functional teams, cross-functional teams, self-managed work teams (semi-autonomous work groups), self-defining teams and virtual teams. Guidelines propose effective team building to increase cohesiveness, mutual cooperation, and identification with the group. They also put forward leader-centered and groupcentred approaches for leading meetings. Research into leadership from the 1950s until the 1980s was mostly concerned with middle managers. Theorists turned their attention to top managers from the 1980s, but there is controversy in leadership literature regarding whether executives have much impact on the effectiveness of an organization. Chapter 12 looks at strategic leadership and top management, and considers external and internal constraints, the degree of discretion a leader has, the bias of attributions and the effectiveness of executive teams. Research shows that chief executives have most impact in a crisis, and the monitoring of the environment by executives is considered essential in the formulation of organizational strategy.