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A study to determine the factors to improve group and team effectiveness in Transnet Engineering

Teams have increasingly become the means for completing tasks in many organisations, and organisations have turned to teams as a better way to use employee talents. Many South African companies have established work teams to solve both complex and minor problems, and some companies’ performance has increased due to the implementation of work teams. The fact that organisations are using teams does not necessarily mean they are always effective, there are many factors that contribute to team effectiveness in an organisation, and these factors need to be identified and managed properly so that the team can remain effective and produce the results that are expected. Management of most companies is unaware of the factors that contribute to group and team effectiveness, and most teams are ineffective because of the lack of focus on the factors that improve group and team effectiveness. This is the reason or objective why this study was conducted at Transnet Engineering, to identify the factors that are critical to improving team effectiveness. The researcher conducted a literature review in order to determine the factors that improve group and team effectiveness. Some of the factors deal with organisational culture, motivation (monetary and non-monetary motivation), diversity in teams, size of teams, formulation of teams, team leadership, team goals, team structures, team member training, trust in teams, etc. An empirical study with the use of a questionnaire was also conducted to determine the perceptions that supervisors, superintendents, foremen and managers have at Transnet Engineering with regards to factors that improve group and team effectiveness. The research instrument was grouped into five categories; organisational context, individual context, team context, management support and team effectiveness. More than 50 percent of the respondents agreed with the organisational and individual context factors that were tested, around 75 percent of the respondents agreed with team context factors that were tested, almost 60 percent of respondents agreed with management support factors, and more than 60 percent of respondents indicated that their teams are effective. Although there is general agreement between most factors identified in the literature study and the empirical study, the following will need more focus:  Offering of team resources  Leadership support from executive committee members (EXCO)  Proper reward and recognition systems  Conducting research to identify employee satisfaction levels  Team development  Diversity management  Talent management  Team size

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:8877
Date January 2013
CreatorsNgwenya, Sandile Goodwill
PublisherNelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MBA
Formatxvi, 170 leaves, pdf
RightsNelson Mandela Metropolitan University

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