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 High performance teams and aclimate of communityNic Beech and Oliver Crane           Strathclyde Graduate Business School, Glasgow, UK    
        Keywords Teams, Leadership, Corporate culture, Performance

Abstract This paper presents an empirically based study of an organisation’s attempt to improvefrom its existent structure of team working to a higher level of organisational performancethrough the development of enhanc本留学生论文由留学生论文网www.51lunwen.org提供ed, or high performance, teams. The research findings arecontextualised by brief reviews of the literature in three areas: the contribution of peoplemanagement to organisational performance, leadership and team working. It is argued that thereis a convergence of theoretical development towards what is conceptualised in this paper as aclimate of community. The empirical research took a multi-method approach to examine thedevelopment from teams to high performance teams, which focused on “soft” processual inputs,but which had to have both qualitative and quantitative outcomes. The analysis revealed threefactors which were crucial to development: transparency, checkability and a climate of community.     

      Introduction        
  There is a synergy between recent developments in the fields of organisationalperformance, team working and leadership. Each field has been developingtowards a view which could be conceptualised under the heading of community.Research on the contribution of people management to organisationalperformance outcomes such as productivity and profitability has been relatedto a climate of satisfaction in the workplace (Patterson et al., 1997; West andPatterson, 1998). The importance of the climate is that it transcends individualsatisfaction and hence has a greater impact on quantifiable outcomes. In thefield of leadership a new paradigm has been suggested (Horner, 1997; Drathand Pal本留学生论文由留学生论文网www.51lunwen.org提供us, 1994) which argued that leadership should be a process integratedwithin a group which shares meanings, understandings and roles, rather than aset of traits, styles or behaviours which are applied by one person to a group ofdifferentiated others. Research in team working has also been arguing for aneed for mutual understanding and processes of interaction which enableconflict management and overcoming the barriers to “team wellness” (Polleyand Ribbens, 1998).        
      The research presented here uses a comparative study over a period of sixmonths to explore the development of a high performance team (HPT). Theresearch used both quantitative and qualitative measure本留学生论文由留学生论文网www.51lunwen.org提供s of an HPT andcontrol groups in the same environment. The HPT development incorporatedinterventions by an external consultant to build up “soft” skills such as givingfeedback, communications, problem solving and objective setting. The resultsof this study compare the performance of the HPT to other teams, and examinethe qualitative changes in the HPT.