EFFECTS OF TEAM EFFORTS ON THE REALIZATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS (A STUDY OF PORT-HARCOURT ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, UYO)

EFFECTS OF TEAM EFFORTS ON THE REALIZATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS (A STUDY OF PORT-HARCOURT ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANY, UYO)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

If the manager is to make the most effective use of staff, it is important to have an understanding of working in teams. It is necessary to recognize the nature of human relationships and the functions, roles and factors that influence team efforts and effectiveness (Mullins, 2007). A team is a group whose members work intensively with one another to achieve a specific common goal or objective (Jones, et al. 2007). Team efforts are major features of organizational life. Most activities of the organization require at least some degree of co-ordination through the operation of team efforts. To build good teams, require wide opinion of staff with different talents to draw upon. Teams occur when a number of people have a common goal and recognize that their personal success is dependent on the success of others. They are all interdependent in practice, this means that in most teams efforts, people will contribute individual skills many of which will be different. It also means that the full tensions and counter-balance of human behavior will need to be demonstrated in the team (Mullins, 2007).

Perhaps, team effort is as old as mankind and as such many organizations use the term “team” in either one sense or the other i.e, such as in the production, marketing processes, among others. Examples are management team, production team or an entire organization can be referred as a team. Holpp (1997) claimed that there is a growing consensus among scholars in the world that organizations may be getting works done through individuals, but his super achievement lies in the attainment of set goals through team efforts. It is well known fact that team efforts is not only the foundation of all successful managements, but the means of improving overall results in the realization of organizational goals. When a team works well together as a unit or group they are able to accomplish more than the individual members can do alone. Team efforts create higher quality outcomes that are more efficient, thoughtful, and effective, as well as faster.

In views of the fact that teams work in groups, goal achievement is easily accomplished. Members of a team feel elated when they perceive themselves to be part of the achievers of the organizational goal. Teams realize goals that individuals cannot achieve. According to Ugwu (2009) one striking quality about team efforts is that there is pooling of talents, abilities, knowledge and capabilities together hence the  saying “two good heads are better than one”. Wage (1997) describes team efforts as an idea of working together in a group to realize the same goals and objectives for the good of the service users and organizations in order to deliver a good quality of service (productivity), which serves as organizational goal. One of the main advantages of using a team is the opportunity to obtain a type of synergy; people working in a team are able to produce more or higher quality outputs than would have been produced if each person had worked separately and all their individual efforts were later combined. The essence of synergy is capture in the saying “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”. According to Robbins and Judge (2007), the key components making up effective team efforts can be subsumed into four general categories. First are the resources and other contextual influences that make teams effective. The second relates to the team’s composition. The third category is work design. Finally, “process” variables reflect those things that go on in the team that influences effectiveness. Typically, the realization of organizational goals lies between the objective measures of the team’s productivity, managers’ measures of member satisfaction.

Organization, however, coordinate the employees into different teams, such as management team, production team, etc. this is purposely to tap from the ability of respective human resources employed by an organization. This therefore, shows that, this study will concentrate specifically on the use of the term “team efforts” which involves reshaping the way work is carried out. This includes organizing employees in terms based on distinct product, each team performing a particular task. These teams are given a high degree of responsibility and are expected to work  with flexibility for optimum realization of organizational goals.

The researcher is interested in this topic in order to understand or know how much organizing employees into teams has contributed to the improved productivity of Port-Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company, Uyo.

1.2    STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Every organization, either large or small,

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