Teams and Networks
I noticed some confusion over the differences between teams and networks in your blog posts. So, here’s a short overview that may help clear it up.
Teams
Teams are “groups of employees with representation from a variety of functional areas within the organization (e.g., sales, manufacturing, engineering) to maximize the cross-functional exchange of information” (p. 229). That means teams have people with differing expertise, are created for a specific purpose, and communication flows within the team. Teams are created for different purposes, and the book outlines three categories: project, work, and quality-improvement (QI) teams. Project teams are intentionally temporary — they bring together experts in a variety of areas that are necessary for the completion of a particular project. IPRO teams are an Illinois Tech example. Work teams stay together longer and manage a process from end to end — the Sodexo workers at the grill, fry, salad, and sandwich stations at Center Court area work team. Their process is serving meals, and they all have different jobs to perform to get that done every day. I think of QI teams as committees. Members of the team usually have other primary functions but are brought together to address some organizational issues. The President’s Student Advisory Council, for instance, is a QI team where the members are students first.
Networks
Networks, on the other hand, are informal and often span organizations. Networks do not require diversity of expertise nor uniformity. They emerge from interactions like job switching, reorganizations, colleges attended, professional meetings, really anywhere that members of organizations interact with each other or with other experts. The attention they’re receiving from organizational communication scholars results, in part, from renewed attention to networks in social sciences broadly. For instance, the analysis of networks can help us understand how information flows or who has relative power over others because of their social positions.
For instance, in Figure 8.6 on p. 250, the four main categories of networks are illustrated. Compare the chain and wheel networks. Maybe you played “telephone” as a kid? A messages started at one end of the line and got passed from kid to kid until it was repeated at the other end. How often was the message that came out the same one that went in? The chain network works like that. In the wheel network, E can double-check directly with A about what she heard from D, and the in and out messages are more likely to match.
Networks and Teams in Lost and Pitch Perfect
One of the prompts for the teams/networks week asked you think about whether characters in Lost or Pitch Perfect were more like teams or networks. What do you think now? Are they assembled for a purpose? Do they all talk to each other?
Remember that concepts, like theories, are partial, partisan, and problematic. Sometimes the same group of people looks like a team and sometimes like a network. The term we use helps us signal what properties or functions of the group we consider salient (e.g., emergent properties vs planned arrangements) but doesn’t necessarily indicate a “truth” about the group.
