Teams and their Context: Moving the Team Discussion Beyond Existing Dichotomies

Abstract

The dichotomies which have been proposed to distinguish between what can be labelled ‘sociotechnical’ and ‘Japanese’ teams oversimplify the ‘team discussion’. They combine team characteristics and contextual factors which should be separated, contain biases, and have an infirm basis. As an alternative we propose an analytical framework to improve our theoretical understanding of how relevant contextual factors impact the design of jobs and organizations