Team Membership and the Experience of Work

Team Membership and the Experience of Work inBritain: an Analysis of the WERS98 Data

Bill HarleyUniversity of Melbourne

abstract Positive accounts of teamwork emphasise its potential not just to improve

organisational performance, but to transform employees’ experience of work in

overwhelmingly positive ways. The key outcome is said to be enhanced employee

discretion, which in turn contributes to satisfaction, commitment and positive views of

management. Critical accounts of teamwork, which locate the phenomenon in the context

of the labour process argue that enhanced organisational performance from teams results

from an undermining of employee discretion, which contributes to work intensification

and increased stress for employees. Differences between the two accounts have not been

resolved, in part because of the fact that neither model has been subjected to rigorous

empirical scrutiny using reliable large-scale statistical data which allow generalisations to

be made about the impact of team membership on employees. Utilising the data from the

1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98) it is possible to identify team

members and non-members and to compare them in terms of discretion, commitment,

satisfaction, relations with management, and stress. The analysis shows no statistically

significant association between team membership and any of the outcome variables and

on this basis, both positive and critical accounts are called into question.

Since at least the 1980s autonomous work teams have become increasingly

popular and have attracted a great deal of attention from academics (see Procter and

Mueller 2000). This paper seeks to contribute to academic debates about teamwork

by assessing the extent to which the experiences of key facets of work differ between

employees who are team members and those who are not. Differences between

positive and critical accounts of teamwork provide the paper’s rationale and

research agenda. Specifically, the paper seeks to elucidate a series of questions about

team membership and employee discretion, commitment, satisfaction, relations

with management and stress.

The unique contribution made by this paper is that, unlike existing positive and

critical accounts of teamwork, the analysis presented here is based on large-scale,

reliable statistical data drawn from a representative sample of workplaces and

employees in Britain. This means that for the first time it is possible to draw

Work, Employment & Society Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 721–742. Printed in the UK © 2001 BSA Publications Ltd

721

Bill Harley is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, in the Department of

Management at The University of Melbourne.

conclusions about the experience of team membership which can be applied to the

population of British employees with confidence. That is, on the basis of the analysis

presented here it is possible to generalise about the experience of teamwork.

The paper is divided into three main sections. The first briefly reviews positive

and critical accounts of teamwork and, on the basis of the differences between them,

identifies a series of research questions. The second section of the paper provides

details of the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98) and the

construction of variables and the third presents the results of analysis of the data. In

the final section, the implications of the findings for our understanding of the

experience of teamwork are discussed.

Competing Accounts of Teamwork

While the view that team-based work can be traced back to ancient times is

highly questionable, it is nonetheless clear that this approach to work organisation

has a lengthy pedigree (Benders and van Hootegem 1999; Sewell 1999). Since the

1980s, however, there has been unprecedented managerial interest in teamwork

(Procter and Mueller 2000: 7) and it has been advocated with almost religious

fervour by management consultants and academics (for a typical example see

Moravec 1999). There is now a considerable body of research devoted to teamwork

and the purpose of the discussion which follows is to outline two broad approaches,

which are labelled ‘positive’ and ‘critical’ respectively. By positive accounts are meant

those which emphasise the effectiveness of teams in terms of organisational

performance and employee experience of work and which, implicitly or explicitly,

advocate this approach to work organisation. Critical accounts are those which

question the positive view and which emphasise the potential negative outcomes for

employees of team membership. In reviewing the two approaches, a research agenda

for the remainder of the paper will be established.

Positive accounts of teamworkIt is possible to identify a pervasive and central theme in positive accounts of

the impact of teamwork, which can be summarised as follows. Teamwork

‘empowers’ workers by providing them with the opportunity for increased control

over their work (Goodman et al 1988; Harley 1999; Sewell 1998). As a result of this

putative empowerment, it is argued, workers are more positively disposed to

workplace management, more committed to their organisations and able to make

greater use of their skills and problem-solving capabilities, all of which feed into

superior organisational performance (Dunphy and Bryant 1996).

This positive account is associated largely with US-based research which draws

on human resource management (HRM) and organisational behaviour (OB)

traditions and which highlights organisational performance as the raison d’être for

722 bill harley

teamwork. Katzenbach and Smith’s 1993 work The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the

High Performance Organization is an excellent example of this approach.

Katzenbach and Smith (1993: 12) argue that: ‘performance … is the primary

objective … a team remains the means, not the end [their emphasis] … [and] will

deliver results well beyond what individuals acting alone in nonteam working

situations could achieve’.

There are two major explanations of the role of teams in enhancing

organisational performance, both of which emphasise the importance of teams

being to some extent autonomous or self-managing. The first explanation, which

might be characterised as structural, draws on insights from socio-technical theory

(see Trist and Bamforth 1951; Cummings 1978) and suggests that teams involve work

processes that allow (indeed require) employees to be flexible and adaptable and to

modify their behaviour as necessary to meet performance goals (Cohen and

Ledford 1994). That is, to the extent that teams involve self-regulation or self-

control, team members can utilise their knowledge, skills and judgement to solve

production problems as they arise and to devise more effective work processes,

thereby enhancing productivity and efficiency (Cohen et al. 1996: 647–8). The

second explanation, which might be characterised as psychological, suggests that

teams feed into improved organisational outcomes via their positive effect on

employee orientations to work. Put simply, teams enhance employee discretion,

which in turn feeds into motivation, satisfaction and commitment (Pil and

Macduffie 1996: 434).

Neither of these arguments is unique to accounts of teamwork. Indeed, both can

be found in broader accounts of a variety of managerial practices characterised

variously as ‘empowerment’ (see Harley 1999),‘high commitment management’ (see

Wood and de Menezes 1998), ‘high involvement management’ (see Wood 1999) and

‘high performance work systems’ (see Appelbaum et al. 2000; Ramsay et al 2000).1

In common with these accounts, central to arguments about the efficacy of

teamwork is the role of employee discretion or autonomy at work. Both structural

and psychological explanations have at their hearts the claim that by enhancing

discretion, team-based work facilitates improved work processes and improved

orientations to work, from which flows improved organisational performance.

There are three aspects of positive accounts of teamwork which contribute to the

rationale for the research agenda of this paper. The first is the overwhelming

concern of most positive accounts of teamwork with issues of organisational

effectiveness, typically conceptualised in terms of productivity or product/service

quality (Batt and Applebaum 1995: 354–5; Dunphy and Bryant 1996; Janz et al. 1997;

Neck et al. 1999; Spreitzer et al. 1999). This concern is hardly surprising, given that

one of the features which distinguishes contemporary approaches to teamwork

from earlier forms of group-based work is that they are overwhelmingly managerially

implemented, explicitly as a means to enhance performance (Procter and Mueller

Team Membership and the Experience of Work in Britain: an Analysis of the WERS98 Data 723

2000: 8–9). Nonetheless, in adopting a narrow managerialist conception of how one

might evaluate teams, many studies simply do not concern themselves with the

implications of teamwork for employees, thereby overlooking a highly problematic

area. That is, while positive accounts of teamwork make employees absolutely

central to their model of links from teamwork to organisational performance, few

actually research how employees experience teamwork. There is, therefore, a need

for research which looks explicitly at the experiences of employees.

Secondly, even those studies which are concerned with employee outcomes tend

to focus on associations between teamwork and positive employee attitudes,

commonly satisfaction and commitment (see Cohen et al. 1996; Corderey et al 1991;

Wall et al 1986). Implicit in much of the research which examines these issues is the

same managerialist agenda mentioned above, since the rationale for being

concerned with employee attitudes is that satisfied and committed employees will

contribute to organisational success (see Appelbaum et al. 2000). Moreover, in

focusing on positive attitudes, the research ignores the possibility that the

experience of teamwork might, in important ways, be negative for employees.

A third limitation of positive accounts of teamwork, which is at the heart of the

analysis presented in this paper, is that much of the literature presents enhanced

employee discretion as a given; that is, it is axiomatic that teams enhance discretion

(Benders and van Hootegem 1999: 617). In examining the impact of teamwork on

other employee outcomes there appears to be a tacit assumption made that

teamwork enhances discretion and because of this employees who work in teams are

more satisfied, committed and well-disposed towards management. It seems

entirely plausible that employees who experience greater discretion also tend to have

more favourable orientations to work, but to make the leap to concluding that teams

have positive outcomes because they enhance discretion is problematic. The

assumptions of most mainstream research render any consideration of the

association between teamwork and discretion apparently unnecessary.

Consideration of positive accounts of teamwork suggests that there are

important gaps in our knowledge. Firstly, limited attention has been given to

employee experiences of teamwork. Secondly, in studies of employee outcomes the

focus has been on positive employee attitudes, with an apparent blindness to any

negative outcomes for employees. Finally, there is a widespread assumption that

teamwork enhances employee discretion and that positive outcomes flow from this.

Before moving to specify the research questions to be addressed in the remainder of

the paper, however, consideration needs to be given to claims made by critics of

teamwork.

Critical accounts of teamworkA stark contrast to the positive accounts is provided by recent critical studies

of teamwork, which have utilised insights from labour process theory, and sociology

724 bill harley

more broadly (see for example: Sewell 1998, 1999; Barker 1993, 1999; Danford 1998;

Baldry et al 1998). Although there are differences of emphasis between different

critical accounts, the element which unites them is a concern with locating

teamwork in the context of the dynamics of capitalist production and therefore

considering the need for managerial control of the labour process to maximise

labour input. While critical studies, like positive studies, see teamwork as a means to

enhance organisational performance and while they make issues of employee

discretion central, they provide a different and much less sanguine view of teams

than that found in mainstream research.

The central argument put forward in many of the critical studies is that

teamwork, while apparently empowering employees, generates new forms of

control which assist management in extracting labour from employees via work

intensification (Marchington 2000: 61). For example, Barker (1993) characterises the

control which emerges from team-based work as ‘concertive control’ which involves

employees in teams monitoring their own, and each others’ behaviour, to an extent

that constrains their behaviour far more than traditional managerial/supervisory

control. Sewell (1998) also emphasises peer- and self-monitoring in his concep-

tualisation of ‘chimerical control’. As Thompson and McHugh put it ‘the

empowerment rhetoric is often empty and managerial prerogative largely intact’

(1995: 187). From this perspective, any discretion associated with teamwork is

illusory and may well mask increased managerial control of production, albeit via

team members monitoring their own and others’ performance.

Critical accounts almost invariably make employee experience of teamwork

absolutely central to their analyses and explicitly question the unitarist assumption

that positive employee experiences and improved organisational performance are

necessarily natural partners. A number of accounts stress that there is room for a

variety of employee experiences (eg. McCabe 2000). Others note that teams are

frequently used to intensify work with the result that employees are likely to

experience it in overwhelmingly negative ways in particular via heightened stress

(e.g. Findlay et al. 2000).

From a critical perspective then, the way in which teamwork can be conceptual-

ised as feeding into organisational performance is by making employees work

harder and thereby raising labour productivity. Thus, the key theoretical point

which emerges is that employees in teams are less likely than other employees to

enjoy high levels of discretion over their work, since teamwork enhances managerial

control, and more likely to be stressed.

Research problemsThe preceding discussion has indicated that positive and critical accounts of

teamwork provide very different views of the phenomenon. In common, they both

conceptualise teamwork as contributing to improved organisational performance,


although the precise nature of the outcomes differs. Once we go beyond this issue,

the two approaches diverge in terms of the mechanisms which they propose as

leading to performance outcomes and the specific variables included in their

theoretical models. While both make discretion central to their analyses, each

conceptualises team membership as having a different impact on it. Further,

discretion is theorised as leading to different outcomes in each model. While the

models are not simply diametrically opposed, they provide competing interpre-

tations of the impact of teamwork on employees’ experience of work. Testing of the

competing claims of the two models provides a means by which to advance debates

on teamwork.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to deal with issues of organisational

performance. Moreover, the paper does not propose to explore the extent of peer or

self-monitoring, or the degree of problem solving, innovation or skill utilisation,

associated with team membership. Rather, the concern is with the association

between team membership on one hand, and the range of positive and negative

experiences of work which the respective models contain. The decision to focus on

these aspects was made firstly because discretion is central to both models, yet has

received little attention in research and, secondly, because the associations involving

teams, discretion and employee experience of work have been neglected in earlier

work.

In order to advance the debates on teamwork, a number of questions require

elucidation. Firstly, is team membership positively associated with discretion? If it

is, this provides support for the positive account. If it is associated negatively with

discretion this provides support for the critical account. Secondly, is team

membership associated positively with favourable orientations to work? Such

associations would provide support for the positive account. Thirdly, is team

membership associated positively with stress? An affirmative response would

support the critics and suggest that positive accounts, in emphasising positive

outcomes, have provided a partial, and potentially misleading, assessment of

teamwork. Finally, is discretion a mediating variable in any associations between

positive employee attitudes and team membership? If it is, then the positive

accounts are supported. The remainder of the paper is devoted to seeking answers to

these questions and attempting to make sense of those answers as a means to

advance the debates on teamwork.

The WERS98 Data

In spite of their theoretical differences, both mainstream and critical

approaches have something in common methodologically. That is, both tend to be

based on quite limited evidence. Positive accounts have been based largely on case

studies and anecdotes (Neck et al. 1999: 246) or surveys in single establishments or

726 bill harley

industries (usually manufacturing) (Cohen and Ledford 1994: 14). This has been

remedied to some extent by the conduct of large-scale survey-based studies in

service sector organisations (Cohen and Ledford 1994; Janz et al. 1997; Spreitzer

1999). Similarly, critical accounts tend not to be based on analysis of large-scale

quantitative data sets, relying for the most part on case studies using ethnography

(e.g. Barker 1999) or some combination of qualitative method and within-

organisation surveys (e.g. Findlay et al. 2000). There has also been some use made of

multi-establishment surveys within industries (e.g. Delbridge et al. 2000). Lacking

in both positive and critical accounts is analysis of large-scale, statistically reliable

data of a kind which allows generalisations to be made across industry as a whole.2

This lack of research on teamwork based on reliable large-scale data is problematic

to the extent it restricts our capacity to say anything about the experience of

teamwork in a general sense.

The particular strength of using data from a large-scale quantitative data set is

that it allows us to make generalisations about the impact of teamwork, which can

be applied with reasonable confidence to British employees. Thus, within the

general limitations of survey methodology and the specific limitations of the

WERS98 (discussed in more detail below) this approach allows conclusions to be

drawn about the experience of teamwork which fill key gaps in current knowledge.

The data setThe most recent in the ongoing series of British Workplace Industrial

Relations Surveys (WIRS), the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98),

was conducted in 1997–8. WERS98, following the lead of the 1995 Australian

Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS95), contained a survey of approxi-

mately 28,000 employees, drawn from the 2,000 workplaces which were included in

the main workplace survey. This feature allows the systematic analysis of the impact

of workplace practices on employees. Data from the employee survey can be linked

to items from the workplace surveys, thereby providing a means to explore

relationships between workplace characteristics on one hand and employee

experience on the other. More details on WERS98 can be found in Cully (1998) and

Cully et al. (1999).3

The decision to use the WERS98 data for this paper was made for four main

reasons. Firstly, WERS98 is a reliable large-scale survey which can be used to derive

findings about the experience of teamwork which can be applied to British

employees with a high degree of confidence. In this respect, it is unique and goes

beyond any of the data sets which have been used in the research on teamwork

discussed above.

Secondly, the unit of analysis for the surveys (at least for the employee survey,

which is the primary data source for this paper) is the individual worker. Elucidating

the questions pursued in this paper requires individual level data. Moreover,


because the employee data can be linked to workplace data it is possible to include in

the analysis both characteristics of individual employees and the workplaces in

which they work, thereby accounting for workplace, industry and sectoral

differences in employee outcomes.

Thirdly, the data set allows the identification of team members and non-

members with a high degree of confidence. Work using the AWIRS95 data (see

Harley 1999) which dealt with associations between particular workplace practices

and employee outcomes allowed identification of employees who worked in

workplaces with particular practices present, but was unable to assess whether the

employees whose responses were utilised were actually subject to a particular

practice. The WERS98 data set allows this limitation to be overcome.

Fourthly, the employee surveys collected data on a wide range of facets of

employees’ own experiences of work. Since the concern of the paper is with

employees’ self-reported experience of work this represents a major strength.

There are limitations which apply to findings made on the basis of analysis of

WERS98 data. Firstly, the WERS collected data from workplaces with ten or more

employees. This means that the findings can only be applied to employees in

workplaces which meet this size criterion, thereby excluding the significant number

of employees in smaller workplaces.4 Secondly, as is common to many large-scale

surveys, depth is sacrificed for breadth. That is, data are collected on a wide range of

phenomena, but not in great detail. The result of this limitation is that the analysis

does not provide a subtle or nuanced account of the experience of teamwork of the

kind provided by detailed qualitative accounts (see in particular Barker 1999 for an

ethnographic study of teamwork). Most notably, while the data tell us whether or

not employees are team members, they do not tell us a great deal about the kinds of

teams which employees are members of. This can be overcome to some extent, as the

discussion in the next section indicates, but it remains an important limitation.

Identifying team membersThe crux of this paper is whether team members and non-members report

different experiences of work. Therefore, a necessary first step was to identify

employees who fell into either category.

The procedure followed in constructing the team membership variable was as

follows. Firstly, using the variable CTEAMS it was possible to identify workplaces

where all members of the largest occupational group (LOG) were identified by

management as working in ‘formally designated teams’ and those where no

members of the LOG were in teams. It was then necessary to further restrict team

membership. There is considerable debate about the defining characteristics of

autonomous work teams and no agreed definition (see Benders and van Hootegem

1999; Marchington 2000). It seems likely that managers responding to the survey

would have had quite divergent views on what the term meant and presumably in

728 bill harley

recognition of this, the WERS98 survey contained a number of items on team

characteristics. These were deliberately constructed to capture facets of

autonomous teams which are widely deemed to differentiate them from other forms

of group-based work (Cully et al. 1999: 42–4).

Managers in workplaces with teams were asked if the following statements were

true: ‘Teamworking depends on team members working together’ (CTEAMHOA);

‘Team members are able to appoint their own team leaders’ (CTEAMHOB); ‘Team

members jointly decide how the work is to be done’ (CTEAMHOC); and ‘Teams are

given responsibility for specific products or services’ (CTEAMHOD). Cully et al.’s

(1999: 43) system for classifying teams using these items was employed (see Table 1).

Then, using a derived variable provided by the WERS project team it was

possible to identify employees who were non-managerial employees and members

of the largest occupational group in their workplace.5 A decision was made to

restrict the sample to non-managerial employees since the experience of those in


Table 1Team membership scale

Employees

Team membership characteristics n (row %)

Non-managerial employee not in a team 1502 (27.1)

Non-managerial employee in a team 1 (0.0)

Non-managerial employee in a team and members work with one another 241 (4.3)

Non-managerial employee in a team and members work with one another

and have responsibility for specific product or service 1406 (25.3)


and have responsibility for specific product or service and jointly decide

how work is to be done 2056 (37.0)


and have responsibility for specific product or service and jointly decide

how work is to be done and appoint their own team leaders 345 (6.2)

Total 5550 (100)

Data weighted to effective sample size (empwt_nr).

Note: The 5550 employees included in this table constitute only 19.7 per cent of all valid employee

responses included in the dataset. The following were excluded: managerial employees (2419; 8.6

per cent of employees); non-managerial employees who were not members of the largest

occupational group (LOG) (13275; 52.6 per cent of non-managerial employees); and non-

managerial employees who were LOG members but worked in workplaces where somewhere

between “none” and “all” non-managerial employees were team members (5931; 50.2 per cent of

non-managerial LOG members). These exclusions were required to guarantee that only non-

managerial team members and non-members were compared, but should be borne in mind when

considering the representativeness of the sample included in the remainder of the analysis.

730 bill harley

Table 2Employee outcome variables

Variables Mean (SD)

Discretion composite (alpha=.784)

‘In general, how much influence do you have about the range of tasks you

do?’ (A9A) 1.73 (1.02)

‘… the pace at which you work?’ (A9B) 1.91 (1.01)

‘… how you do your work?’ (A9C) 2.25 (.87)

Normative/affective commitment composite (alpha=.826)

‘Do you share many of the values of your organisation?’ (B5A) 3.42 (.92)

‘Do you feel loyal towards your organisation?’ (B5D) 3.67 (.94)

‘Are you proud to tell people who you work for?’ (B5E) 3.58 (.98)

Intrinsic job satisfaction composite (alpha=.764)

‘How satisfied are you with the amount of influence you have over your

job?’ (A10A) 3.52 (.96)

‘… with the sense of achievement you get from your work?’ (A10C) 3.59 (1.01)

‘… with the respect you get from supervisors/line managers?’ (A10D) 3.43 (1.14)

Management relations composite (alpha=.925)

‘How good would you say managers here are at keeping everyone up to

date about proposed changes?’ (B8A) 3.15 (1.14)

‘… providing everyone with the chance to comment on proposed

changes?’ (B8B) 2.86 (1.14)

‘… responding to suggestions from employees?’ (B8C) 2.93 (1.10)

‘… dealing with work problems you or others may have?’ (B8D) 3.27 (1.10)

‘… treating employees fairly?’ (B8E) 3.34 (1.13)

‘In general, how would you describe relations between managers and

employees here?’ (B9) 3.46 (1.07)

Job stress composite (alpha=.638)

‘Do you agree or disagree that your job requires that you work very

hard?’ (A8A) 3.97 (.82)

‘Do you agree or disagree that you never seem to have enough time to get

your job done?’ (A8B) 3.23 (1.07)

‘… that you worry a lot about your work outside working hours?’ (A8D) 2.56 (1.14)

All WERS98 attitude items coded on a scale of 1-5 of either agreement or satisfaction, except for

the job discretion/control items which were coded on a four-point (0-3) response scale (none, a

little, some, a lot). Composites are simple additive scales. In each case removal of any of the

individual items reduced Chronbach alpha for the scale. Statistics were calculated for the entire

sample and not just the sample of ‘Team Members and Non-Members’. All analysis weighted to

empwt_nr.

managerial jobs is likely to vary significantly from other employees. Those who were

members of the LOG and worked in a workplace where all members of the LOG

were in teams were assigned to one of the five categories set out above (which were

assigned values 1–5). Those who were in the LOG in workplaces where no LOG

members were in teams were assigned a value of 0. Those who were not in the LOG

or whose workplaces had between none and all LOG members in teams were coded

‘missing’ on this indicator, on the basis that it was not possible to be sure whether or

not they were in teams.6

Thus, the variable had values of: 1–5, depending on team characteristics, if an

employee was in a non-managerial job, a member of the LOG and worked in a

workplace where all LOG members worked in teams; 0 if an employee was in a non-

managerial job, a LOG member and worked in a workplace where no LOG members

worked in teams; missing if an employee was not a LOG member or if management

reported any proportion of LOG team membership other than none or all. A

frequency distribution for the variable is presented in Table 1.

The table indicates that virtually no team members work in teams which have

none of the characteristics of an autonomous team but that very few work in teams

which have all of them. Indeed, the largest single category (37.0 per cent) comprises

employees who work in teams which have all characteristics except the ability to

appoint their own team leader.

Since the concern of this paper is to differentiate between team members and

non-members, this scale was used to construct a dichotomous dummy variable in

which non-managerial employees not in teams were allocated a value of 0, those

who were in categories 4 and 5 were allocated a value of 1 and those who were in

categories 1 to 3 were coded as missing. The rationale for this approach is that it

allowed a degree of confidence that the team members included in the analysis were

members of teams which were as close as possible, within the limits of the WERS98

questions, to approximating fully autonomous teams. The dichotomous variable

had a distribution of 1,502 non-members and 2,401 members.7

Employee experienceThe variables used to capture employee experiences are presented in Table

2.8 The items used are indicators of: discretion; normative/affective commitment;

intrinsic job satisfaction; relations with management; and stress. The variables are

largely self-explanatory. Each is a simple additive scale of the individual items

specified in the table. In each case, the range of individual items comprising each

scale was selected on the basis that they were the best indicators of the various

phenomena available from the WERS98 data set. Factor analysis was then used to

confirm that each set of scales loaded on a single factor and Chronbach’s Alpha used

to assess reliability of scales. While the scales do not exhaust the range of employee


732 bill harley

Table 3Characteristics of employees, team members and non-members

Employee and All employees Non-members Members

workplace variables n Mean/% n Mean/% n Mean/%

Workplace

Size 28222 646 1502 166 2401 381

Age 27886 36 1496 30 2384 30

Union Density 27425 35 1482 30 2313 41

Ownership

UK (51% or more) 24314 86 1338 90 2132 89

Foreign (50% or more) 3849 14 156 10 269 11

Sector

Private 19363 69 1155 77 1421 59

Public 8859 31 346 23 980 41

Production Sector 6941 25 391 26 383 16

Employee

Gender

Male 14264 51 807 54 969 40

Female 13897 49 693 46 1432 60

Employment Status

Fixed Term 923 3 38 3 95 4

Temporary 1235 4 77 5 98 4

Permanent 25847 92 1376 92 2194 92

Working Hours

Less than 30 (PT) 8361 30 562 37 758 32

30 or more 16861 70 940 63 1644 68

Current Member

Union/ Staff Assoc. 10984 39 530 36 1193 50

Occupation

Managers/SenAdmin. 2419 9 N/A N/A N/A N/A

Professional 3088 11 101 7 595 25

Assoc. Prof. & Tech. 2238 8 5 0 175 7

Clerical & Secretarial 4981 18 191 13 428 18

Craft & Skilled Service 2878 10 276 18 144 6

Personal & Protective 3317 12 247 17 321 13

Sales 2580 9 154 10 373 16

Operative & Assembly 3651 13 337 23 294 12

Other 2855 10 190 13 70 3

Total Employees 28222 1501 2400

Analysis weighted to effective sample size (empwt_nr). The measure of union density used here is

a computed figure based on syntax provided by the WERS Data Dissemination Service.

outcomes which might be included in this analysis, nonetheless, they provide useful

indicators of all the key outcomes of interest.

Control variablesA number of variables were utilised which captured workplace and

employee characteristics which seemed likely to intervene in associations between

team membership and employee experience. Briefly, the rationale for inclusion of a

range of control variables in later analysis relates firstly to the fact that the context in

which teams operate is likely to influence outcomes (Benders et al. 1999: 3) and

secondly that employee outcomes are known to vary systematically with employee

characteristics (see Harley 1999) and industry or workplace characteristics (see

Singelmann and Mencken 1992). Table 3 presents distributions for these variables

for all employees, team members and team non-members.9

The Experience of Teamwork

The first question addressed here is whether team membership is associated

with any of the outcome variables. Table 4 presents results for bivariate correlation

analysis which suggest that team membership is positively and statistically

significantly, although weakly, associated with each of the variables.

There are also associations between the outcome variables. Discretion is

positively, quite strongly and statistically significantly associated with commitment,

satisfaction and management relations, which would be consistent with the main-

stream view that teamwork improves employees’ attitudes to work via enhanced

discretion. Discretion, however, is not significantly associated with stress.


Table 4Correlations between team membership and employee outcomes variables

Variable 1 2 3 4 5

1 Discretion 1

2 Normative/Affective

Commitment .341** 1

3 Intrinsic Satisfaction .502** .645** 1

4 Management Relations .275** .626** .621** 1

5 Stress �.011 .011** �.129** �.075** 1

6 Team Membership .089** .100** .055* .138** .130**

Coefficients are calculated using weighted data and significance levels are calculated using

unweighted data. Analysis restricted to team members and non-members only. No correction has

been made for multi-level survey design and this means that statistical significance levels are

inflated.

*p <.05 **p <.01

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Table 5Correlations between employee outcomes variables and workplace characteristics variables

Variable Size Age Union density UK ownership Private sector Production sector

Discretion �.016 �.013 �.080** .022** .012** .024**

Normative/Affective Commitment �.010** .014** �.051** �.019** �.041** �.096**

Intrinsic Satisfaction �.081** �.001 �.097** �.051** �.016 �.063**

Management Relations �.085** �.049** �.099** �.055** �.035** �.139**

Stress �.026* �.016 .041** �.038** �.127** �.078**

Coefficients are calculated using weighted data and significance levels are calculated using unweighted data. Analysis includes the total sample of employees.

No correction has been made for multi-level survey design and this means that statistical significance levels are inflated.

* p <.05 **p <.01

Table 6Correlations between employee outcomes variables and employee characteristics variables

Variable Female Perm. Fixed Temp. Hours Union Prof. A/Prof. Cler. Craft P/P Sales Op. Other

Discretion �.028** .039** .011 �.061** .113** �.071** .077** .037** �.021** �.009 �.038** �.053** �.113** �.059**

Normative/Affective Commitment .088** �.028** .017** .021 �.030 �.083** .053** �.006* �.025** �.102** .100** .020** �.145** �.038**

Intrinsic Satisfaction .104** �.037** .024** .027** �.072** �.129** .036** �.012* �.011** �.037** .066** �.003 �.134** .006

Management Relations .138** �.074** .034** .067** �.136** �.118** .028** �.006** .007 �.121** .083** .074** �.139** .014

Stress .042** .059** �.002** �.075** .216** .092** .220** .064** �.008** �.065** �.071** �.067** �.144** �.078**

Coefficients are calculated using weighted data and significance levels are calculated using unweighted data. Analysis includes the total sample of employees.

No correction has been made for multi-level survey design and this means that statistical significance levels are inflated.

* p <.05 **p <.01

These results could be interpreted as follows: team membership enhances

discretion, which leads to higher commitment and satisfaction and positive views of

management, but at the same time it is associated with stress, presumably due to

responsibilities associated with team membership and decision making. This

interpretation is tempting, but more detailed analysis is required before it can be

accepted. The most obvious problem with drawing conclusions based on simple

bivariate correlation is that the employee outcomes are likely to be influenced by a

range of factors besides team membership. Moreover, the data presented in Table 2

indicate that there are significant differences between team members and non-

members in terms of their individual characteristics and those of their workplaces.

There is, therefore, a need to consider the role of potentially intervening variables.

To explore this issue, bivariate correlation analysis between each of the outcome

variables and each of the workplace and employee variables was conducted. The

results appear in Tables 5 (workplace variables) and 6 (employee variables) and

show that by far the majority of the workplace and employee variables are

statistically significantly associated with employee outcomes. This suggests that they

need to be included in the analysis of associations between teamwork and outcomes.

As a means to integrate these potentially intervening variables in the analysis,

regression analysis was carried out. A separate regression model was run with each

of the outcome variables as the dependent variable, with the teamwork dummy and

all the workplace and employee characteristic variables as independent variables.

The results of this analysis are included in Table 7.10

The analysis shows that, once all the potentially intervening variables are

controlled for, the introduction of the team membership variable makes virtually no

difference to the r2 value for any model. Moreover, teamwork is not statistically

significantly associated with any of the employee experience variables. The results

suggest that there is no difference between team members and non-members in

terms of their reported levels of discretion, commitment, satisfaction, orientation to

management or stress.

This is a very significant finding. The failure to demonstrate the link between

team membership and discretion calls into question the assumption in the

mainstream literature that teamwork enhances discretion and the extension of that

assumption to the belief that it is via discretion that other positive outcomes arise. If

team membership does not enhance discretion, logically this cannot be the route

through which other outcomes emerge, although since the other outcomes do

not emerge, the issue of the role of discretion as a mediating variable becomes

irrelevant. The results also call into question the critical argument that teamwork

heightens effort and stress, either because of reduced discretion, or directly.

A further point which emerges from the analysis is that a number of the control

variables show very clear associations with outcomes. While the coefficients are not

big, nonetheless the results suggest that employees in production sector workplaces,


lowly unionised workplaces, who are in professional or personal/protective service

occupations or who work longer weekly hours tend to have higher discretion than

other employees. The key point to be made, however, is that team membership is

unimportant in determining discretion when compared to other factors, most

notably occupation. The importance of occupation has been demonstrated in a

number of other studies (see Harley 1999).11 The r2 for the discretion regression

model is only .065, which suggests that there are other factors accounting for

differences in discretion, but nonetheless the findings suggest that team member-

ship does not figure as a determinant of discretion.

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Table 7Regressions of employee outcome variables on workplace characteristics,employee characteristics and team membership

Dependent variables

Norm./Aff. Management

Independent variables Discretion commitment Satisfaction relations Stress

Step 1: Control variables

Size .086 �.004 .022 .032 .000

Age �.003 .014 �.001 �.027 .014

Union Density �.121* .066 .005 .023 �.077

UK Ownership .015 �.084 .017 �.072 .052

Private Sector �.025 .105 .106 .093 �.015

Production .167* �.026 .062 �.028 �.028

Female .026 .066* .087* .063 .097**

Permanent .018 �.021 �.024 �.062 .051

Weekly Working Hours .074* .008 �.020 �.002 .228**

Union/Staff Assoc. Member �.036 �.030 �.071 �.035 .105

Professional .227* .257* .190 .172 .368**

Assoc. Prof & Tech .082 .042 .008 .018 .068

Clerical & Secretarial .146 .082 .053 .094 .058

Craft & Skilled .014 .015 .017 �.093 .010

Personal & Protective .205* .275* .177 .187 .025

Sales .096 .163 .081 .134 .011

Operative & Assembly �.027 �.0009 �.067 �.079 �.073

Step 2: Team membership .044 .047 .057 .073 �.020

(all controls included in Step 2)

Step 1 adj R2 .064 .093 .073 .108 .252

Step 2 change in adj R2 .001 .001 .002 .004 .000

F change 1.856 1.319 3.571 2.171 .088

N 2808 2808 2808 2808 2808

Regression coefficients are standardized. Coefficients, R2 and N calculated using weighted data.

Significance levels and F change calculated using unweighted data.

*p <.05 **p <.01

A similar picture emerges with reference to commitment, satisfaction and stress,

with a number of the control variables showing statistically significant associations

with these variables. In particular, being a professional was significantly, and

relatively strongly, associated with each of the variables, with the association being

positive in all cases. Being female was positively and significantly associated with all

of them. Being a professional or personal and protective services employee was

positively associated with commitment. Being a professional or working long hours

was associated with stress. There were no statistically significant associations

involving relations with management. While it is possible to speculate about the

reason for the associations involving control variables, the important point is that

team membership is not a significant influence on outcome variables relative to

factors such as occupation, gender and working hours.

Discussion and Conclusion

The results leave positive and critical accounts of teamwork looking rather

forlorn. While teamwork does not, according to this analysis, herald a transform-

ation of work in which employees regain the discretion denied to them by Taylorist

work organisation, nor does it appear to involve reductions in discretion and hence

increased work intensification and stress. Put bluntly, according to the analysis

presented here, team membership does not matter much. In view of the fact that

other studies, albeit using different kinds of approaches, have found associations

between teamwork and outcomes for employees, how can we explain the lack of

associations found in this analysis?

Firstly, it may be that there are limitations inherent in the data and analytical

strategy which render it unable to find the theorised associations. One possible

problem, already alluded to, is that the teams in which the WERS98 respondents

worked were not ‘real’ teams, or at least the majority of them were not. From this

perspective, managers use the term ‘team’ loosely and tend to assign the appellation

to any group-based work. This is not a very compelling explanation. The criteria for

identification of team members used here were by design quite restrictive, precisely

to approximate autonomous teams as closely as possible.

Even putting this aside, this explanation is unconvincing, chiefly because it leads

into circularity and provides advocates of teamwork with an easy way out when

their sanguine view of teamwork is challenged. If, in spite of how teams were defined

in this paper, one were to argue that the explanation must be that they still were not

‘real’ teams, a certain circularity starts to emerge: teams are only teams if they

enhance employee autonomy and have other positive outcomes. If they do not, they

cannot be real teams. It is entirely possible that there are teams which do enhance

employee discretion, but the evidence presented here is that most British employees

who work in teams do not enjoy such outcomes.


It is also possible that the employee outcome variables generated from the

WERS98 data set are inadequate. Even if they are sufficient to capture key outcomes

of team membership they may be insufficiently subtle or nuanced to capture the

experience of teamwork adequately. Closely related to this is the possibility that the

models which were set up and (partially) tested are too crude to capture the

complexity of teamwork and its outcomes. It seems likely that the outcomes of team

membership are contingent and that there are considerable variations across

industry. Within a large data set like the WERS98, particularly when the analysis

relies on simple models, these variations may cancel each other out, thereby

providing a misleading picture at the aggregate level.

Undoubtedly the data set and analysis have limitations, but it seems unlikely that

these factors alone account for the findings. The WERS98 represents the largest,

most reliable and most current source of data on employee relations in Britain

available and the items on employee outcomes are for the most part well-established

measures which have been tested previously. Moreover, the statistical models

employed are entirely appropriate to the data and to the research problems under

investigation.

If it is accepted that the lack of associations between teamwork and employee

experience cannot be explained simply by limitations of data and analysis,

explanations must be sought elsewhere. Two explanations are proposed here.

The first, discussed in the first section of the paper, is that teams are managerially

driven and usually introduced as a means to enhance organisational performance.

Unfortunately the WERS98 survey did not ask managers about reasons for the

introduction of teams. There is, however, evidence that group work in Europe has

mostly been introduced by management, has involved very limited decision-making

rights for employees, and usually involves management rather than team members

controlling team membership and appointing team leaders (Benders et al 1999: vii).

Procter and Mueller (2000: 8–9) argue that a defining feature of the current wave of

teamwork is that it is managerially driven and aimed at improving performance,

rather than being a manifestation of concern with employee quality of working life.

To the extent that teamwork has as its rationale a primary concern with

performance improvement, it seems fanciful to expect major gains for employees to

emerge.

Secondly, it is possible that teams represent such minor adjustments to existing

hierarchical structures as to be negligible in effect. This critique of ‘new’ forms of

work organisation is well-rehearsed (see Harley 1999). Teamwork, like other

allegedly ‘empowering’ forms of work organisation is unlikely to present any

challenge to existing hierarchical structures in which power and influence are

exercised by virtue of one’s position. This argument finds support in the continuing

importance of occupation, not just for discretion, but for a range of facets of the

experience of work as demonstrated in the results presented above. Unless teams

738 bill harley

entail a fundamental reconfiguration of dominant patterns of work organisation

then they are unlikely to make a difference to employee discretion and via this to

orientations to work. It seems entirely plausible that there are real limitations to the

extent to which teams represent a genuine alternative to hierarchical forms of

organisation. Just as teamwork is generally too minor a modification to work to

enhance the experience, it is unlikely to involve a major degradation of work as

proposed by critics.

The findings presented in this paper suggest that both positive and critical

accounts of teamwork may have overstated the impact of this approach to work

organisation. Rigorous empirical analysis of reliable large-scale data has provided

no support for either account. It seems that the enthusiasm of positive accounts and

the dire warnings of the critics, may have been based on rather over-excited

evaluations of the extent to which teams represent a change to organisational forms

and patterns of work and the extent to which employees’ experiences of work are

touched by such practices.

notes1. The similarity between arguments about teamwork and these other approaches is not

surprising, since most conceptualisations of empowerment, high involvement

management, high commitment management and high performance work systems

include teamwork within the range of management practices considered (see Ramsay et al.

2000).

2. Two recent studies which have, inter alia, considered teamwork using large national-level

data sets are Harley (1999) and Ramsay et al. (2000), although neither had teamwork as its

primary focus.

3. The roles of the Department of Trade and Industry, the Advisory, Conciliation and

Arbitration Service (ACAS), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the

Policy Studies Institute (PSI) in making the WERS98 data available are acknowledged. As

with other surveys in the series, the National Centre for Social Research, formally Social

Community Planning and Research (SCPR), were commissioned to conduct the survey

fieldwork on behalf of the sponsors. WERS98 is deposited with and available from The

Data Archive at Essex University. Neither the sponsors nor the Data Archive have any

responsibility for the analysis or interpretation of the material contained in this paper. I

would like to thank Jos Benders, Rick Iverson, Graham Sewell, participants in the 2000

Labour Process Conference and the anonymous reviewers for Work Employment & Society,

for their comments on earlier versions of the paper.

4. Note that the WERS98 sample excludes workplaces with fewer than ten employees. It is

estimated by the WERS Data Dissemination Service (WDDS) that at the time of the survey

approximately 18 per cent of employees in Britain worked in workplaces which were not

represented by the WERS98 sample. This figure is not published and was provided to me

by Simon Kirby of the WDDS. There are not data available which allow an estimation of

the prevalence of teams in workplaces too small to be included in WERS98. Nonetheless,

there is a positive correlation between workplace size and the incidence of teams. This

suggests that that workplaces with fewer than ten employees are less likely than larger

workplaces to feature teams.


5. Thanks are due Mark Cully, formerly director of the WERS98 project team, and Simon

Kirby of the WERS Data Dissemination Service for their helpful advice on the data, for

making available SPSS syntax used in constructing the LOG and team membership

variables and the union density variable and for calculating weights to adjust results for

the effects of the multi-level design of the survey.

6. It seems likely that being a member of the largest occupational group (LOG) in a

workplace will have an impact on some of the outcomes explored in this paper. Indeed,

bivariate correlation analysis between a LOG dummy variable (1=member of LOG; 0=not

member of LOG) and the outcome variables showed weak, but statistically significant

associations (except in the case of management relations). Nonetheless, because all the

analysis is of data collected from employees who were members of the LOG, this factor is

controlled for and should not confound the analysis.

7. Consideration was given to limiting team membership only to those who worked in teams

which had all the characteristics of a self-managing team. This would, however, have

restricted team membership to only 6.2 per cent of the sub sample of members and non-

members and reduced the sub sample to only 1847 cases. Both the size of the sub sample

and the highly skewed distribution of the dichotomous variable would have caused

statistical problems in subsequent multivariate analysis.

8. A number of these items are based on analysis in Ramsay et al. (2000).

9. In the interests of saving space details of construction of the intervening variables are not

included, but can be provided upon request.

10. Because by far the majority of employees were on permanent contracts, a single

employment status dummy was included whereby a value of 1 was assigned to permanent

status and 0 to fixed term or temporary employment status. ‘Other’ was used as the

reference category for occupation. The design effects of the multi-level survey design were

controlled for by recalculating significance levels using ‘deft’ weights provided by the

WDDS. Details of the implications of the multi-level design, and techniques for dealing

with them, can be found in NIESR (2000: 28–36).

11. It should be noted that managerial employees are excluded from this analysis and that the

best predictor of discretion found in Harley (1999) using the AWIRS95 dataset was being a

manager.

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Accepted February 2001 email: [email protected]

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Documents

Team Membership and the Experience of Work