Result-oriented team development processes : a longitudinal study of self-managing work teams

An extensive literature review of team development literature was carried out, resulting in an overview of three general team processes. These processes, internal relations, task management and external relations and improvement, were explored at more than 150 blue-collar and white-collar self-managing work teams (SMWTs) during a three-year study in a Swedish Volvo plant. The three processes were found consistent over time and appeared to relate to objective performance measures for product quality, number of sick-occasions and long-term sick-leave. Each process showed distinctive effects on one-year-later performance of SMWTs. A result oriented team development approach is proposed, in which the achieved results determine the processes to develop SMWTs.