THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE OF TEAMWORK, SATISFACTION, AND PERCEIVED PERFORMANCE EFFECTIVENESS AMONG PROFESSIONAL HUMAN SERVICE TEAMS.

摘要

This study investigated the relationship between knowledge of teamwork, performance, and satisfaction in members of human service teams. Team Knowledge was conceptualized as encompassing four critical areas: Personal-Interpersonal, Team Environment, Team Leadership, and Team Processing.;A major hypothesis of the present study was that there is a direct relationship between team knowledge and satisfaction, team knowledge and perceived member performance effectiveness, and between satisfaction and perceived member performance effectiveness. The following questions related to team performance, team member satisfaction and teamwork knowledge were investigated: (1) What levels of satisfaction do team members experience in the areas of the work of the team, team leadership and relationships with fellow team members? (2) What relationship exists between teamwork knowledge and effectiveness of team members? (3) What relationship exists between team member performance and satisfaction? (4) What areas of teamwork knowledge are related to effective team performance? (5) What areas of teamwork knowledge are related to team member satisfaction?;Eight human service teams, comprising thirty-eight members, participated in the study. The subjects completed a Team Knowledge Survey, a Team Member Performance Self-Assessment instrument, and the Job Descriptive Index (JDI). Team Leaders completed a Leader Assessment measure of overall Team Performance. The Team Knowledge Survey was designed to measure team member knowledge in the four critical areas. A self-assessment of performance was obtained through the Team Member Performance Self-Assessment. Three of the four JDI scales were employed to measure satisfaction with the work of the team, with team leadership and with other members of the team.;Possible relationships between knowledge and performance, knowledge and satisfaction, and performance and satisfaction were examined through use of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. The independent variable was team knowledge and the dependent variables were performance and satisfaction.;Research findings in the literature point to certain general benefits of the team model. Nevertheless, some teams are dysfunctional, which may be reflected in poor performance and low morale or satisfaction. Lack of knowledge about teamwork was identified as a possible contributor to such problems.;Team members were distributed in the middle to moderately high end of the range on knowledge scores; performance scores tended to fall within the middle of the range. There was a tendency for satisfaction scores to be negatively skewed. Members appeared to be relatively more knowledgeable in the Team Environment area.;No statistically significant relationships were found between global knowledge scores, or the subscores in the critical areas of team knowledge, and the performance or satisfaction scores. It was suggested that certain unmeasured moderator variables intervened between the knowledge of individual team members and their performance and satisfaction. Therefore, any relationships among the variables investigated in the present study may be indirect.