This chapter identifies key resources for understanding and applyingteamwork to higher education settings.

Using Teams in Higher Education:Resources for Researchers andPractitioners

Susan H. Frost, Pankaj Bidani

Although many of the resources listed here are not new, some apply team con-cepts to new settings. The work of Mintzberg and Senge, discussed in the Edi-tor’s Notes, inform this volume. The other articles listed here discuss organizingconcepts for effective team building, administrative strategies and effectiveness,case studies of teams at work, and lessons in the business context.

Mintzberg, H. “Crafting Strategy.” Harvard Business Review, 1987, 65, 66–75.Mintzberg states that formal planning alone is not the best way for man-

agers to develop strategy. He argues that strategy is not merely a plan for thefuture but grows out of the iterative history of change within the organizationas well as out of the processes that characterize it. Many successful strategiesare not deliberately formed. Rather, they emerge over time as organizationsrespond to challenges and opportunities. To recognize patterns that alreadyexist, as well as to create new methods for change, managers need an intuitiveunderstanding of the organization.

Senge, P. “The Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations.” SloanManagement Review, 1990, 32, 1–17.

Senge discusses the forces in business organizations that tend to restrictindividuals’ natural tendencies toward learning. He then presents two types oflearning: adaptive learning, which slowly evolves from confronting andresponding to problems; and generative learning, which requires one to devisenew ways to see the world and new capacities to design the future.

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98 USING TEAMS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Understanding Culture and Organizing Concepts

Argyris, C. “Teaching Smart People How to Learn.” Harvard Business Review,1991, 32, 31–41.

Argyris argues that competitive organizations are successful because theyhave the ability to learn. Most people are not good at learning, however. Learn-ing is a result of how people reason about their own behavior. To improve thequality of work, organizations should focus on the nature of the patterns oflearning of both managers and employees.

Bartlett, C., and Ghoshal, S. “Changing the Role of Top Management: BeyondSystems to People.” Harvard Business Review, 1995, 73, 132–142.

This article is based on the results of research on twenty successful busi-nesses. Bartlett and Ghoshal call for an “individualized corporation.” Postwartools that enabled organizations to expand and helped managers to deal withlarge enterprises caused many of the problems that companies experiencetoday. Static systems and hierarchies are ill equipped to adapt to new chal-lenges. In the individualized corporation, however, managers create an envi-ronment in which individuals monitor themselves, allowing the company toengage the knowledge and skills of each person, and encouraging informationto flow between top-level and frontline managers.

Bess, J. “Collegiality: Toward a Clarification of Meaning and Function.” In J.Smart (ed.), Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Vol. 8. NewYork: Agathon Press, 1992.

To reach a closer agreement on what constitutes collegiality, Bess exploresthe meaning of collegiality, its origin or sources, its functions and uses, andneeded research. Bess provides insight into the nature of collegiality amongfaculty and the benefits of a culture that values collegiality, and guidance tothose who are attempting to establish or strengthen collegiality in institutions.

De Geus, A. “Planning as Learning.” Harvard Business Review, Mar.–Apr. 1988,15–19.

De Geus contends that although individual managers are capable of high lev-els of thinking, the thinking that goes on in management teams is usually far belowthe capacity of the individuals involved. Within the context of planning as learn-ing, he addresses two questions the Shell Group of companies asked: How does acompany learn and adopt? What is the role of planning in corporate learning? Thepace and extent of change depends on the culture and structure of the organization.

Garvin, D. “Building a Learning Organization.” Harvard Business Review, 1993,71, 78–91.

Garvin discusses the flaws in many attempts at improvement and focuses onareas that characterize successful improvement programs. Fundamental learning inthree areas—meaning, management, and measurement—is key to improvement.

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Ghoshal, S., and Bartlett, C. “Changing the Role of Top Management: BeyondStructure to Processes.” Harvard Business Review, 1995, 73, 14–24.

Ghoshal and Bartlett argue that a top-down structure can fragmentresources and prevent small units from sharing their strengths with oneanother. Structural change alone cannot solve the problem. The authors pre-dict that successful managerial change will emphasize three horizontalprocesses: frontline entrepreneurship, competence-building, and renewal.

Gumport, P. “The Contested Terrain of Academic Program Reduction.” Journalof Higher Education, 1993, 64 (3), 283–311.

Gumport examines organizational struggle among groups to define andcontrol professional work in universities. Using five major patterns of lan-guage, she draws distinctions among organizational participants and discussesthree overarching alignments of interest that emerged: executive administra-tors and faculty research stars with their funding sources, targeted faculty withtheir powerless constituencies, and targeted faculty and contiguous faculty incollective defense of faculty’s professional autonomy.

Heifetz, R., and Laurie, D. “Work of Leadership.” Harvard Business Review,1997, 75, 124–134.

The leader’s challenge is to support the “adaptive work” that responds tochanges in societies, markets, and technology. Heifetz and Laurie offer six prin-ciples for leading adaptive work, including identifying the adaptive challenge,regulating distress, maintaining disciplined attention, giving the work back topeople, and protecting voices of leadership from below.

Katzenbach, J. Teams at the Top: Unleashing the Potential of Both Teams and Indi-vidual Leaders. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, 1998.

Katzenbach explores dynamics that characterize leadership groups atthe top and contrasts these with so-called teams, or working groups with asingle leader. Solutions do not lie in mandating teams or in changing topleaders’ styles, or even in designing a better top team structure. Katzenbachadvocates clearly differentiating between team and nonteam opportunities,and developing the capability to shift into different leadership modes, dif-ferent leadership roles, and appropriate team membership composition,depending on the desired results. High-performing organizations require abalanced leadership effort that fully exploits nonteam as well as teamapproaches.

Rosener, J. “Ways Women Lead.” Harvard Business Review, 1990, 68, 119–125.Drawing on the results of a survey conducted for the International

Women’s Forum, Rosener found that women managers succeed by drawingon their unique experience as women. Because women are often forced to playsupportive and cooperative roles, they manage effectively without relying ontheir positions of power and control of resources to motivate others.

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Administrative Strategies and Methods of Change

The work of Estela Mara Bensimon and Anna Neumann is a valuable startingpoint for further research into this area.

Bensimon, E. Making Sense of Administrative Leadership: The “L” Word in HigherEducation. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report no. 1. Washington, D.C.:ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports, 1989.

Bensimon synthesizes much of the theoretical literature on leadership inhigher education. She covers the contemporary context, conceptual explana-tions of leadership, higher education and leadership theory, higher educationand organizational theory, and overview and integration. An agenda forresearch on leadership in higher education is included, as well as approxi-mately 250 references.

Bensimon, E. “How College Presidents Use Their Administrative Groups: ‘Real’and ‘Illusory’ Teams.” Journal for Higher Education Management, 1991, 7 (1), 35–51.

Through interviews with fifteen presidents of colleges and universities,Bensimon investigated the ways in which administrators perceive that theiradministrative teams are useful. The presidents had very different approachesto teamwork, using them for utilitarian, expressive, and cognitive functions(“real” teams) or in more limited ways (“illusory” teams).

Bensimon, E. “Total Quality Management in the Academy: A Rebellious Read-ing.” Harvard Educational Review, 1995, 65 (4), 593–611.

Bensimon presents a poststructural feminist analysis of Total Quality Man-agement principles that suggests that their application in higher educationgives more support to traditional values than to the valuing of diversity.

Bensimon, E., and Neumann, A. Redesigning Collegiate Leadership: Teams andTeamwork in Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Bensimon and Neumann examine the use of leadership teams in fifteenhigher education institutions. First the authors discuss leadership teams in thecontext of the advantages and disadvantages of teamwork. They then contrastleadership as a one-person act with shared, interactive leadership; they explorethe cultural workings of teams; and they present examples highlighting the dif-ferences between real teamwork and illusory teamwork. Ways to develop teamsthat are inclusive and responsive to complex campus changes are presented.

Gioia, D., and Thomas, J. “Identity, Image, and Issue Interpretation: Sense-making During Strategic Change in Academia.” Administrative Science Quar-terly, 1996, 41 (3), 370–403.

Gioia and Thomas explore how top management teams in 372 U.S.higher education institutions make sense of important issues affecting strate-gic change.

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Neumann, A. “The Thinking Team: Toward a Cognitive Model of Administra-tive Teamwork in Higher Education.” Journal of Higher Education, 1991, 62 (5),485–513.

Neumann interviewed seventy administrators at fifteen campuses toexamine the collective thinking of top-level administrative leadership teams.She focused on how individual team members make sense of their roles withinthe context of the team. From this examination, a model of standard roles wasdeveloped (see Eckel, Chapter Three, this volume).

Pomrenke, V. “Team Leadership Development.” Effective Planned Change Strate-gies. New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 33. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982.

Pomrenke compares two models for change, structural and person-oriented.Within this context, team building is seen as a person-oriented approach thatcan also affect the structure of an organization. Pomrenke argues that people andstructures should be approached in tandem.

Satterlee, B. Executive Leadership Concepts for Higher Education, 1997. (ED 405 928)Satterlee identifies several concepts that help reveal the traits and

processes of leadership in educational settings. First, leadership can be under-stood as the act of persuading others to set aside individual concerns and pur-sue a common goal. Second, leadership is part of a vision community formedwhen leaders have a vision and create a desire in others to make the vision areality. To be successful in the twenty-first century, leaders will need to acquirenew skills related to systems thinking, change management, and team build-ing. Finally, efforts at implementing Total Quality Management are reviewed;these efforts have been less successful than expected, primarily because topadministrators often exempt themselves from the processes.

Weber, M., and Karman, T. “Graphite into Diamonds: Using Teams toStrengthen Intracollegial Interaction.” Innovative Higher Education, 1989, 14 (1),49–56.

Weber and Karman argue that in an information-processing organizationit is essential to keep the lines of communication open. Cooperative teamworkcan help achieve this goal.

Case Studies of Teams at Work

The following articles explore team development in specific academic settings.

Bruegman, D. “Needed: Changes in Management Focus.” Business Officer, 1992,25 (9), 40–42.

A chief financial officer argues that internal reform in higher educationmanagement will require that excessive administrative growth be contained,

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procedures be streamlined, foci be shifted from individuals to the organization,leadership be encouraged, governing boards be restructured, priorities be clar-ified, and reward systems be revised. Creating circumstances that supportteamwork can help achieve these objectives.

Caldwell, P., and Gould, E. Effecting Change in a Resistant Organization. Victor-ville, Calif.: Victor Valley Community College District, 1993. (ED 354 960)

Caldwell and Gould describe the strategy that Victor Valley CommunityCollege leaders have used to create change. The process includes developingvision, assessing campus climate, developing a leadership strategy, improvingformal as well as informal communications, and developing and maintainingan effective management team. These steps provide a foundation on whichstructural change can develop.

Gallagher, J. P. “Developing Institutional Teams.” New Directions for Higher Edu-cation, 1994, 87, 17–25.

The experience of the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science showsthat the development of leadership teams can help colleges cope with institu-tional change.

Nicodemus, R. Internal Consultancy, Team and Institutional Development. Paperpresented at the Symposium “Organization 2000: Psychoanalytic Perspectives”of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, NewYork, June 14–16, 1996.

Nicodemus draws on experience at the Open University (United King-dom) to describe internal consultancies, one form of effective teamwork. Theseconsultancies include course consulting, counseling with a course team chair,serving as a participant-observer with staff in summer schools, interviewingstudents in summer schools, evaluating the impact of new technology on staff,conducting a workshop for staff on group dynamics, analyzing group dynam-ics in a video about learning and teaching mathematics, offering confidentialcounseling to team members, and providing consulting services to a courseteam on child development.

Shreeve, W. (ed.) “. . . If You Don’t Care Who Gets the Credit.” Journal of theCollege & University Personnel Association, 1986, 37 (3) 20–22.

Shreeve discusses the evolution and success of a cooperative research, writ-ing, and editing team at the Eastern Washington University Department of Edu-cation. This collaboration led to thirty-four articles and received two nationalawards for excellence. The dynamics that enabled this productivity are outlined.

VanDyke, P. (ed.). The Culture for Quality: Effective Faculty Teams. Maryville, Mo.:Prescott, 1995.

Faculty at Northwest Missouri State University describe their experiencesin academic teams implementing the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality stan-

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dards. Chapters discuss the ability of academic teams to solve problems thatindividual faculty members could not manage alone. Teams used cooperativestrategies to improve weak programs, encourage a philosophical shift in theorganization of general education courses, and involve students in large lec-ture courses.

Lessons in the Business Context

Bartlett, C., and Ghoshal, S. “Changing the Role of Top Management: BeyondStrategy to Purpose.” Harvard Business Review, 1994, 72, 79–88.

By creating a shared institutional purpose and focusing on developing peo-ple rather than managing systems, senior managers change their priorities andways of thinking. The authors discuss efforts to implement these new practicesat 3M, AT&T, Royal Dutch/Shell, Intel, Kao, Corning, and other companies.

Katzenbach, J., and Smith, D. The Wisdom of Teams. Boston, Mass.: HarvardBusiness School Press, 1993.

Katzenbach and Smith interviewed more than fifty different teams inthirty companies to discover what differentiates various levels of team perfor-mance, including where teams work best and how to enhance their effective-ness. Among their findings were that formal hierarchy is good for teams,successful team leaders fit no ideal profile, commitment to performance goalsis more important than commitment to team-building goals, top managementteams are often smaller and more difficult to sustain, and team endings can beas important to manage as team beginnings.

Katzenbach, J. (ed.). The Work of Teams. Boston, Mass.: Harvard BusinessSchool Press, 1998.

In this collection of articles from the Harvard Business Review, Katzenbachaddresses the challenges and rewards that accompany teams. Recommenda-tions and guidance for overcoming the problems that can derail work groupsare included.

SUSAN H. FROST is vice provost for institutional planning and research and adjunctassociate professor of educational studies at Emory University.

PANKAJ BIDANI is a research assistant in the office of institutional planning andresearch at Emory University.