a study on teamwork and its effects?

Question

I am doing a paper on the pros and cons of teamwork and I am trying to make the point that teamwork builds a sense of camaraderie between co-workers. I need a reference to back up how this is beneficial to the workplace. Can anyone help? I have been searching for about two hours. You would think I could find ONE study that tells the benefits that camaraderie has on co-workers. I'm actually not even interested in what it says about it, just that there is such a study because I can't just say there is one, I have to cite a source. HELP!!!

Answer 1

Here are some 'studies' on teamwork. See the sources below.

The trick is not to let 'Teamwork' really mean 'Groupthink'. As a person with very creative ideas on how to do things, I often run into people who can't accept other people's ideas. (I can and do accept others ideas, if the ideas are good and I can't improve upon them.)

Management often says that they want to have people think "Out-of-the-Box". However, they often don't pay attention to the real 'creatives'.

For example, I took a training class on 'creative' thinking offered by my employer, a very large employer with offices in every state of the USA and in many other countries. There were 7 steps to the creative process. Imagine, exactly 7 steps. How confining, how stifling.

One of the class members brought in a problem he was having with another department. It seems the other department (scientists and engineers) looked down on his department (programmers) as tools rather than collogues. In the brainstorming step I offered a suggestion that the programmers challenge the scientists to a softball game [losers by the beer].

The 'scribe', [the person taking notes] refused to put my idea on the list. That is strictly forbidden under brainstorming rules. ALL ideas go on the list.

Well, when it came time for my classmate to choose the best ideas, he chose another idea. But on the next break, he told me that he had already tried every idea suggested in the class, except the two (the other idea was a social outing for the two departments to a pro sporting event) that I had offered.

What he was REALLY going to do was try my ideas; he was just too embarrassed to say so, because of the calcified thinking of the other class members.

He later called me and let me know that my suggestions had proved at least partially successful, while the two departments weren't 'best buddies', at least the scientists were more civil.

Why did I suggest these ideas? It was because the scientists didn't see the programmers as people. By getting to know them in a casual environment the programmers became something other than tools to use.