Abstract

This study on the impact of teams on organizational performance in NPACCUL was set out specifically, to examine the various characteristics of an effective team, the effect of teamwork on employees’ commitment at work, and the effect of teamwork on organizational productivity.

This study adopted a descriptive research design and data collected for this study was from the primary source (questionnaires) and chi-square was used to analyze the data. The target population for this study was employees of NPACCUL Limbe, comprising management and all other employees. Using a sample size of 20 respondents.

This study found out that teams highly contribute to organizational performance as it increases fast execution of tasks, hard work, and competition thus increasing output. From the findings, it was established that teams have a significant impact on organizational performance with confidence thereby rejecting that teams have no significant impact on organizational performance in NPACCUL.

Conclusively, we, therefore, recommended that the management of NPACCUL Limbe should encourage their workers to work in teams and also encourage collaboration among the workers. This study suggests that research on the employee-manager relationships should also be carried out to verify their impact on performance.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

Teams are an integral part of the workplace. Basic teams involve everyone working together to support the organization and complex teams could involve ‘’work teams’’ chosen to complete a project by working closely.

Teams enhance performance through joint and collective efforts. Allowing team members to bring their specific education and training to a project or a work task maximize the variety of work the team can accomplish as well as the number of tasks completed without additional research. It is true that more minds can work better than a single one (Okoh, 2006).

Teams are as old as mankind and as such many organizations use the term ‘’team’’ in either one sense or the other that is, such as in the production, marketing processes, etc Examples are management team, production team, or an entire organization can be referred as a team. (Cook 1998) stated that there is a growing consent among researchers in the World that organizations may be getting works done through individuals, but his super achievement lies in the attainment of the set goals through teams (teamwork). It is a well-known fact that teamwork is not only the foundation of all successful management but the means of improving overall results in organizational performance.

Wage (1997) describes teams as an idea of working together in a group to achieve the same goals and objectives for the goods of the service users and the organizations in order to deliver a good.

quality of service users and organizations in order to deliver a good quality of service(performance).

Teams are the actions of individuals, brought together for a common purpose or goal, which subordinate the needs of the individual to the need of the group. In essence, each person on the team put aside his or her individual needs to work toward organizational objectives. Effective teamwork is essential to the success of any business. As ‘’no man is an island’’, the positive effects of performance on teamwork can energize an entire organization. Just as the negative effect of lack of teamwork can cripple an organization.

An essential ingredient to effective teamwork is attracting and keeping the right team members that would facilitate performance in an organization. As such most human resource approaches lay so much emphasis on teamwork due to its importance to organizational performance.

Teams enable individuals to empower themselves and to increase benefits from cooperative work engaged as a group. Getting together with others also can allow individuals to better understand the importance of teams and how organizations operate as well as promote the culture of team success.

Employees take little steps toward accomplishing key action items and nothing important is finished. Teams work together towards a common vision and it is a fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. Collective action is widely recognized as a positive force for teams in any organization or institution to succeed.

David (2007) posited that employers always stress the need for employing those employees that can be able to work with a team. And employers generally talk about teamwork when they want to emphasize the need for various talents possessed by different employees into different teams such as management team, production team, etc.

This is purposely to tap from the abilities of respective human resources employed by an organization. Organization according to Caroline (2008) is a social entity that is a goal-directed, deliberately structured activity system with a preamble boundary.

Alain (2008) claimed that productivity is the rate at which an employer, company, or country produces goods and the amount produced, compared with how time, work, and money are needed to produce them. This, therefore, shows that this study will concentrate specifically on the use of the term ‘’Teams” which involves reshaping the way work is carried out.

This includes organizing employees into teams based on distinct products, each team performing a particular task. These teams are given a high degree of responsibility and are expected to work with flexibility and increase productivity. Thus this study is carried out to examine the impact of teams on organizational performance.

According to Cohen and Bailey (1999), an employee team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in the tasks and who share responsibility for the outcomes. Teams enable people to cooperate, enhance individual skills and provide constructive feedback without any conflict between individuals (Jones 2007). A team comprises of different individuals with complementary skills and who work together to

However, the concepts of team and group are often confused and mostly used instead of one another. One opinion in the literature suggests that the team is not different from the group and that the studies on them go well long common past But, they do not have the same qualities.

As a mostly accepted definition, a group is “two or more number amount of people who perceive themselves as a group and share the common goals, who have stable relationships in between and are within interaction”. Up to date books on organizational behaviour exhibit the distinctive attributes that define the team on the group.

Those are; shared goals and objectives, mutual confidence and loyalty, expressing the feelings explicitly, making decisions with compromise cooperation, coordination, and compliance, having a common synergic effect. Assessing the above given definitions it can be inferred that they have a lot in common.

Also, Delarue (2003) defines a team as a group of employees who have at least some collective tasks and where the team members are authorized to regulate mutually the execution of this collective task. Teamwork is defined by a common task requiring interdependent work and successive or integrative action ( Hacker 1998).

However, Katzenbach and Smith (1999) describe three fundamental characteristics of a team which is devotion, accountability (responsibility), and skills. Teams within organizations can be classified in many different ways. According to the formation style, formal and informal teams according to the functions they claim responsibility for, advisory and complementary teams, and according to the relations within the organization vertical and horizontal teams. Apart from these, they can also be classified as problem-solving, self-managing, and cross-functional teams award a common goal.

Teams in NPACCUL can be classified in a formal way that is, according to their function in NPACCUL we have the senior staffs who are the board of directors and the junior staff who make up the teams in this institution and they are still struggling to grow since their population size is not too large. The board of directors with the staff working in teams often experience high performance than those working in isolation.

1.2. Problem statement

In NPACCUL, team performance is becoming more and more critical to organizational success. One of the first questions asked at most interviews today is ‘’ can you work as part of a team’’? if performance management of NPACCUL activity is not defined correctly, employees individual goals may damage the team’s performance and vice versa

NPACCUL is a category one microfinance institution struggling to increase performance so as to achieve success and maintain a valuable image in this competitive business world. This is driven by the desire to effectively use resources to produce the best output and this effectiveness is closely tied to human capital (labour).

Organizations with staff working in teams often experience high productivity than those in which individuals work in isolation. Nevertheless, the workers in an organization may be very large and yet that organization is performance is very low and with no improvement in their products.

Some of these problems that occur in NPACCUL are a result of the absence of teams in their institution. In this case common, problems face by them is lack of teamwork in this institution, poor leadership styles, lack of motivation of the workforce resulting in poor performance in the organization.

It is against this backdrop that this study seeks to examine the impact of teams on organizational performance. This problem has led to the following research questions which will be addressed:

• What are the characteristics of effective teams in NPACCUL (National Ports Authority Cooperative Credit Union Limited)?
• What is the effect of teamwork on employee’s commitment in NPACCUL?
• What is the effect of teams on organizational performance in NPACCUL?

1.3 Objectives of the study

The main objective of this study is to examine the impact of teams on organizational performance.

The specific objectives of this study will include:

1. To identify the characteristics of effective teams in NPACCUL (National Port Authority Cooperative Credit Union Limited)
2. To Examine the extent to which teams affect employees commitment to NPACCUL
3. To examine the effect of team Work on organizational performance in NPACCUL