Network Intelligence Studies (Jun 2014)
SYNERGY EFFECTS IN WORK TEAMS
Abstract
Today’s organization increasingly utilizes all kind of teams in order to surpass their competitors through flexibility, adaptability and innovation, features which are seen to characterize the teams. For this purpose, the concept of synergy in teams’ activity is often mentioned as the prime reason for which collective work is considered to be superior comparative with individual work. But what exactly does it mean? The present paper aims to shed some light on the concept of synergy in work teams and its positive effects, namely, the social consequences of collective work such as social compensation, social indispensability, social comparison, social identity, but also its negative effects, such as free-riding, social loafing and sucker effect. These are important group phenomena that managers should be aware of because they have a major impact on team performance, and consequently, on organization performance.
