Issue of Teamwork in the Context of Theoretical Discourse

In recent decades teamwork has become not only a popular topic for public discussion, but also the focus of numerous scientific insights. The abundance of publications on this subject suggests that organizing teamwork has become one of the phenomena of organi‑ zational activity. On the other hand, based on his numerous research, the author of the paper raises the question of whether the concept of teamwork analysed in such publications is studied within the framework of scientific concepts. For instance, some authors believe that the only distinguishing feature of a team is an efficiently working group; the formation of the team is a long‑term process and to achieve this the group needs to undergo several stages of development (Hersey, Blanchard, Tuckman, Jensen, Katzenbach, Smith, Liker, Kasiulis, Barvydienė, Savanavičienė, Šilingienė, Gražulis); other authors use these concepts as synonyms (Boddy, Peiton) and analyse them in the context of formal and informal sta‑ tus. Thus, the concept of effective and ineffective teams has become the additional object of the research. Numerous researchers limit their research to the analysis of functional roles within well‑established teams (Benne, Sheats), at the same time neglecting the impact of personality traits on the activity of the work group. Specialists do not agree on the team size (Manz, Sims, Miller, Stoner et. al.), purpose (Meskon, Katzenbach, Smith, Sakalas et. al.), and periodically arising constraints on the team development and the like. As a result, scholars and practitioners perceive the issues of team work differently, thus they often talk at cross purposes. The author of the paper believes that it is expedient to consider the information collected up to now on the topic of teamwork within the overall context of the development of management science, which at the same time would provide for the development of conceptual theoretical proposals for scientific teamwork models (systems).