Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Project Performance and the Influence of Group Longevity
The general neglect of a temporal perspective - the fact that group activities do not take place at random points in time - has been one of the major problems in the study of groups and project teams. Yet until it is addressed, questions about how well a group is doing will receive answers that are, at best, incomplete. As individuals are born, grow, up and grow old - first feeling their way uncertainly, then seeking out new challenges and experiences as they gain confidence, and finally, becoming a bit self-satisfied about thier own knowledge and achievements - so the same process seems to occur within groups whose members have worked together for an extended period.
The analogy is a convenient one, though subject in both cases to variation: age need not mean stagnation in either an individual or a group. Still, a field study of research and development project teams, which I and Professor Tom Allen have been engaged in for some years, does tend to support a general finding of less intense involvement in job demands and challenges with increasing stability in project membership.
It is, of course, natural for both individuals and groups to attempt to structure their work activities to reduce stress and ensure a level of certainty. People like to know, as much as possible, what will happen next. Given this, group members interacting over a long time are likely to develop standard work patterns that are both familiar and comfortable, patterns in which routine and precedent play a relatively large part - perhaps at the expense of unbiased thought and new ideas.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
