Advantages of Teamwork Versus Individual Work Synergy Essay

Work teams play an important role in a modern organization. From software engineers who collaborate to write code to the board of directors who gather to make strategic decisions, teams are increasingly being used worldwide as the foundation of work. We know from our everyday experiences, however, that effective teamwork is not achieved as easily as getting a collection of individuals together. There are important things that the group has to accomplish in order to prove effective. First of all, individuals have to group around a common task or goal that they are trying achieve. Once this is satisfied and group members are aware and agree on the common goal/task, there should be further effort put in to develop and nurture the group as it†¦show more content†¦Sharing the work in such a way that each member of the team utilizes his/her strength and does not have to deal with areas where skills may be deficient has not only the advantage of higher productivity, but the advanta ge of higher morale and lesser frustrations. Moreover, groups generally outperform individuals in cases where both the group and the individuals do not have any expertise on the task. This interesting phenomenon can be explained by what is called the effect of synergy. According to Salazar, the whole is not necessarily equal, but may be greater than the sum of its individual parts, which describes the effect of synergy. Synergy occurs when group performance from joint action exceeds that of the total performance of its members when perceived abilities and skills of individual members are considered (Salazar 172). In a recent study, groups were able to answer a question correctly 28% of the time whereas individual members working alone could only answer correctly 4% of the time when the answer to the question was not known by any of the members (Stasson and Bradshaw 304). This obviously demonstrates a very important advantage of groups over individuals through synergy, but it is not the only one. The synergy bonus often will al so appear as productivity, quality, timeliness, creativity and some otherShow MoreRelatedPrevailing Contemporary Themes in Hospitality2237 Words   |  9 Pagesbecomes critical to the success in the long term. 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