Article review

How staff experience teamwork challenges in a new

organizational structure Mette Sandoff

Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, Goteborgs Universitet, Goteborg, Sweden, and

Kerstin Nilsson Institute of Health and Care Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy,

Goteborgs Universitet, Goteborg, Sweden

Abstract Purpose – This study aims to explore challenges arising from the development of teamwork in a new organizational structure, based on the experiences of the staff involved. Design/methodology/approach – An explorative and qualitative approach was used, with individual interviews as the data collection method. These interviews were analyzed using qualitative and interpretative analysis with a modified editing style. Findings – The results describe how the lack of essential organizational prerequisites for teamwork and the absence of the leadership qualities needed to facilitate teamwork contribute to difficulties in working in a team-orientated way. Shortage of information among the team members and few scheduled meetings signify insufficient coordination within the working team. Without a team leader who can keep things together, read the team members’ needs and support and guide them, team work is difficult to uphold because the members will need to seek support elsewhere. Assumed synergies from working together as team member experts will be thwarted. Originality/value – This study contributes knowledge about the difficulties in creating team-orientated cooperation in a new organizational structure when leadership as well as structures and processes supporting team work are absent. The challenges described are drawn from the experiences of the staff concerned, providing insights to form a basis for theoretical and practical discussion.

Keywords Leadership qualities, Challenges, Explorative and qualitative design, Need for teamwork structure, Organizational prerequisites, Staff’s experiences

Paper type Research paper

Introduction and aim Since the early 1980s, teamwork has won popularity in almost all kinds of organizations (Dionne et al., 2014; Chin, 2015). This study focuses on experiences from teamwork in a new organizational structure at the city-constituency level within a municipality, establishing development departments. The intention was to employ development leaders, within each development department, with different fields of expertise and enable them to work as a team to support urban development within the municipality. Teamwork is assumed to be especially important the more complex the tasks are (Solansky et al., 2014; Salas et al., 2015). According to Chin (2015), many organizations, not least public ones, emphasize collaboration, cooperation and teamwork as a positive

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Team Performance Management Vol. 22 No. 7/8, 2016

pp. 415-427 © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1352-7592 DOI 10.1108/TPM-05-2016-0021

mode of work. Often described advantages are better judgment and problem-solving as well as better performance on cognitive tasks. Other positive results are increased production, creativity and innovation (Dionne et al., 2014).

The setting for this study was a public organization with a new organizational structure where teamwork was settled. The focus in this study is on working teams, i.e. real teams, and with that in accordance with Katzenbach and Smith, we have in view “a small number of people with complementary skills who are equally committed to a common purpose, goals, and working approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable” (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993, p. 92). However, successful teamwork requires understanding of each team member’s field of responsibility as well as confidence in her/his ability to manage tasks appropriately (Marshall, 2007). Furthermore, a shared purpose, critical reflection and leadership are essential when it comes to a team’s possibility to set and maintain its focus and direction (Sims et al., 2015).

Reviewing the literature, we found that Laughlin and colleagues concluded that team performance in general exceeds that of an average individual but not necessarily that of an expert (Laughlin et al., 2011). Hinsz views teams as a technology that can be applied. The question is, therefore, when and how to use teams. Sometimes teamwork is preferable, sometimes not. When viewing teams as a technology, like with any technology, “technical” knowledge about how to apply the technology appropriately is required. Such a task may be assumed to be an issue for the team manager to reflect upon. According to Hinsz, there is a mystification surrounding teams that results in a not-always-grounded enthusiasm, claiming that teamwork is always beneficial (Hinsz, 2015).

Several studies have pinpointed the leadership and management of teams as one challenge to creating effective working teams. Liff and Wikström have studied the intersection between teamwork and professional identity in public health care (Liff and Wikström, 2015). They recommended a leadership strategy that focuses on building good relationships among the working team members by means of carefully selected activities, as well as avoiding compartmentalization that has a negative impact on team efficiency and creativity. This is also stressed by McInnes and colleagues when describing barriers within working teams related to confusion around roles and responsibilities, hierarchical structures, territorialism and poor communication (McInnes et al., 2015).

Dionne et al. (2014) concluded that transformational leadership, comprising idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, are important aspects for performance beyond expectations within teams. According to the authors, research is sparse when it comes to internal examination of the relationship “black box” between leadership and team performance. Also, McIntyre and Foti emphasized how absolutely essential leadership is for effectiveness within the working team, though questioning the reservation of leadership development training in organizations solely for the person appointed to be in charge of the working team. Furthermore, they suggested that shared leadership should be considered as it has positive effects on the working team’s engagement and responsibility-taking for results achieved (McIntyre and Foti, 2013).

Self-managed teams (SMT) are also highlighted in earlier studies. De Jong et al. used the following definition of SMT: “groups of interdependent employees who have the collective authority and responsibility of managing and performing relatively whole

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tasks” (De Jong et al., 2004, p. 19). Leadership is a vital factor for the success even of SMT (Stoker, 2008).

Kent has studied a self-directed team in a manufacturing setting and problematized the use of teams within a traditional and hierarchical structure. He used a metaphor describing the manager’s situation as being like standing with one foot safely on the dock and the other in a canoe that was not moored to the dock. Most organizations provide their teams with training in operational skills as well as interpersonal and team training, but according to Kent, that is not enough. Managers need training in how to see processes and how to manage the transition from the dock to the canoe (Kent, 2006). Siassakos and colleagues found that a team leader’s capability and experience are more important than seniority – a relevant insight in relation to the importance of focusing on processes when using teams within traditional and hierarchical structures (Siassakos et al., 2013).

Stoker (2008) discussed important managerial aspects for well-functioning working teams. He claims that it is important for a team manager to lay the foundations for the structure to define, direct and structure the roles and activities of subordinates (directive leadership). That means deciding and describing what to do and how to do it. Furthermore, it is important to show consideration on a daily basis, which means being involved in hands-on processes and giving guidance, encouragement and support to the team members (coaching leadership). Chin (2015) discussed similar aspects, i.e. the leader’s assertiveness and responsiveness. Assertiveness relates to how leaders communicate with team members and can vary from direct to indirect. Responsiveness relates to how the leader expresses her- or himself emotionally while leading the team.

As shown, several studies have focused on the intersection between leadership and working team performance. But it is hard to find studies focusing on the challenges to be faced, so that teamwork can function, based upon the experiences of the staff involved. Therefore, the aim of the study is to explore the challenges arising from the development of teamwork within a new organizational structure, based on the experiences of the staff involved.

Method Design An explorative and qualitative approach (Patton, 2002) was used in the study with individual interviews as the data collection method because the aim was to grasp the experiences of the development leaders participating; qualitative methods have been recommended to obtain knowledge and understanding about the meaning people invest in specific situations or phenomena, such as development leaders’ experiences of working in teams. Similar design and methods have been used in several other studies (Nilsson et al., 2005, 2007; Nilsson and Sandoff, 2015a, 2015b; Sandoff and Widell, 2015; Bååthe et al., 2016).

The study was conducted in 2015, which was four years after the new organization was implemented.

Setting The public administration of the city of Gothenburg implemented a new organizational structure in 2011. New development departments were established in the ten city constituencies within the municipality of Gothenburg and were to be equally organized

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and managed (Göteborgs Stad, 2009, 2010b, 2010a). The development departments were intended to serve and support the management team of each city constituency, respectively, as well as the four operational sections within each constituency. The staff at the development departments were expected to work in a team-orientated manner, which means that even though each development leader represents a specific area of expertise, they must all cooperate as a team to serve and support urban development within the city constituency (Göteborgs Stad, 2010b). The idea was to employ development leaders with different fields of expertise and responsibility in each development department, so that they could inspire and enrich one another. Effective teamwork in each development department was in turn expected to stimulate development leaders to provide good and relevant support for the constituency’s core activities. The manager of each development department had a key role in implementing the new organizational structure and was expected to organize the teamwork within her/his department.

Participants The participants, i.e. the staff involved, all of them with the job title of development leader, were voluntarily recruited from three out of ten development departments at the city-constituency level in Gothenburg. However, the participants were recruited with permissions from the development departments’ managers. Participants from these three development departments were selected because these departments differ from each other in terms of demography and are therefore collectively well representative of the city as a whole.

The development leaders, in total 18 persons, were responsible for one or two areas of expertise within their department. Only one participant was male and the mean age was 41 with a range of 28-62 years of age. All of them were well educated, most of them with a master’s degree, within a knowledge area relevant to their area of expertise. Their average length of professional experience was 13 years with a range of 1-30 years. As many as ten had held their position since this new structure was implemented in 2011, and the one with least experience from the new organizational structure had had the position for one year.

Data collection Before the interview commenced, the development leaders were asked if they still agreed to be interviewed and they gave their written, informed consent, all in accordance with the ethical rules current in Swedish legislation (Act, 2003: 460, Amended SFS, 2008: 192). The interviews took the form of a conversation but were guided by a semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions (Patton, 2002) to cover the research purpose. Each interview took place at the respective development leader’s office and lasted approximately 60 to 90 minutes. Typical opening questions were:

Q1. “How do you perceive your role and responsibility in relation to your experience of working in a team-orientated manner?”

Q2. “How do you cooperate within the team?”

Q3. “How does the team work together as a group?”

These questions were followed by further questions to probe for precision, clarity and greater detail.

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Data analysis The interviews were transcribed verbatim and then analyzed using qualitative and interpretative analysis with a modified editing style (Crabtree and Miller, 1992). This means that the interview texts were analyzed inductively, based on the study’s aim, to understand their content, which was then imported into the NVIVO 10.0 program. To capture the meaning of the text, the first step in the analysis was to identify meaningful segments or units in the text. Each unit of meaning was labeled with a code (called nodes in NVIVO). NVIVO was later used to organize the units of meaning into dimensions that were examined to identify patterns and the relationships between them. This interpretative process of analysis resulted in two themes with additional categories.

The first author conducted all the interviews, but both authors read all interview texts and cooperated in the analytical work that followed. The process of dividing the data into dimensions and comparing these dimensions was conducted in an interactive process of discussion between the two authors until an agreement was reached. Both authors are experienced in the method of qualitative research and of analyzing interviews as well as in organizational and managerial research. Direct and typical quotations from the interviews, marked with an identification code, are used to illustrate the results.

Results The aim of this study has been to explore challenges arising from the development of teamwork within a new organizational structure, based on the experiences of the staff involved and according to their descriptions. The two themes identified represent such challenges. The themes’ additional categories are continually interwoven in the text and marked in italics.

Lack of organizational prerequisites for teamwork Development leaders, each upholding a specific area of expertise and all belonging to the same development department are, as mentioned when the setting was described, supposed to work together as a team. Together they represent important perspectives to take into account when working toward the collective/common goal for the team, i.e. supporting city urban development. Participants talked about how synergies are supposed to be achieved when different perspectives are combined, so that they can inspire and enrich each other. To realize this cross-pollination of ideas, participants considered that some kind of structured teamwork would be required and that efforts must be made to encourage individual team members to work together collectively as a team.

However, according to participants’ descriptions, people tend mainly to work separately when it comes to brainstorming, planning, deciding and conducting actions. However, the situation described is not a result of participants’ own preferred choice or unawareness of requirements for a working team to function. Instead, they did actually talk about these problems, in a concerned though ineffective way. They explicitly mentioned the shortage of information among the team members. They raised questions like: How do the others tackle certain issues, what kind of actions have they undertaken, is there any interest in working together? They did not, however, seem to have answers to such questions, which they found problematic. They described a situation in which

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they were rather uninformed about, but also quite uninterested in, each other’s working situation. Here are some examples from participants:

[…] if we could work together on various issues […]. You achieve better and wiser solutions when you cooperate […]. For example I can hear reflections about not achieving what was expected at a school project, so now they need a follow-up meeting and I wonder why I was not invited since I could have been a support. I could have introduced perspectives that other people do not see and vice versa […]. The situation is really that they have decided that I should work on these issues and you should work on those […] we’re bad at seeing what everyone else is doing (1).

Nobody is particularly interested in what other team members are doing as we all have our own special fields of expertise. If we had worked as a multidisciplinary team, we would probably have been more interested, but since we have somehow accepted that we don’t work like that people are not terribly interested in each other’s work (10).

Participants described having few scheduled meetings within the team, whether just for the team members themselves, or together with the manager. There were descriptions of how they had tried on their own and sometimes on the manager’s initiative, but they had given up. The team meetings held on a regular basis, led by the manager, primarily revolved around decisions taken by, for example, the politicians or general information. They never gathered to discuss the collaborative work within the team or the team members’ specific efforts, as is exemplified in the following quotations:

At our work meetings we do not discuss things that specifically. Of course I can bring up something if I want and put it up on the agenda, an idea that I have perhaps, can we discuss it? But in my opinion, we don’t generally talk about ourselves and what we’re doing, for example I’ve done this and would anyone like to join me? (6)

The meetings we have are not activating or engaging ones, they are more informative. We have meetings weekly but they do not have the character of “let’s get together and discuss how to proceed with this”. We work far too separately and this has been brought up as an issue […]. Even though we are very different, most of us are not happy with the leadership (17).

Sometimes a work-related issue is brought up but we never discuss our projects, our work climate doesn’t encourage us to bring up issues or requests for cooperation, so we do not really have meetings when we work together (3).

They also expressed a concern about the absence of coordination within the working team. Their descriptions conveyed a feeling that work efforts are undertaken in parallel rather than being intertwined and coordinated. In a concerned way, participants expressed the absence of structured forums for discussions revolving around the overall aim for the working team they are supposed to be. Below are some participants’ descriptions of what they find appropriate:

I believe that we need to talk more […] we have not discussed cooperation in a structured way, but work is based on the individual instead […] people think “I do not have any time to spend on you, I have other things to do so please stop trying to involve me in your stuff”. But I think it would be wise to open up for more cooperation (1).

We need to become better at working together, taking advantage of initiatives and drives and kind of giving each other basic support (16).

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Due to the situation described, without any prerequisites for teamwork and, therefore, with very limited interaction, participants said they primarily work on their own, separately, and in ways they have developed on their own. They described having assumed the work to be different but having meanwhile been forced to adapt to the prevailing circumstances, i.e. making their own plans and discovering their own working methods, partners and tools. As a way to tackle a lonely situation they sometimes met in informal subgroups. Subgroups were however primarily built on personal relationships and of a social character rather than work-related.

Thus, teamwork did not follow any predetermined structure. On the contrary, the descriptions conveyed the feeling that teamwork did not need any attention or organization. As a consequence, each team member planned, decided on and carried out her/his work in isolation.

Absence of leadership qualities needed to facilitate teamwork According to the participants, nobody in the group was capable of organizing a well-functioning working team. There was no discussion about managers taking on responsibility or ensuring that teamwork is put into practice. Forming a working team in an appropriate way demands deep consideration that the participants found was missing.

Instead of being a dynamic working team, they have become a scattered group of development leaders. On the paper, they have a huge potential due to their varied areas of expertise, but something is missing in putting expertise together into joint efforts and processes directed to a well-known common goal.

When talking about their view on the department manager’s role as a leader for the team, their answers are vague and fumbling but also critical. It is fairly clear that participants do not recognize anybody as having the vision and initiative to unite them and their efforts. There is no team leader to keep things together, guide them in the right direction in the long as well as the short run, and introduce other perspectives, thus putting things in a broader context:

I think this is a leadership issue. There’s no explicit assignment and since all of us are very different as persons and do not get along very well together and there is nobody to lead us […] well, so there’s no cooperation (17).

They clearly want and need a manager and leader who can actively support and guide them as individual team members and also as a proper team when it comes to deciding on specific tasks, challenges or processes to undertake. Participants describe their need of support and guidance, and how they try to satisfy this need, as follows:

My manager is usually so overworked that if I were to go in and ask “please, I need a little advice about how I should proceed” then I would like her to say perhaps “think about doing this”. But instead she would probably say “you’re the expert, you’ll have to write that piece yourself otherwise it’s no help to me”. So then I have to try to get it on a level I can handle and decide what to do myself (10).

As a first step I discuss with the colleague that I happen to share room with, so that’s suitable and easy and as a second step I bring it up in my “ten-group” [colleagues in other city constituencies], and finally I might refer it to my manager (8).

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Furthermore, participants expressed the need for someone skilled in reading their specific needs, as a consequence of upholding different but very specific areas of expertise, and also as a consequence of their differing former working experience. As the overall goal, supporting city urban development, is rather diffuse in itself and somewhat new, the manager’s role was found to be even more important:

As I see things, and as I’ve also mentioned to my manager, what I really would like to see is skills development and a discussion about our role. Methods, processes, areas in which we really need change and help to benefit from different kinds of expertise […] so more about methods and such leadership, coaching activities […] (18).

We don’t meet our manager very often. Obviously she’s important since she’s the one to give us our commissions and who can represent us; but not in our daily work. No, it’s impossible to discuss points at issue with her, in that case it’s better to talk to colleagues here or colleagues in other constituencies (1).

Due to the prevailing situation, they have become rather independent. Independence is described as having its advantages, but also disadvantages such as not making the most of the varying experiences and competence of the group of staff. Participants describe their efforts at dealing with the situation that they try to get support from somewhere else. They described the importance of the network called the “ten-group”. This is an informal group for individuals with the same responsibility, in charge of the same area of expertise, in the different constituencies. These groups meet a couple of times every term, sharing information and experiences from actions that have turned out well or badly, which is useful for the participants. However, according to them all the “ten-group” is not a team for collaboration or shared responsibility; it is group to share ideas with. They explicitly pointed out the fact that the “ten-group” is not a formal working group. Examples of some participants’ descriptions can be seen here:

My view is that even though I’m definitely employed in this constituency, I think that I need more contact with colleagues in other constituencies. I have more in common with them than with people in my own organization, with regard to our dilemmas or challenges or good ideas. […]. So I have a stronger network with them than I have within my own organization. In my own organization I don’t have the same strong network to work in (7).

I use the network to fill up on ideas about what they are doing since there are several people there with the same assignment. We try to support each other around here too, for example when having a general discussion about the role of development leader, but here it is not that easy since we have different assignments. So you don’t get the support you really need from the team you belong to (15).

Discussion The importance of transformational leadership (Bass, 1999) for effective teamwork is stressed by Dionne et al. (2014). They propose that transformational leadership training is essential for team outcomes such as subordinate commitment, development and performance. Furthermore, teamwork processes are a required component for effective teamwork (Dionne et al., 2014). However, teamwork processes do not come about spontaneously; instead, they require leadership dedicated to realizing the collective effort. Furthermore, team building demands processes of mentoring and enhancing team members’ performance (Chin, 2015) to achieve sustainable and effective

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cooperation. If supportive activities are not taken care of, the threat of compartmentalization (Liff and Wikström, 2015) and territorialism within the hierarchical structure (McInnes et al., 2015) will become a fact.

Such supportive processes for cooperation are missing in the case described, resulting in development leaders primarily working side-by-side instead of approaching development issues together as a team. Participants’ descriptions show no sign of team managers raising, motivating or encouraging cooperation within the team as important or something to strive for in line with Kent’s (2006) suggestion, referring to the canoe metaphor. On the contrary, the managers have separate talks with each development leader, some occasionally and some in a more structured way. The development leaders themselves hardly ever meet in a structured way. At the most, they are invited to meetings when the manager shares information with them from the politicians.

The managers seem to practice a transactional leadership style (Bass, 1985) rather than a transformational one, resulting in rather dysfunctional teams. Thus, there are signs of compartmentalization between areas of expertise. According to the participants, the different areas of expertise could have benefitted a lot from joint efforts in a structured way. Nilsson and colleagues found that working in teams strengthens the feeling of being involved in decision-making and influences both work performance and working conditions in a positive way (Nilsson et al., 2005). If the development leaders had been led and supported, so that they could really work in a team-orientated way, the city urban development work might probably have been developed even more.

Another important team prerequisite, besides leadership, is the composition of the team. The overall goal of city urban development is described as a complex challenge, demanding new methods of organization and efforts to bring together different perspectives. However, in the case studied, the teams consisted of persons recruited on account of their expertise and knowledge in a certain field. The capacity for and experience of teamwork were not the selection criteria when recruiting development leaders. Such capacity and experience, as well as training for working in a team-orientated way, do not seem to be the aspects that were considered when forming the organizational structure with development departments. The assumption seems to be that the organizational structure would work well on a team-orientated basis.

Marshall (2007) stressed the importance of understanding other team members’ work to benefit from working together. Issues of collaboration and communication need to be addressed among the people supposed to take on the complex challenge of supporting city urban development. It is important for managers to take into account each individual team member with her/his abilities, needs, expectations, etc. Furthermore, as Stoker (2008) stressed, a team manager also needs to be aware of and to adjust her/his leadership in relation to individual team members as well as to the working team as a whole. The capacity to practice and alternate between “a directive leadership style” and “a coaching leadership style” is important. Attention must be paid to this capacity when putting a team together (i.e. when it comes to the needs of the team members) and also in the daily work of the team when demands on leadership can vary considerably.

In the case studied here, insufficient attention seems to have been paid to these issues. However, according to the participants’ descriptions, such managerial awareness, accompanied by the relevant adjustments, could have been very fruitful, both for the individuals and for the collective, working team. If managers had been more aware of the impact of communication (Chin, 2015), and how to alter it according to the situation

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and with whom one is communicating, many of the problems described could probably have been tackled or at least have been brought up to the surface as areas to take into consideration, to improve and facilitate team work.

Stoker (2008) emphasized the importance of using expertise from human resources (HR) when forming a working team as well as setting the structure for how to work within a team. HR can also provide support through training in how to manage and lead working teams as well as putting in place relevant processes within the team, issues described earlier as lacking in the this particular case.

Taking into account the lack of leadership, one may ask if the intention of the organizational change was to form SMT (De Jong et al., 2004). Perhaps the assumption was that people with different areas of expertise, and being very knowledgeable within these, would themselves be able to organize their working structure and establish relevant processes. According to Stoker (2008), SMT are characterized by all team members having leadership roles. Transformational leadership training would, in this case, be indicated for all team members. However, an SMT must be explicitly informed about its constitution beforehand. Team members must also be given relevant training on how to collaborate while leading oneself as well as others. None of the participants has described any such expectations being communicated to them. Instead, they all describe having achieved their positions due to their knowledge within their respective areas of expertise. Furthermore, only very few had previous leadership experience or leadership training.

Kent (2006) and McInnes et al. (2015) problematized the use of teams within a hierarchical structure. When the power to decide is located outside the scope of the working team, somewhere else within the hierarchical structure, the freedom of action for the team is scant. Public organizations are traditionally organized according to a hierarchical order (Mintzberg, 1983). The case studied here is such an example, as are many health-care organizations. For example, studies of process leaders (Nilsson and Sandoff, 2015a, 2015b) working in health-care organizations showed that process leaders experienced problems in leading processes “against the grain” in a hierarchical organization in which authorization to make decisions followed the hierarchical order.

Our results indicate similar challenges: working teams supposed to enhance and support city urban development but without sufficient authority to make decisions. The hierarchically structured public organization is, of course, not responsible for all challenges mentioned in this or similar studies. Over and above the challenge of working as a team “against the grain” in a hierarchical organizational structure, there is, in this case, also the difficulty of the assignment in itself, because city urban development in its very essence is a complex issue.

The new organizational structure included having a department manager for every working team, having a dedicated person responsible for managing and leading the work within the team. However, participants’ descriptions reveal the absence of team management and leadership as well as the importance of it – it is undoubtedly a prerequisite they lack. Team leadership needs its own special attention to achieve well-functioning working teams. Having a manager who can help out in prioritizing between actions, who can be a supportive coach and who can gather different areas of expertise into relevant work processes, thereby creating synergies between different areas of expertise, seems to be a challenge so far unanswered. Appropriate working

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processes do not evolve by themselves – they need proper attention, otherwise synergies between team members will be thwarted.

From a transformational leadership perspective, the management has to take the lead in setting an agenda, a vision for the team. Forming an agenda, a vision for the team includes answering certain questions: which specific goals are we striving for, what does the team want to achieve and how should it be done? Team members should be involved in this work, forming the working team, to get the work anchored. Besides the anchoring aspect, in our case, each team member had specific knowledge and expertise. These areas of expertise were selected as part of the organizational change. Taking those different perspectives into account when forming the teamwork would probably be beneficial for the output and also as a way to engage and involve development leaders in a collaborative action. No such attempts at involving actions have been prioritized in this particular case.

The creation of a working climate including a spirit of cooperation must be initiated and led by the manager as part of her/his responsibility. The management needs to work on putting appropriate processes into place, i.e. enrolling development leaders and welcoming them on board, so that the development leaders, the teams and the departments can all combine forces to achieve the overall goal of city urban development toward which they are striving.

Such processes need to be managed and led in a deliberate way and are important obligations belonging to management and leadership responsibility. The work of forming relevant processes could benefit from contributions by Lundin and Söderholm, 1995. They stress the need of focusing on the interface between individuals, team and team environment. Attention must be paid to forming appropriate relationships.

Besides the conclusion about insufficient managerial and leadership efforts to support team processes and team members, the study results raise questions about the appropriateness of the chosen organizational structure with working teams. Laughlin et al. (2011) concluded that team performance, in general, exceeds that of a group of average individuals but not necessarily that of an expert within a team. Perhaps the working team is not the most appropriate way of organizing development leaders, representing specific areas of expertise but without any power within a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, working teams composed only of knowledgeable specialists do not perhaps constitute the most appropriate solution if joint efforts and collaboration are highly prioritized to enhance city urban development.

In this study, our starting point is the perspective of the staff involved, the team members in working teams in a public hierarchical organization. From this perspective, it is obvious that leadership issues are of great importance. Also, the relevance of having a structure for teamwork cannot be overlooked. Indeed, it is a precondition for realizing work processes and providing the necessary support for team members.

Earlier studies have stressed that leadership and management of teams within public organizations are challenging (Chin, 2015; Kent, 2006; Liff and Wikström, 2015; McInnes et al., 2015). The empirical findings in this study contribute with in-depth understanding of several dimensions of leadership when using working teams within municipal public administration. However, other studies have questioned the appropriateness of using working teams (Hinsz, 2015; Laughlin et al., 2011). The empirical findings exemplify such questioning; working teams is perhaps not the most appropriate organizational structure within a municipality supporting urban development.

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Corresponding author Mette Sandoff can be contacted at: [email protected]

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