News Media: It's less about me and more about we

Our class has only focused on talking about teamwork in major corporations and minimum wage jobs since the topic began, however we have forgotten one other important area where teamwork is important – in the sciences. In the article that I found titled “More teamwork crucial after HIV vaccine flop,” it goes to show that every aspect of the world, not only those dealing with sales, need to learn how and when to use teamwork aspects.

According to our book, “Organizational Communication: Balancing Creativity and Constraint,” teams are groups of employees with representation from a variety of functional areas within the organization. (e.g. sales, manufacturing, engineering, etc.) to maximize the cross-functional exchange of information. Team-based organizations encourage informal communication and view all employees as capable of making decisions about how to manage work tasks. In the scientific world, teams are very similar.

In the article, Alan Bernstein, the founding president of Canadian Institutes of Health Research, who has now been appointed first executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise heads off the group. The group of people also involved include academics, drugmakers, governments and regulators who are all brought together for a common strategy. As also stated in the article Bernstein makes the point that, "The AIDS challenge is too important for anybody to say they have a right — whether it's public or private money — to keep things secret."

In Chapter 8: Teams and Networks, it states that there are various different types of teams within a workplace. Not all groups in an organization are necessarily the same kind however…

Project teams help coordinate the successful completion of a particular project, which has long been used by organizations in the design and development of new products and services.
A work team is a group of employees responsible for the entire work process that delivers a product or service to a customer.
Quality-improvement teams goals are to improve customer satisfaction, evaluate and improve team performance, and reduce costs.
Virtual teams consist of a group of people who work together across time and space.

As it is evident in the article, the type of team that is trying to be put together is a project team. This teams main “project or goal” is to find a vaccine for HIV. As you can see though according to Bernstein, "We need a mechanism for everybody from scientists to volunteers to get around the table and talk and agree on a common way forward," however this isn’t always the case with project teams.

Project teams struggle at times because people lack the communication skills needed to collaborate across significant functional divides. Collaborative behaviors are hard to learn; hence, while many project teams are formed with great optimism, few are managed for success. Hopefully, however, this new group of people can work together as a team and find a vaccine.




After class today I also thought that this link would be interesting to you, Prof. Berdayes... it is on "teamwork artifacts"