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How is Resilience Achieved?

Team orientation
Teamworking is a key building block of Resilience in any organisation. However ‘teamwork’ is used to describe such a diverse range of workplace situations that arguably the term has become meaningless. While teamworking may refer to a general ‘sense of community’, or a limited enlargement of jobs to enhance organisational flexibility, in a high-road sense teamworking will involve a radical re-appraisal of jobs, systems and procedures, throughout the whole organisation. Mueller and Purcell (1992) attempt to clarify the contemporary conception of teamworking:

• the team works on a common task;
• its work is spatially concentrated and it has a recognisable territory;
• the allocation of tasks is largely organised by the team;
• the team encourages and organises the acquisition of multiple skills;
• it has decision-making power over time and appropriate means;
• there is team spokesman/leader;
• the team has some influence on who will join it.

What distinguishes a team in the sense used here from a collection of workers who merely work in the same department is the degree of autonomy enjoyed in relation to formal line management structures. However it is also necessary to consider the quality of dialogue and innovation which takes place inside the team. If teams are to be more than decentralised units for the production of a given product or service, all team members must have the potential for a high level of reflexivity unconstrained by internal demarcations and privileges. Teams in which the specific knowledge and expertise of each team member are valued and make a tangible contribution to product and workplace innovation meet important criteria for convergence between enhanced productivity and enhanced quality of working life.
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Resources
The following case studies offer further insight into teamworking:
Esbjerg Centralsygehus
Autoliv
Hollandse Betongroep
Ericsson Radio
Interpay
Province Gelderland
Volvo Aero
Philips Lighting
NKT Cables
Phycomp
This paper by UKWON Researcher Jessica Sherrin provides a practical overview of teamworking.

This paper from the EU-funded Innoflex project contains a useful discussion of teamworking.
A guide to other sources of information on teamworking can be found here.
http://reviewing.co.uk/toolkit/teams-and-teamwork.htm

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