Revealing interpersonal relationships in working groups

Martina Miklavcic Sumanski, Igor Kolenc and Mirko Markic

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2011, vol. 5, issue 2, 123-135

Abstract: Organisations are systems designed to serve customers. To excel at meeting customer needs, an organisation must constantly improve processes. This paper aims to explore a potential problem of the size of groups or teams, which is presumably too large, therefore, preventing teamwork or collective learning, and to a certain extent neglecting the relationships among group members (attraction or propensity, repulsion and indifference). We established that there are deviations in terms of interpersonal relationships between the production and service sectors in the studied enterprise. The results showed that the interpersonal relationships in smaller groups were better, which in turn means that there are greater opportunities to acquire new knowledge. We proposed a model which helped to improve teamwork in the studied enterprise and provided suggestions in terms of improving staff management, which is closely related to a continuous improvement of the quality of operations.

Keywords: human resources; interpersonal relationships; multi-team systems; teamwork; teams; working groups; customer needs; process improvement; collective learning; group size; group members; attraction; propensity; repulsion; indifference; production systems; support services; opportunities; new knowledge; staff management; continuous improvement; operational quality; Alcan Tomos; Slovenia; metal processing; business; systems research. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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