Where can I find Team Building Statistics?

Question

I'm doing a project on the effectiveness of team building in the workplace. Is there anyway to get good statistics on the cost and results of team building (changes in productivity)?

Also I heard a rumor that the Harvard Business Review has an article on Toyota toting team building and that there was new data coming out disputing Toyota's claims. However I can not find it, do I have the wrong website, search terms?

Answer 1

I think that the article from the Harvard Business Review you are referencing is:

The Contradictions That Drive Toyota's Success.Takeuchi, Hirotaka; Osono, Emi; Shimizu, Norihiko. Harvard Business Review, Jun2008, Vol. 86 Issue 6, p96-104

You can read an abstract of it at the Harvard Business Review site:

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvar...

However, in order to read the whole article, you will either need to purchase it from the website or check to see if your local public or academic library has a subscription (either print or electronic) to this journal.

You'll probably need to find some case studies in academic journals. Your best bet might be to run searches in proprietary databases, like EBSCOBusiness or LexisNexis, available at some libraries.

If you need freely available journal articles, here are a couple of places you can try:

Social Science Research Network

(Here's a link to the article: Team Incentives and Worker Heterogeneity: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Teams on Productivity and Participation; http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?a... as an example of what is available there)

OAIster: http://www.oaister.org/

(Many full-text academic journal articles free online; try doing a search for "subject: business" "entire record: team building")

And here's a directory of other open-access business journals: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cp...

Good luck with your research!