Team-work training: The role of strategic management simulation

Abstract

The growing importance of teamwork in the business world has obliged both companies as well as higher educational centers (universities, business schools, etc.) to invest in a type of training specialized in team work. In particular, it deals with the teaching of certain knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) which allows the work teams to be more effective, as Chen et al. (2004) or Ellis et al. (2005) have demonstrated in their research. Along the same lines, Stevens and Campion (1994) classify the KSAs into two groups: those of self-management and interpersonal ones and link them to different company human resource practices - among others, that of training.The aim of the present work, following the path initiated by the previously cited authors, is to study the positive influence of teamwork training on the results of the work teams and, also, to compare the effectiveness of the training aimed at team self-management, and the training centered on the internal processes of these teams, based on interpersonal variables.
In order to verify the previous relationships, an experiment was carried out with students from the second cycle of Business Administration and Management who participated in a strategic decision simulation in teams, offering diverse kinds of teamwork training. The results confirm that training aimed at teaching to work in teams has a positive influence on the performance of the work teams. In particular, greater effectiveness is achieved by those teams trained for the self-management of their tasks than those trained for obtaining interpersonal skills which favor the group processes.