Engaging Team Interventions in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change

The purpose of the paper is to examine how organizational development and change (ODC) consultants engage in complex processes of facilitating and implementing team interventions in organizational contexts. The notion of high-performing teams in organizational contexts needs to be re-examined and reinterpreted beyond the team building, developmental and training strategies. Complexity issues such as organizational cultural and political realities impact teams and teamwork effectiveness or lack of it. The qualitative methodology integrates ODC methodologies in examining the challenges and opportunities experienced in facilitating change related to tasks and roles required in the diagnosis and implementation of team intervention. The case study of team intervention in a business school depicted capacity improvements in team building and training outcomes which demonstrated its success. However, the organizational cultural and political factors remained the team’s challenge. Since these complexities were not solved the team eventually collapsed.