ORGANIZATIONAL WORK GROUPS AND WORK TEAMS – APPROACHES AND DIFFERENCES

Abstract

Work groups and work teams represents basic structures of traditional and modern organizations, and during the time they have been intensively researched. However, managers often do not always consider the fundamental differences between groups and teams, which will lead to unrealistic goals and results below expectations. Thus, in the present paper we propose a review of the main researching approaches on groups and teams (psychosocial, socio-technical, and behavioral approach), in the third part of the paper being detailed the fundamental differences between groups and teams in the light of these approaches.