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Michael M. Beyerlein, Sue Freedman, Craig McGee, and Linda Moran. Beyond Teams: Building the Collaborative Organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2003, 247 pages, $42.00 softcover.
This book is about collaborative work systems. These are systems where strategies, policies, and structures are established, and values, behaviors, and practices are institutionalized to promote collaboration. As the authors show, when key organizational units enhance collaboration, they get better business results.
Many organizations vocalize support for teamwork and collaboration. Collaborative work systems are distinguished with embedded work process and cultural mechanisms that enable and reinforce collaboration. I like the book and, given the impressive group of authors representing academicians, researchers, and practitioners, the quality of this work is no surprise. They obviously collaborated effectively to produce this practical guide book for culture change.
This book is written for people in organizations who work collaboratively, namely executives seeking synergistic decision making, managers and supervisors who must make work teams work, and human and organizational development professionals who support and guide collaborative initiatives. External consultants should also find the work of value.
The book is organized into three sections. Section I, Principles and Perspectives, includes two chapters. The first is introductory, defining the collaborative organization and describing how it can help enhance competitiveness in a business world of rapid change. The authors outline collaborative competencies and culture, and contrast three levels of collaborative work systems, including traditional teams, team-based organizations, and the collaborative organization. As you may have surmised, the collaborative organization involves building competencies and culture change and, as a result, has greater impact and is more sustainable. The authors conclude by citing case examples of the impact of collaboration on bottom line results.
Chapter 2 is a very substantive chapter. The authors explain the essence of the book, namely, 10 principles of collaborative organizations. They are:
1. Focus collaboration on achieving business results. This is about...