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This paper critically discusses the composition and motivation of teams in British Telecom by analysing the results of a research based on company documents and interviews with experienced employees in order to provide a deep insight into the company and to find out if the theories explained in the academic literature are used and how are they implemented in the real business world. The findings ratify the importance of accuracy in the team selection process for reaching high performance but due to barriers in applying theory to practice, BT managers cannot use theoretical models to select team members on a more meticulous basis as much as they would like to. To motivate teams and to encourage performance, BT has built an extensive financial based reward system. The recently introduced payment structure, representing the main part of the reward system and the main point of discussion, intends to provide fairness and to encourage employees' effort by linking salary and bonuses to the external market and the achievement of pre-determined objectives.
INTRODUCTION
Due to organisational change in recent years, as being recognised by the growth of the small firms as well as the growth of professional, high technology and creative economic sectors and the move from bureaucratic to more adaptive structures resulting from changing markets, change of employees' attitudes and technology revolution, one can notice the increased importance of teams in organisations (Thomson, 2003). Teams are a good way of dealing with the challenges in today's complex world (Katzenbach and Smith, 1999). It is not only argued that teamwork leads to higher firm's performance (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Weisbord, 1987; Wellins et. al., 1994) and that "teams outperform individuals" (Katzenbach and Smith, 1999; p.1) but also that employees, due to higher education and skill level, become more and more demanding and ask for teamwork as a job design which is especially the case in service sector organisations where the 'intellectual capital is the key asset" (Scase, 2003; p.2) of the company. Apart from team composition, team motivation becomes a fundamental aspect of management in a high performing organisation as it is argued that the degree of motivation is strongly linked with the organisation's success (Scase, 2003), and that motivated employees have fun at work and...