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Article

Open Access

Cultural Dynamism: Reimaging Team Building That Transcend Reflexive Individual Biography in a Post-Segregated Environment

Author(s)

Xolani Ngonini

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DOI:10.17265/2328-7144/2021.03.002

Affiliation(s)

Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority, Centurion, South Africa

ABSTRACT

In the Southern African context, businesses, governments, and community-based organizations have become reliant on teamwork to streamline processes, augment participation and improve performance. In this regard, the historically formalized, centralized, and departmentalized mechanistic structures are being replaced by team-based structures. Research from the North, on team building, suggests that teams have a potential to give diversity in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and experience, whose integration would make it possible to offer rapid, flexible and innovative responses to problems and challenges, promoting performance and improving the satisfaction of those making the team. In South Africa, a state-owned entity launched a team-building initiative to improve team effectiveness and functioning within the water sector. This initiative was implemented contemporaneously with climate and culture change management initiatives envisioned to usher in a new culture, to improve employee morale, and, ultimately, to ensure a high-performing organization. These initiatives sought to help articulate and cultivate leadership accord, create a common vision, as well as develop a consensus on a set of collective values that would become the bedrock of the organization. In the light of this background, this paper examines the effectiveness of the “growing-our-teams” initiative, with the goal of lending insights into the strengths and weaknesses of strategies and processes deployed to implement and manage the initiative. In assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the program, the underpinning research was conducted by reviewing and analyzing related articles and papers, as well as interrogating employee experiences relating to the program. How do state-owned entities learn and implement lessons distilled from their programs or initiatives to build capacity and improve efficiencies?

KEYWORDS

team dynamics, leadership, organizational culture, social context

Cite this paper

Economics World, July-Sep. 2021, Vol. 9, No. 3, 114-121 doi: 10.17265/2328-7144/2021.03.002

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