Morgan, Salas and Glickman's Team Model

Combining multiple theories and the development models of Tuckman and Gersick, Morgan, Salas and

Glickman (1994) created the Team Evolution and Maturation (TEAM) model to describe a series of nine developmental stages through which newly formed, task-oriented teams are hypothesized to evolve. The periods of development are labeled "stages" and conceived to be "relatively informal, indistinct and overlapping", because "sharp demarcations are not often characteristic of the dynamic situations in which operational teams work and develop". According to this model, teams might begin a given period of development at different stages and spend different amounts of time in the various stages. Teams are not always expected to progress in a linear fashion through all of the stages. A team's beginning point and pattern of progression through the stages depend on factors such as the characteristics of the team and team members, their past histories and experience, the nature of their tasks and the environmental demands and constraints (cf. McGrath, 1991).

The TEAM model identities a total of nine stages, seven central ones supplemented by two additional ones. The seven central stages begin with the formation of the team during its first meeting (forming) and moves through the members' initial and sometimes unstable, exploration of the situation (storming), initial efforts toward accommodation and the formation and acceptance of roles (norming), performance leading toward occasional inefficient patterns of performance (performing-I), reevaluation and transition (reforming), refocusing of efforts to produce effective performance (performing-II) and completion of team assignments (conforming). The development of a team might be recycled from any of the final stages to an earlier stage if necessitated by a failure to achieve satisfactory performance or if adjustments to environmental demands are required or if problematic team interactions develop.

The core stages of the model are preceded by a pre-forming stage that recognizes the forces from the environment (environmental demands and constraints) that call for and contribute to, the establishment of the team; that is, forces external to the team (before it comes into existence) that cause the team to be formed. The last stage indicates that after the team has served its purpose, it will eventually be disbanded or de-formed. Here individuals exit from the group (separately or simultaneously) and the team loses its identity and ceases to exist.

The TEAM model also postulates the existence of two distinguishable activity tracks present throughout all the stages. The first of these tracks involves activities that are tied to the specific task(s) being performed. These activities include interactions of the team members with tools and machines, the technical aspects of the job (e.g., procedures, policies, etc.) and other task-related activities. The other track of activities is devoted to enhancing the quality of the interactions, interdependencies, relationships, affects, cooperation and coordination of teams.

The proponents of the model did not test its components or sequence of stages empirically but did confirm that the perceptions of team members concerning the performance processes of the team are perceived to include both team-centered and task-centered activities and that these perceptions seem to change over time as a result of team training.

Further Challenges

Apart from the question of the validity of the research methods used and the generalizations that can be made based on the types of groups studied, there still remain some significant challenges in the study of group development. As some researchers have pointed out (e.g. Tuckman, 1965) group development models often provide only snapshots of groups at certain points of their history but do not fully describe the mechanisms of change, the "triggers" that lead to change or the amount of time that a group might remain in a stage. Furthermore, naturally occurring groups tend to be highly sensitive to outside influences and environmental contingencies, but few models account for these influences.

Models of "small" group development are also related to those of organization development but operate at a different level of analysis. Despite their differences, both areas of work attempt to understand patterns and processes of collective change. Both fields should strive to develop "processoriented" theories, which according to Poole and Van de Ven (2004):

• Provide a deep understanding of how change comes about by describing the generative mechanism that drives the process;

• Can account for path dependence and the role of critical events in change and innovation; and

• Can incorporate the role of human agency in change without reducing it to causal terms.

A number of questions still remain unanswered in the study of group development over time. As McGrath and Tschan (2004) stated, some of these challenges include:

• Do groups of all types change in the same way?

• Are the temporal patterns in groups in fact developmental stages with the changes patterned so that the same kinds of structures and processes occur in the same fixed sequences for all groups?

• If there is a fixed sequence of stages of development, are the stages of equal or different durations? Do all groups go through these stages at the same rate?

• Is the pattern of stages immutable or subject to alteration by unique circumstances or events external to the group?

• If a given group does not follow a fixed sequence of stages, is variation in the sequence indicative of malfunction in the group's development or maturation, or does it merely express normal variation arising from initial or contextual conditions? (p.102)