Groups and team in organizations

Why are some groups and teams effective and other teams ineffective? What factors within the organizational environment influence that effectiveness? At all levels in countless organizations, groups and teamwork seem to be a part of the strategy to become more productive and competitive. Self-managed teams, cross-functional teams, product-teams, and virtual teams, teams that rely on information technologies for communication and may never meet face-to-face, are all commonly used in the modern workplace. However, the use of this potentially powerful management tool has met with mixed effectiveness and often with high cynicism. Some detractors think that half of the decisions reached by teams are never implemented and the other half should not have been implemented. This paper is a literature review about group and team effectiveness and tries to point out some serious problems that can occur in groups and teams.