The teams are classified on the basis of the objectives they have to achieve. Generally we find these three types of teams in organizations self manage teams, problem solving teams and cross functional teams. These three different types of teams are discussed in detail:

(i) Self managed teams
Usually there are ten to fifteen members in a self managed team who have taken the responsibilities of their former supervisors. They are responsible for the collective control over the speed of the work and the determination of work assignments. They are also responsible for the organization of breaks and the collective choice of inspection procedures. These teams even select their own members and these members evaluate each others performance. Supervisory position take on decreased importance and in some cases, can even be eliminated.

Business journal are all over the world are full of articles describing successful operation of self managed teams. These teams help to increase the employee satisfaction and the volume of business of the companies. These teams lead to reduction in costs and increase in productivity.

In spite of the increasing importance of self managed teams, some organizations have been disappointed with the results of these teams. The overall research on the performance of these teams has also not been very positive. The employees working in self managed teams seem to have higher absenteeism and turn over rates than do employees working in traditional work structures. The specific reasons for all this are not very clear and require some additional research.

(ii) Problem solving teams
These are the traditional types of teams and in the beginning almost all teams of this form. Generally there are five to ten employees in every department who meet for a few hours every week to discuss the methods to improve efficiency and the quality of work. The purpose of these teams is to share the ideas and listen to the suggestion about the methods of improving the work processes. These teams usually give the suggestions only and do not have the authority to implement these suggestions. The quality circles are the most common form of problem solving teams. These teams are not very popular among the present day organizations as these could only suggestions but could not implement these suggestions and take the responsibility for the outcomes of these suggestions.

(iii) Cross functional teams
The cross functions teams are most popular forms of teams in the recent days. These days teams are made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. The examples of cross functional teams can be task forces and committees. A task force is a temporary cross functional team and committees are group made up of members from across departmental lines.

Cross functional teams are an effective means for allowing people from diverse areas within an organization (or even between organizations) to exchange information, develop new ideas and solve problems and co-ordinate complex projects.

Despite the usefulness of cross functional teams, these teams are quite difficult to manage. Particularly, the initial stages of development are very time consuming as in these stages members learn to work with diversity and complexity. When people from different back grounds, experiences and with different perspectives come together, is takes time to build trust and team work. It will depend upon the capabilities of managers to facilitate and build trust among team members.

The experts are almost unanimous on benefits of teams in the business organizations. Teams have become immensely popular in the organizations as these offer the following benefits:

1. Improved output due to Positive Synergy: Teams have the potential to create high levels of productivity due to positive synergy created by them. The output in the form of performance productivity is generally more than the summation of inputs put in the form of employee efforts. There is draw back of positive synergy also. Sometimes, managements resort to cuts in staff to use the positive synergy to get the same or greater output from fewer people.

2. Improved Organizational Communication: As the teams encourage interactions, it will lead to improved communication. In case of self managed teams, interpersonal dependencies are created which require the members to interact considerably more than when they work on jobs alone. Cross functional teams create inter-functional dependencies and increase organization wide communication.

3. Enhanced Employee Motivation: Work teams help in enhancing the employee motivation. Because work teams encourage employee involvement, these make the jobs more interesting and fulfill the social needs of the employees. Individuals are likely to perform better when they are working in the presence of other people. Individuals will work harder and put in a lot of extra efforts to remain in the team’s good graces.

4. Organizational Flexibility: Management has found that teams are more flexible and responsive to changing events than the traditional departments or other forms of permanent groupings. Teams have the capability to quickly assemble, deploy, refocus and disband. All this is because of the reason that teams focus on processes rather than functions. They encourage cross training so members can do each other jobs and expansion of skills. This expansion of skills increases organizational flexibility.

5. Satisfaction of Social Needs: Man is s social animal. He always feels the need of affiliation. Teams can satisfy this need of the employees by increasing worker interactions and creating a feeling of brotherhood and friendship among team members. Such employees are always in a better position to cope with stress and they enjoy their jobs more.

6. Commitment to Team Goals: Teams generally develop a common purpose, commitment to that purpose and agreement upon specific goals. All this combined with the social pressures exerted by the teams result in a high degree of commitment to common team goals. The individual members sublimate their individual goals for the common goals of the group.

7. Benefits of Expanded Job Training: The implementation of teams work always leads to expanded job training. Through this training employees build their technical, decision making and interpersonal skills.

Though the introduction of teams does not always achieve these benefits, but we can’t ignore the reality that team movement currently has tremendous momentum and reflects management’s belief that teams can be successful in a wide range of settings. These are obviously contingency factors that influence the acceptance and success of teams.

The importance of team functioning has been highlighted by a number of writers and some of the characteristics of effective teams have been highlighted by them are: The atmosphere in teams is generally relaxed, informal and comfortable. All the members of the team understand and accept the task assigned to the team. All the members of the team listen to each other and a lot of discussion related with the task is done in the team. The team members can freely express their feeling their ideas and though there are conflicts disagreements among the members of the teams but these are only about the ideas and methods related with the completion of the task and not focused around the personalities and members of the team. Generally the decisions the team are based on consensus and once the action have been decided upon, clear assignment are given to the members of the team. When all these characteristics are present in a team, it means the teams is capable of successfully achieving its objectives and at the same time, satisfy the personal and inter-personal needs of its members. Thus the following characteristics are found in effective teams. These are a clear purpose, informality, participation, listening, civilized disagreement, consensus in decision making, clear roles and assignment, share leadership, open communication and self assessment.

Teams have emerged as the most important group phenomenon in the organization. Earlier the importance of the team work was confined to sports activities but now in business also team work as become very important. In the past business organizations were focused around individuals but now teams have become the primary means for achieving the organizational goals. Some times the terms team and group are used interchangeably but they are not the same. While a work group consist of a number of a person that report to common superior and have face to face interaction and there is a certain level of inter-dependence in carrying out the tasks but they performance of a team can provide individuals results and collective products also. We can say that though a team is also a group but it has some characteristics in greater degree as compare to ordinary groups. These characteristics include a higher commitment towards the goals of the group and a higher degree of inter-dependence and interaction. These characteristics make a team different from an ordinary group. There are some difference between work groups and teams. While the basic purpose of a work group is to interact for the purpose of sharing information, the basic purpose of work team is to perform collectively. While the work group must have a strong and clear focused leader, teams generally do not have clear leaders and the leadership roles are also shared. The work group meets through the formal and efficient meetings the teams are encouraged to have open ended active problems solving meetings. The functioning of the work group that it discusses decides and delegates the work, the functioning of the team is to discuss beside and then do the real work also.

They can be some problems in the implementation of job enrichment in the organizations. It is also possible that job enrichment may not lead to the desired results. The limitations of job enrichment are:

1. The first basic problem is that majority of workers do not want the type of changes which are introduced by job enrichment. They do not really want challenging jobs, as the basic human tendency is to shirk responsibility. Workers put wages and job security above all.

2. Job enrichment is basically limited to the unskilled and semiskilled jobs. Jobs of highly skilled professionals already contain many challenging elements. As such there is no scope of applying job enrichment in their cases.

3. Technology may not permit the enrichment of all the jobs. With specialized machinery, tasks and processes, it may not be possible to make the jobs very meaningful.

4. Job enrichment is a highly costly affair. In most of the cases, the cost involved is more than the gains in productivity.

5. Sometimes, the employees may prefer to have job enrichment but may not have the necessary capabilities and qualifications to meet the new challenges.

6. In the short run, job enrichment may have negative effects. After an increase in job responsibility, it is not unusual for organization to experience a drop in productivity, as workers become accustomed to the new system. In the long run, however, there will be increased productivity.

7. People being bored in their jobs, it is likely, therefore, that after a period of time they will become bored in their enriched jobs also. Thus, enrichment may become static after some time and additional enrichment will be required.

8. There is, generally, a tendency on the part of the management to impose job enrichment on workers rather than applying it with their consent; it will have a negative impact on the employees.

9. The top managers and personnel, generally apply, their own scale of values of challenge and accomplishment to other people’s personalities this evokes more resistance from workers.

Despite these limitations job enrichment remains an effective technique for motivation which gives proper recognition to the complex human and situational variables.