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Managerial Belbin's team role theory:
Psychology
17,1
for non-managers also?
S.G. Fisher, T.A. Hunter and W.D.K. Macrosson
14 University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Keywords Teamwork, Managers, Employees
Received November 2000
Revised August 2001 Abstract Belbin team role scores derived from the 16PF5 personality questionnaire data were
Accepted August 2001 obtained from a sample of volunteers drawn from industrial and local authority organizations.
The volunteers, comprising male and female managers and non-managers, with approximately
equal numbers in each of the four possible categories, were set into teams. Approximately half of
the 55 teams comprised solely managers, the other half solely non-managers. The distribution of
Belbin team roles over all the teams was not controlled. All teams completed a business game
typically used for training managers in team decision making. The distribution of Belbin scores
amongst all the volunteers and the results of the business game provided evidence in support of
the claim that Belbin's team role theory can be applied to non-managerial personnel.
Belbin's team role theory, originally described in his book Management Teams.
Why They Succeed or Fail (Belbin, 1981), was developed from his work among
managers and was formulated with their activities and needs in mind. As is
now well known, Belbin proposed that for the optimal operation of a
management team eight personality-related team roles needed to be fulfilled.
He coined special names for them, completer finisher, chairman, company
worker, monitor evaluator, resource investigator, plant, shaper and team
worker, and suggested that some individuals possess a strong preference to
operate in one or more of these roles. In a later work, Team Roles at Work,
Belbin (1993a)
re-named the chairman and company worker the co-ordinator and implementer
respectively, and added a ninth role, the specialist. This ninth role identified the
need for a team to have an individual who provided knowledge and skills in
rare supply. However, it is not a role identifiable through personality tests.
Early users of Belbin's management team role theory accessed team role
scores via the self-perception team role inventory published in Management
Teams. Why They Succeed or Fail (Belbin, 1981). However, subsequent
investigation (Furnham et al., 1993a, b; Belbin, 1993b; Fisher et al., 1996;
Broucek and Randell, 1996) of the ipsative self-perception team role inventory
led to the recommendation (Broucek and Randell, 1996) that it not be used for
the derivation of Belbin team role scores. Not all users of and investigators into
Belbin's team role theory have been mindful of the recommendation (Arroba
and Wedgwood-Oppenheim, 1994; Lessem and Baruch, 2000; Partington and
Harris, 1999; Senior, 1997, 1998; Senior and Swales, 1998; Shi and Tang, 1997;
Watkins and Gibson-Sweet, 1997). Furthermore, questions have been raised by
Journal of Managerial Psychology,
Broucek and Randell (1996) regarding the construct validity of the Belbin team
Vol. 17 No. 1, 2002, pp. 14-20.
# MCB UP Limited, 0268-3946
roles, but their validation study was based on scores derived from the self-
DOI 10.1108/02683940210415906 perception team role inventory. Fortunately, access to the original eight roles
can be made (Dulewicz, 1995) through two well-known personality Belbin's
questionnaires, Cattell's 16PF and Saville and Holdsworth's OPQ. Dulewicz's team role
(1995) paper is currently the only published investigation into the construct theory
validities of Belbin team roles which has been based on scores derived from the
two major personality questionnaires. Employing data collected from 100
middle managers, Dulewicz (1995, p. 91) noted that his ``results provide support
. . . for the construct validity of seven of the eight team roles''. The monitor 15
evaluator lacked sufficient support, but Dulewicz (1995) was able to advance
cogent reasons, that did not undermine the construct validity of this team role,
to explain how this result may have come about.
However, acquaintance with Belbin's theory engenders the notion that its
potential is probably not limited to the management cadre solely. The
behaviours which each of the team roles bring to the process of making
decisions are needed universally, irrespective of the level of the organization in
which that activity occurs. Whether the decision-making team is formed from
shopfloor workers, middle management or board-level personnel is immaterial
since good group decision making requires task leadership, goal resourcing
and imaginative ideas, as well as critical self-appraisal, attention to detail and
enthusiastic endeavour. In addition, the human relations aspects of the group
itself need leadership and maintenance. Belbin's theory provides for all of these
needs.
If the Belbin theory fits so neatly with the process of team decision making
the question then arises: ``Why can't Belbin's team role theory be viewed as a
general theory for teams, why must it be for management teams only?'' In
earlier studies of the Belbin theory (Fisher et al., 1996) the issue was raised over
the appropriateness of employing university undergraduate students as
subjects in the investigation. It was noted then that current practice among
most employers was to recruit managers almost exclusively from the ranks of
newly graduated university students. With that in mind it seemed reasonable
at the time to use undergraduates as surrogates for managers. However, apart
from that brief reference, the generality of the Belbin theory to ranks other than
managerial has not been addressed in the literature or by Belbin himself. An
opportunity for improved team performance may be being missed by limiting
Belbin team role theory to management alone when the theory could be applied
equally profitably in all levels of an organisation.
This paper attempts to address the issue of the generality of Belbin team role
theory from two standpoints: first, the frequency of occurrence of the various
Belbin team roles within the ranks of non-managerial employees, and second,
the performance of non-managerial teams in a team decision-making exercise
designed for training managers. Addressing the frequency issue first, it is
posited that if certain Belbin team roles were discovered to be absent among
non-managerial employees, the Belbin team role theory would appear to have
limited generality, for one cannot build Belbin-type teams without the full
complement of roles. Thus, an examination of the Belbin profiles of a sample of
non-managerial employees would resolve the issue by revealing the availability
Journal of of each of the roles. The second issue relates to performance. If it were found
Managerial that, in a typical managerial team decision-making exercise, the performances
Psychology of managerial teams and non-managerial teams were significantly different, the
generality of the Belbin team role theory would, again, appear limited. Teams
17,1 were formed, data were collected from employees, and an experiment
conducted in which a comparison was made between the performances of
16 managerial and non-managerial teams in a team decision-making exercise
designed for training managers.
Method
Subjects
During 1996 and 1997 a total of 55 teams comprising 187 male and 151 female
volunteer subjects, mean age 38.1 (SD = 9.9) and 37.2 (SD = 10.9) years
respectively, were recruited. A total of five prominent multinational manufacturing
organizations and two large indigenous UK firms, all with plants located in
Scotland, provided 14 teams (44 males, mean age = 36 years, SD = 8.4, 20 females,
mean age = 30, SD = 6.5) comprising managerial personnel and 14 teams (107
males, mean age = 39 years, SD = 10.5, 11 females, mean age = 27, SD = 6.3)
comprising non-managerial personnel. A total of 13 public service organizations
such as local district councils, employment service, and NHS Trusts provided 14
teams (33 males, mean age = 33 years, SD = 9.4, 81 females, mean age = 41, SD =
10.5) comprising managerial and 13 teams (three males, mean age = 29 years, SD =
6.7, 39 females, mean age = 36, SD = 10.9) non-managerial personnel. The
composition of the teams are shown in Table I.
Team exercise.
``Toxic Waste'', a commercially available team working exercise obtained
from Chadwick Rees Consultancy Ltd, UK, is a business game developed
specifically to allow various aspects of team-working styles and behaviours
to emerge. Not only does it not require specialised business or technical
knowledge, but it also imposes few rules or any hierarchy on the team prior
to the start of the exercise. That no specialised business or technical
knowledge was required in the exercise removed the need to consider the
Belbin team role of specialist. The exercise, which has no time limit, usually
takes about three hours to complete. In advance of conducting the
investigation, a trial run of ``Toxic Waste'' was made with a team
comprising volunteers drawn from university staff and students. From the
lessons learned from the trial a minor modification was made to the exercise
which helped bring out the characteristics of the least assertive or involved
team member. The modification to the ``Toxic Waste'' exercise was nothing
other than addition of the requirement that the team produce a tender for the
contract to collect the waste. Each of the 55 teams were assembled at
separate times and, having first completed the 16PF personality
questionnaire, participated in the modified form of ``Toxic Waste''. All
decisions in the exercise had financial consequences which enabled the final
performance of each team to be assessed by a profit or loss figure. An
independent samples test was performed on these results to compare the
performances of the managerial and non-managerial teams.
Journal of Results
Managerial Mean and standard deviation data for the Belbin team role scores for subjects
Psychology grouped into the categories of managers and non-managers are shown in
Table II. Also included in Table II are the frequencies of cases where the Belbin
17,1 team role score is 5, 6, 7 and 7 or more. The univariate analysis of variance on the
Belbin team role scores, not excluding the low values, revealed a higher order
18 effect, that is, the team role type and managerial level are dependent on one
another. The analysis of variance was repeated, each time excluding increasing
numbers of low value team role scores. When team role scores of zero to four were
excluded from the analysis the higher order effect disappeared. Table III shows the
variance estimates calculated for the team roles scores of 5 or greater.
The performance of the teams in the ``Toxic Waste'' exercise were compared.
The performances of the managers' teams were not significantly different from
those of the non-managers, as shown by a t-test for the equality of means:
t (53) = 0.068, p = 0.95.
Team rolesa
CF CO IM ME RI PL SH TW
Managers (n = 178)
Mean 5.12 6.06 5.42 4.46 5.44 6.57 6.02 6.26
SD 1.98 1.98 1.94 2.15 1.82 2.13 1.84 1.87
No. of cases, score 8 20 41 24 15 67 24 36 43
No. of cases, score 7 45 82 55 33 97 44 60 84
No. of cases, score 6 78 111 99 57 130 82 111 22
No. of cases, score 5 111 136 125 88 148 130 144 148
Non-managers (n = 160)
Mean 5.24 5.97 5.98 4.79 4.93 6.14 5.58 5.93
SD 1.98 1.99 1.85 2.07 2.01 1.97 1.73 1.94
Table II. No. of cases, score 8 21 36 32 16 43 18 21 37
Mean, standard No. of cases, score 7 37 68 71 31 71 33 46 58
deviations and some No. of cases, score 6 75 99 100 57 105 57 84 86
frequencies of team No. of cases, score 5 101 127 129 87 125 93 121 121
role scores for
managers and non- Notes: a CF = completer finisher, CO = co-ordinator, IM = implementer, ME = monitor
managers evaluator, PL = plant, RI = resource investigator, SH = shaper, TW = team worker.
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