New Article about Team Work Engagement Climate

Together with Marieke Gersdorf - Van den Berg, Ludwig Hoeksema, and Svetlana Khapova, I published a new article entitled "The whole is great than the sum of its parts: Exploring attributes of team work engagement climate" in Group & Organization Management. In this study, we conducted a 1.5-year qualitative research project among eight self-steering teams to explore the factors that might enable or hinder the development of team work engagement. The article introduces the concept of team work engagement climate, consisting of eight attributes that can facilitate teams to become engaged at work.

This article is the first publication in the PhD research of Marieke Gersdorf - Van den Berg. As such, it marks a huge milestone in her research!

You can access the article HERE. It is available as an open access paper, free for anyone.

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ABSTRACT

Despite growing interest in the concept of team work engagement (TWE), relatively little is known about the conditions that allow it to emerge. Based on the literature on work engagement and team climate, this study introduces the concept of TWE climate and examines its conceptual attributes. Based on a one-and-a-half-year qualitative investigation of eight Dutch self-steering project teams, we discovered that TWE climate comprises eight attributes, both (a) personal and (b) shared. Personal attributes include team members' commitment and drive toward the team and a personal feeling of being respected within the team. Shared attributes include a shared ability to overcome challenges and a shared sense of accomplishment, community, drive, and focus. Our findings indicate that personal and shared attributes are both critical elements of a team climate conducive to team work engagement. We conclude this paper by discussing what these findings mean for the concept of TWE climate in light of future research and practice.