Performability of work teams: Balancing hard and soft issues

Teamwork plays a vital role in today's business environment, which is characterized by continual change and an increased demand for satisfaction by stakeholders. Teams can be understood as the basic units of an organization, as they are able to deliver improved business performance as well as improved quality of working life. This paper shows the importance of balancing the implementation and development of teamwork in organizations (that is, the "soft" issues) with the improvement of "hard" performance. Based on a longitudinal study involving more than 160 teams at Volvo Trucks in Sweden, the concept of performability is introduced to understand work teams, where this concept has, in fact, been applied at various organizations within the private sector as well as in the public sector throughout Europe.