An Article Review of Implementation Teams: a New

Lever for Organization Change, Journal of

Organization Behavior, 33 pp. 366-388.
Formative Assessment: Plan for the article Review

Doaa Emad Mokhtar Ahmed ElShafie

R2011D11542967
Master of Arts in Leadership in Education
Leading Effective Teams (28911)
Dr. Georgina Michael
Date: Sep.18th, 2021

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 Table of Contents

I-Introduction and Rationale 3

II-Presentation of Article 3

III-Evaluation of Article 5

V-References 7

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I-Introduction and Rationale

This literature review presents the implementation team as a form of change-leadership

team. This team is responsible for planning and leading the execution of an organizational-wide

change strategy. The article, also, explores this team type in a US public education setting in

Connecticut that is ready for change. Rather than focusing on teams as diagnostic groups or

strategic decision-making entities, this study advances the idea that teams may be utilized to

achieve organizational transformation. It investigates how team member learning, a crucial

component in sustaining organizational change, is affected by positional and tenure diversity as

well as work environment. Over the course of two years, the results of 25 school district

instructional improvement strategy teams challenged some basic beliefs about what constituted a

"real team" Higgins, Weiner and Young (2012).

When addressing "real teams" in this changing environment, the authors posit that some

often-assumed features of teams, such as team member stability, may not be important or even

suitable; rather than team membership stability, the stability of members' tasks or positions may

matter most. The article comes to the conclusion that researchers ought to look into this team

structure further and reframe, rethink, and update their understandings of "real teams,"

particularly for teams undergoing organizational transformation, Higgins, Weiner and Young

(2012).

II- Presentation of Article

The article “Implementation Teams: a New Lever for Organization Change”, by Higgins,

Weiner and Young (2012) discusses the importance of team formation, team types and team

roles in leading organizational change which in its turn leads to goal achievement and success

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sustainability. The article reviewed also discusses the roles of team members and what makes a

“real team” among other factors of team effectiveness. Due to the recent changes in leadership

from “solo” or independent, personal to “collaborative” or leadership teams. It presents three

different types of leadership teams: a diagnostic team which is responsible for finding and

identifying the problem, a decision-making team that examines and provides a solution for the

problem and an implementation team which is responsible for applying the solution in order to

resolve the problem and implement the needed processes to accomplish the desired change. The

article offers four hypotheses as mentioned by Higgins, Weiner, and Young, (2012, pp.369-371-

372):

“1-The better the implementation team’s direction, structure, support, and expert
coaching, the greater team member learning will be…2- The greater the positional
diversity of the implementation team, the greater the team member learning… 3- The
greater the tenure diversity of the implementation team, the greater the team member
learning…4- The effect of the team’s enabling conditions on team member learning will
vary by the team’s positional diversity such that when enabling conditions are low,
positional diversity will enhance team member learning.”

These hypotheses are examined through a sample of 25 teams of school district

instructional improvement strategy teams over two years. Although the sample is relatively small

and the duration isn’t longitudinal, the study managed to shed light on the importance of the

roles or positions of the team members rather than the members or people themselves, which

solves the issue of quick turnover of staff members in educational settings. The researchers used

a variety of measures, such as team diagnostic survey (TDS), to measure team member learning,

team effectiveness, and sustaining change. Equations formed to have accurate measures of

positional and tenure diversity helped two researchers to come up with results that are congruent

with previous studies.

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III-Evaluation of Article

The article sheds light on the importance of leadership team stability by means of

stabilizing and focusing on the team member roles or positions, not the team members

themselves, as common in previous studies (Higgins, Weiner, and Young, 2012). This was later

confirmed by Gast, Schildkamp, and van der Veen (2017) who state that although more

curriculum innovations in higher education include teachers working in teams, either to

implement a curriculum innovation or to collectively enhance their teaching knowledge and

abilities, most professional development interventions are primarily focused on individuals. As

cited in Gast, Schildkamp, and van der Veen (2017), West mentions that working together

provides teachers the opportunity to discuss issues, skills, and concepts; they get a chance to

share resources; teachers who have kids in common can change views about their needs across

courses or grade levels. Most importantly, working in groups fosters a common professional

culture, which aids in long-term change sustainability. For example, when teachers leave and

new ones are hired, they will directly join the previously shared school culture.

Higgins, Weiner, and Young (2012) assume that team member learning increases by

some factors: enhanced implementation team’s direction, structure, support, and expert coaching;

increased tenure diversity; and positional diversity even when enabling conditions are low. They

clearly presented these assumptions and provided elaborate evidence by distributing electronic

TDS, team diagnostic surveys, (Wageman, Hackman, and Lehman, 2005) through the 25-team

sample, recording the teams’ meetings, analyzing the data collected twice by different

researchers, discussing findings to have a mutual consensus, reexamining the data according to

that consensus, finally have a third researcher examine the findings again to make sure of

accuracy. They conducted the same survey a year later and confirmed the previous outcomes.
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 The article discusses an aspect of leadership-teams that isn’t experimented enough and

needs more focus. The implementation team offers a recently recognized role for teams as tools

of organizational transformation, not as strategic decision-making bodies or change targets.

Higgins, Weiner, and Young (2012) clearly exhibited their points of view about

implementation teams, provided cautious, well planned research methods as well as explained

results. They also provided the limitations of their work, among which is that the sample is small

and the time span is not very long. They recommended following their research with more

studies about implementation teams.

Word count: 958

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References

Gast, I., Schildkamp, K. and van der Veen, J.T., 2017. Team-based professional development

interventions in higher education: A systematic review. Review of educational research,

87(4), pp.736-767.

DOI: 10.3102/0034654317704306

[Accessed: 14th September. 2021]

Higgins, M.C., Weiner, J. and Young, L., 2012. Implementation teams: A new lever for

organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(3), pp.366-388.

DOI: 10.1002/job.1773

[Accessed: 8th September. 2021]

Wageman, R., Hackman, J.R. and Lehman, E., 2005. Team diagnostic survey: Development of

an instrument. The journal of applied behavioral science, 41(4), pp.373-398.

DOI: 10.1177/0021886305281984

[Accessed: 14th September. 2021]

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