A diagrammatic approach to discovering chances in team relationships

Abstract

Typically interpersonal relationships in teams are investigated with questionnaires, interviews or observational studies, methods which lack either depth or are very costly. This affects the chances for improving such relationships that can be discovered. The first part of the paper describes a system that takes a diagrammatic approach to acquiring data on interpersonal relationships in teams. It will be argued that this approach is suitable to acquire data with less cost than conventional methods. The second part describes the analysis of relationships in a security team that utilizes the approach. The results of the analysis clearly identify strength and weaknesses of the intra-team relationships, and indicate that the approach is useful in organizational settings but also as research tool for investigating intra-group relationships in social psychology. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.