Team Development. A True Field Experiment at Three Levels of Rigor

Eighteen logistics units in the Israel Defense Forces were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. The command teams of the nine experimental units underwent a 3-day team development (TD) workshop. A random sample of about 30 subordinates in each unit completed questionnaires describing their unit before and after TD. Although subjective after-only reports of the command personnel who had participated in the workshops were very positive, more rigorous before-after comparisons among both command personnel and subordinates demonstrated that TD failed to improve organizational functioning. The implications of the different results obtained in organization-development research with more and less rigorous designs are discussed.