Team scaffolds, as team shells that can be instantly populated with transitory teams, is an organizational structure that may have broad applicability for supporting teams of people who work intense shifts together in virtual or actual settings.
Implementing the team scaffolding organizational design in a city hospital triggered significant changes in teaming networks and behaviors in ways that improved operational performance.
With team scaffolds the hospital supported teaming among people who were often strangers and among people who might work together intensely for six hours and then not again for a month. In the team scaffold, people starting a shift would come in and occupy their place in the role set.
Across many industries, particularly in health care delivery, interdependent work is performed under conditions that make bounded stable teams infeasible, creating a need to understand factors that foster teaming in the absence of team stability. Teaming refers to coordination and mutual adjustment during episodes of interdependent work. The present research investigates teaming in the high-stakes, fast-paced setting of a hospital emergency room and focuses on the effects of a new organizational structure, which we call a team scaffold, on teaming effectiveness and performance outcomes. Using a multi-method research design with qualitative interview and observational data and quantitative operational data analyzed with adapted network methods, we examine whether and how team scaffolds facilitate teaming in a dynamic work environment. Although team scaffolds were implemented with little or no membership stability, their introduction triggered significant changes in teaming networks and behaviors in ways that improved operational performance. Implications of team scaffolds for theory and practice are discussed.