Groups processess and team management at contemporary work: comprehensions with complex thought

Abstract

In this article we propose some reflections on possible similarities and differences between group processes and team management knowledges. Despite recognizing that group processes and team management knowledges are very distant and belong to different areas of study, Psychology and Management, we understand that a bridge can be established between them, as we are referring to people in the work and life context regardless if they are groups or teams of people. In the business environment concerns with results reifies an ideology about a true team, from which is expected efficiency and effectiveness, but leaving limited space to include, simultaneously, a reflection about the life relationship at work therefore damaging the subjectivity. The contemporary time immerses team management in a game of power between the individual and the group, between career and yourself (self-reflection), between life and work. Here, based on sistemic thinking, we discuss how the concepts and properties of living systems (namely, interaction, interdependence, self-reliance, organization and production-of-itself) can help us with insights about the contemporary work, upon the mediation of Edgar Morin’s complex thought. We support the possibility of a dialogue between the concepts of team management, group processes and their contexts through the modes of knowledge of comprehension and explanation. Therefore, objectivity and subjectivity, explicit and implicit can complement each other, opening space for subjectivity in the professional dimension, despite recognizing that the quest for objective results is imperative in the post-modern work.