Thinking Teams / Thinking Clients: Knowledge-Based Team Work

Anne Opie

Paper, 256 pages, 2 tables
ISBN: 978-0-231-11685-5
$30.50 / £18.00

November, 2000
Cloth, 256 pages, 2 tables
ISBN: 978-0-231-11684-8
$83.50 / £49.00

Addressing a key concern in human service and other organizational settings concerned with effective teamwork, this book offers a new paradigm for conceptualizing the subject. Based on qualitative research conducted with teams working with the chronically ill, elderly, and with high-risk psychiatric patients, Anne Opie has developed a method of working with teams that focuses on teamwork as "knowledge work" and is applicable to a variety of disciplines and settings.

Most discussions of teamwork have focused on the team players, notably their interpersonal relationships. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of discourse, Thinking Teams / Thinking Clients provides a postmodern analysis of teamwork that stresses working with professional knowledge in an organizational context. It stresses the need for different kinds of disciplinary knowledge in teams, and discusses the role of organizations in achieving more effective teamwork.

Related Subjects

• Social Work Methods and Practice

About the Author

Anne Opie is research manager for the Legal Services Board in Wellington, New Zealand. She has published extensively on issues in qualitative research and aging. Her writings include Beyond Good Intentions: Support Work with Older People.

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