What are the differences between work groups and work teams?

"The opportunity to turn the decision-making process over to a group with diverse skills and abilities is one of the arguments for using work groups (and teams) in organizational settings. For group decision-making to be most effective, however, both managers and group members must understand its strengths and weaknesses.\n\nStrengths and Weaknesses of Group Decision Making\n\nStrengths\n\n• Groups bring more information and knowledge to the decision-making process.\n\n• Group decision-making results in a higher-quality decision than does individual decision-making.\n\n• Participation of group members increases the likelihood that a decision will be accepted.\n\nWeaknesses\n\n• Groups offer a diversity of perspectives and, therefore, generate a greater number of disagreements.\n\n• Groups typically take a longer time to reach a solution than an individual takes.\n\n• Group members may pressure others to conform, reducing the likelihood of alternatives.\n\n• The process may be dominated by one or a small number of participants.\n\n• Groups lack accountability, because it is difficult to assign responsibility for outcomes to any one individual.\n\nWork groups share resources and coordinate efforts to help members better perform their individual duties and responsibilities. The performance of the group can be evaluated by adding up the contributions of the individual group members. Work teams require not only coordination but also collaboration, the pooling of knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources in a collective effort to attain a common goal. A work team creates synergy, causing the performance of the team as a whole to be greater than the sum of team members’ individual contributions. Simply assigning employees to groups and labeling them a team does not guarantee a positive outcome. Managers and team members must be committed to creating, developing, and maintaining high-performance work teams. Factors that contribute to their success are discussed later in this section."