Olympics Skiing, Elite Distance Runners, and NCAA Basketball: Three Cases of Exemplary Team Performance

Abstract

In the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, Norway showed its dominance by taking home 39 medals, more than any single nation has ever won at the event in its history. Norway showed particular supremacy on the slopes, winning 34 of their medals in skiing. Through a combination of Norway’s cultural foundation and the creation of a high functioning team out of individual participants, Norwegian Olympic athletes were able to outperform opponents on the most competitive international stage. In 2017, Shalane Flanagan led 11 of her teammates to make the Olympics in the traditionally individualized sport of elite running. During the 2017–2018 season, the Duke Blue Devils basketball team made it to the NCAA Elite Eight, adding another victory as one of college’s all-time most successful basketball team programs. The case explains these exemplary team stories to highlight factors associated with high-performing teams, including leadership, a relational team culture, and the role of national context, among others, in influencing behavior. This case leverages three well-known and highly cited frameworks/theories to illustrate how to build an exemplary team and better understand factors that influence how teams perform: (1) input/process/output framework (IPO); (2) social identity theory; and, (3) Hofstede’s national culture framework (see Hofstede, 1984, 2003; Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp & Gilson, 2008; McGrath, 1964; and Turner, Brown & Tajfel, 1979 for original works on these theories and reference to one in a top journal literature review). This case is appropriate for upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students in organizational behavior, group dynamics, and principles of management courses.