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This paper was originally published in the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Interdisciplinary Health Team Care Conference, which took place September 9-11, 1993 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  It is reproduced here with the permission of the authors.

An interdisciplinary health care team as a subgroup within an organization is often analyzed using team development instruments. However, it is sometimes more useful to look at the larger organization because strengths and barriers to growth and change may be imbedded in the organization as a whole. Also, a team that expands to include several teams, thus becoming an interdisciplinary health care organization, may benefit from an organizational analysis.

This paper describes the process of conducting an organizational analysis in an interdisciplinary geriatric health care organization with an emphasis on its health care teams. The analysis of this organization consisted of a personal interview of all participants followed by the administration of a paper and pencil attitude survey, the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) (Smith, Kendall, and Hullin, 1969). The JDI is a multi-faceted instrument that measures respondent's agreement to statements about the work itself, supervision, pay, promotions, and co-workers. The JDI is one of the widely used instruments in the study of organizations (Buckley, Carraher, & Cote).
This study was conducted in the geriatrics department of a large medical facility. This department was composed of several mature, overlapping interdisciplinary teams which were coping with a major organizational change.