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.