MGT3002
Types of Groups, Group Development, Behavior, and Structure © 2016 South University
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Organizational Behavior
©2016 South University
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MGT3002 W3 L1
Types of Groups
It is widely recognized that the group is an important sociological unit for any analysis of organizational behavior. Groups can establish hierarchy, status, roles, norms, practices, and traditions. Thus, an understanding of these aspects of group dynamics is necessary to explain the behavior of people in groups so that they can be directed toward achieving the organization's goals.
Groups may be formal or informal, as follows:
In organizations, a variety of large and small formal groups are defined by the structure of the organization—for example departments, divisions, and sections. Formal groups are created by the organization and can be categorized into command groups and task groups. A command group is a group that is created with a hierarchy and a designated leadership. A task group is created to address specific jobs which are usually temporary and often includes a cross-section of the organizational hierarchy. For example, an enquiry committee may contain members from different departments.
To illustrate the different types of formal groups within an organization, we can look at a company engaged in creating online courses. Like most companies it will have a command group with a formal hierarchy headed by the CEO of the organization. The heads of the various departments will report to the CEO. One of these departments would develop the content for online courses and this department would have a variety of temporary projects which would be headed by project managers. The command
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Organizational Behavior
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group, consisting of the company and its departments is different from the task groups, which carry out temporary projects that have definite beginnings and ends. Because the company mandates both types of groups, they are formal groups.
Informal groups develop through association, affiliation, and friendship, and may take the form of interest groups or friendship groups. In an interest group people get together for a specific purpose. For example, a group of people may organize a farewell party for a retiring colleague or they may contribute toward the purchase of lottery tickets to share in the winnings. People with common characteristics may form friendship groups based on social or ethnic background, political affiliation, or support for a favorite sports team.
Informal groups may also develop on the basis of social background, region of origin, ethnic origin, and common interests. Examples of regional origin would be people who are originally from the Midwest, the New England region, the southern states, or the West Coast. Examples of ethnic origin would be people who are of German, Korean, African, or Chinese descent. These informal groups develop naturally, based on a desire for social interaction within a familiar and comfortable environment. Group Development
How do groups develop and evolve? While the organization may define the formal group by setting its goals and selecting its members, the way in which the group actually operates and performs depends more on the processes of the group's development.
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Organizational Behavior
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The most widely accepted model of group development is the five- stage model, which defines the stages as forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
You should already be familiar with these stages of group development from the Principles of Management course, so we can now look at each of the stages in more detail. To illustrate these stages of group development, we can examine the case of a new group of students who have joined a Yoga class.
At the initial forming stage the new students will probably have many questions: What kind of class will this be? Will I actually be able to learn Yoga? Will I make a fool of myself? Is the teacher knowledgeable? Who are these other people? How will we get along? Do any of them know more than me? How will the instructor teach us?
These questions reflect some of the uncertainties and anxieties that a new student may have about the group, his or her own position within the group, and the roles of other students within the group. They also represent the individual's uncertainties about the relationships and bonds that may or may not develop with other students. The role of the teacher may be to break down barriers and to help the students get to know each other better by introducing themselves to the rest of the group.
The basic process in the forming stage involves the clarification of the individual's place and role within the group, and more importantly, familiarity with the other students and the teacher.
Group Behavior
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Organizational Behavior
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Once the forming stage is complete the individual should have attained at least some degree of familiarity with the other students. The storming stage now begins, as the students begin to address their initial unanswered questions. Disputes, disagreements, and conflicts may result, as some students may be perceived as trying to dominate the group, perhaps by showing off their existing level of familiarity with Yoga or by trying to get more attention from the teacher. The resentments of other students may be a source of these disputes and conflicts.
As its name implies, the storming stage can be intense although this is a completely "natural" process. Every group needs to develop its own social hierarchy as well as the informal roles that run parallel to the formal structure. This stage should culminate in a definite hierarchy and an understanding of individual roles within the group. Students assign a higher status and a positive value to other students who have exhibited greater skill at learning the methods and practices of Yoga, and the more skilled students may start to help others without the other students feeling incompetent. Some students may also help the teacher to mediate and counsel in order to generate cooperation and collaboration.
Once the class is comfortable with the new group structure, the group enters the norming stage in which norms of behavior are established. Usually the teacher will outline the class structure to the students so that they know what to expect from the class. In addition, the students will establish their own norms of behavior. For example, these norms may include how members conduct themselves during discussion sessions; members may decide that a person who wants to ask a question should raise his or her hand to be addressed. In this stage, the members of the group settle into some degree of cohesiveness and cooperation.
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At this point, the students can now focus on the basic goal of the group which is to learn the techniques and practices of Yoga. This is now the performing stage where the group is fully functional and the relationships among students, as well as between students and teacher, become settled. The students can then focus on the group goal without distractions; they can learn Yoga and look forward to future classes.
As the Yoga course draws to a close, the students will become aware that the class is coming to an end. This is the adjourning stage and it involves review and feedback where students have the opportunity to express their experiences of the course and of fellow students. A successful closure in this stage can result from the students feeling satisfied that they have learned what they wanted from the course.
The stages of group development have a very important influence on the success of the group in terms of its goals. However, as we will see in the next section, the formal structure that is externally imposed on the group can also strongly influence the outcome.
Group Structure
We can now look at structural factors that have an influence on group performance. Some of these factors are leadership, roles, norms, status, group composition and size. Because leadership deserves special attention, we will examine this factor in greater detail later in the course.
The term "role" refers to the set of behaviors that are expected of a person in the system. Organizations, therefore, need to define each role in order to clarify their expectations of group members. However roles also extend to outside of the workplace—for
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example, as father, mother, brother, daughter, husband, or wife within a family group.
People usually have more than one role in the workplace. For example, an employee is not simply a member of the company; he or she may also be a specialist (such as an accountant), a member of a certain division (such as a consumer products division), and a designated role-player (such as an accounts manager).
Sometimes people may experience role conflict, a situation where compliance with one expectation makes compliance with another very difficult or even impossible. A good example of role conflict can be found in the situation of a working mother who feels torn between her responsibilities toward her children and her organization. Taking her child to an amusement park on his or her birthday may be as important to her as working on the presentation that she needs to make to a client the next morning.
Norms are accepted standards of behavior that are shared by the members of the group. Groups in the workplace generally have established norms about how to perform various tasks, about their appearance and presentation, and about their social interactions. Departure from these norms is usually met with criticism and resistance and may also lead to conflict. This represents the group's efforts to control departure from the norms and to establish some degree of conformity.
However, there may be occasions when it is necessary to depart from the norms. Change always involves these departures from accepted group behaviors. The employee who wants to implement change needs to handle the pressures of conformity through dialogue, discussion, experimentation, and feedback with the group in order to manage group resistance.
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It is important to remember that there is a difference between departures from the norm that are intended to lead to productive change, and the more extreme departures which are called deviant workplace behavior. This covers a range of sometimes illegal but definitely illegitimate social behavior, which invariably creates highly undesirable negative effects for organizations and their members. Wasting resources, sabotage of work, stealing, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment are examples of this type of behavior.
When a drill sergeant shouts at the new recruits at an Army training camp, this is accepted as normal behavior in that setting. But the same behavior by a supervisor in a civilian business office would be considered unacceptable workplace behavior. Similarly, if fellow employees develop a romantic relationship outside of the workplace, those same affectionate behaviors that they exhibit while seeing a movie or when going to a restaurant will probably be inappropriate in the workplace. This is also why workplace romance is generally discouraged.
Spreading malicious rumors, leaving work early, and showing favoritism are other common examples of this kind of behavior.