Organizational behaviour
Siti Nazrana 
Lecture5-GroupbehaviourWorkTeams.pptxBX3171 Organisational Behaviour Topic 8: Foundations of group behaviour Topic 9: Understanding work teams
Lecturer: Jaime Wong
This deck is available in Subject hompage -> Learning Activities -> Slides -> Lecture 5 – Group behaviour….
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Topic 8
Foundations of Group Behaviour
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Foundations of Groups
Norms control behaviour by establishing standards of right and wrong. The norms of a given group can help explain members’ behaviours for managers.
Status inequities create frustration and can adversely influence productivity and willingness to remain with an organisation.
The impact of size on a group’s performance depends on the type of task. Larger groups are associated with lower satisfaction.
Cohesiveness may influence a group’s level of productivity, depending on the group’s performance-related norms.
Diversity appears to have a mixed impact on group performance, with some studies suggesting that diversity can help performance and others suggesting it can hinder it.
Role conflict is associated with job-induced tension and job dissatisfaction.
People generally prefer to communicate with others who are at either their own status level or a higher one, rather than with those who are at a lower status level.
Consider that the degree of congruence between the employee’s and the manager’s perception of the employee’s job influences the degree to which the manager will judge that employee effective. Therefore, be certain your employees fully understand their roles so you can accurately assess their performance.
In group situations where the norms support high output, you can expect markedly higher individual performance than when the norms restrict output. Group norms that support antisocial behaviour increase the likelihood that individuals will engage in deviant workplace activities.
Pay attention to the organisational status levels of the employee groups you create. Because lower-status people tend to participate less in group discussions, groups with high status differences are likely to inhibit input from lower-status members and reduce their potential.
When forming employee groups, use larger groups for fact-finding activities and smaller groups for action-taking tasks. When creating larger groups, you should also provide measures of individual performance.
To increase employee satisfaction, work on making certain your employees perceive their job roles the same way you perceive those roles.
Define group. What are the different types of groups? A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or informal. Formal groups are designated work groups defined by an organisation’s structure. Informal groups are groups that are neither formally structured nor organisationally determined; such a group appears in response to the need for social contact.
Do role requirements change in different situations? If so, how? A role is a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Different groups impose different role requirements on individuals.
Role perception is an individual’s view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation received by external stimuli.
Role expectations are how others believe a person should act in a given situation.
A psychological contract is an unwritten agreement that sets out mutual expectations of management and employees.
Role conflict is a situation in which an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations.
Learning Objectives
Evaluate how role requirements change in different situations
Evaluate how issues of cohesiveness and diversity can be integrated for group effectiveness
Contrast the strengths and weaknesses of group decision making
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Introduction
All individuals belong to group based upon our occupations, race, gender, etc.
Being part of a group changes our perception of a situation.
This topic will define groups and discuss the foundations of group behaviour.
What could influence group behaviour?
Type your answer in Chat
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Individuals seldom work in isolation from others. Groups are a characteristic of all social situations and almost everyone in an organisation will be a member of one or more groups. Work is a group-based activity and if the organisation is to function effectively it requires good teamwork. The working of groups and the influence they exert over their membership is an essential feature of human behaviour and of organisational performance. The manager must use groups in order to achieve a high standard of work and improve organisational effectiveness.
There are many possible ways of defining what is meant by a group. The essential feature of a group is that its members regard themselves as belonging to the group. Although there is no single, accepted definition, most people will readily understand what constitutes a group. A popular definition defines the group in psychological terms as:
any number of people who (1) interact with one another; (2) are psychologically aware of one another; and (3) perceive themselves to be a group.
Another useful way of defining a work group is a collection of people who share most, if not all, of the following characteristics:
a definable membership;
group consciousness;
a sense of shared purpose;
interdependence;
interaction; and
ability to act in a unitary manner.2
Groups are an essential feature of the work pattern of any organisation. Members of a group must co-operate in order for work to be carried out, and managers themselves will work within these groups. People in groups influence each other in many ways and groups may develop their own hierarchies and leaders. Group pressures can have a major influence over the behaviour of individual members and their work performance. The activities of the group are associated with the process of leadership (discussed in Chapter 8). The style of leadership adopted by the manager has an important influence on the behaviour of members of the group.
The classical approach to organisation and management tended to ignore the importance of groups and the social factors at work. The ideas of people such as F. W. Taylor popularised the concept of the ‘rabble hypothesis’ and the assumption that people carried out their work, and could be motivated, as solitary individuals un- affected by others. The human relations approach, however, gave recognition to the work organisation as a social organisation and to the importance of the group, and group values and norms, in influencing behaviour at work.
Whereas all teams are, by definition, groups it does not necessarily follow that all groups are teams. In common usage and literature, including to some extent in this book, there is however a tendency for the terms ‘groups’ and ‘teams’ to be used inter- changeably. And it is not easy to distinguish clearly between a group and a team.
Defining and classifying groups
A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives
Group
Formal group – defined by org structure, designated work tasks
Informal group – form in response for social contact
Social identity – shared experience amplify perceptions of events, increase bond and trust (esp sharing painful experience)
Ingroups and outgroups – paves the way for social identity threat
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A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or informal. By formal groups, we mean those defined by the organisation’s structure, with designated work assignments establishing tasks. In formal groups, the behaviours that team members should engage in are stipulated by and directed towards organisational goals. The six members of an airline flight crew are a formal group. In contrast, informal groups are neither formally structured nor organisationally determined. These groups are natural formations in the work environment that appear in response to the need for social contact. Three employees from different departments who regularly have lunch or coffee together are an informal group. These types of interactions between individuals, although informal, deeply affect their behaviour and performance.
Group - Two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives.
Formal group - A designated work group defined by an organisation’s structure.
Informal group - A group that is neither formally structured nor organisationally determined; such a group appears in response to the need for social contact.
Social identity
People often feel strongly about their groups, partly because, as research indicates, shared experiences amplify our perception of events. Also, according to research in Australia, sharing painful experiences, in particular, increases our felt bond and trust with others. Why do people form groups, and why do they feel so strongly about them? Consider the celebrations that follow when an AFL team wins the grand final. The winner’s supporters are elated, and sales of team-related shirts, jackets and hats skyrocket. Fans of the losing team feel dejected, even embarrassed because, even though fans have little to do with the actual performance of the sports team, their self-image can be wrapped up in their identification with the group. Our tendency to personally invest in the accomplishments of a group is the territory of social identity theory.
Ingroups and outgroups
Ingroup favouritism occurs when we see members of our group as better than other people, and people not in our group as all the same. Recent research suggests that people with low openness and/or low agreeableness are more susceptible to ingroup favouritism. Whenever there’s an ingroup there is, by necessity, an outgroup, which is sometimes everyone else but is usually an identified group known by the ingroup’s members. For example, if my ingroup is the Liberal National Party (LNP) in Australian politics, my outgroup might be anyone in the world who is not an LNP voter, but it’s more likely.
Ingroups and outgroups pave the way for social identity threat, which is akin to stereotype threat. With social identity threat, individuals believe they will be personally negatively evaluated due to their association with a devalued group, and they may lose confidence and performance effectiveness. One study found, for example, that when subjects from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds took a high-pressure maths test, the low-status subjects who felt social identity threat could be as confident as the high-status subjects only when they were first deliberately encouraged about their abilities.
Social identity theory
Proposes that people have emotional reactions to the failure/success of their group because their self-esteem is tied into the group’s performance.
Group does well – bask in reflected glory, self-esteem rise
Group does poorly – feel bad, reject part of your identity
One ‘switches on’ different identities in different situations.
Social identities help us understand who we are and where we fit in with other people.
Relational identification – connect with others because of our roles
Collective identification – connect with the aggregate characteristics of our groups.
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Social identity theory proposes that people have emotional reactions to the failure or success of their group because their self-esteem is tied into the performance of the group.3 When your group does well, you bask in reflected glory, and your own self-esteem rises because you’re affiliated with the winning team. When your group does poorly, you might feel bad about yourself, or you might even go so far as to reject that part of your identity, like ‘fair weather fans’. Social identities also help people reduce uncertainty about who they are and what they should do.
People develop a lot of identities through the course of their lives. You might define yourself in terms of the organisation you work for, the city you live in, your profession, your religious background, your ethnicity or your gender. We ‘switch on’ different identities in different situations. An Australian expatriate working in Kuala Lumpur might be very aware of being from Australia but won’t give this national identity a second thought when transferring from Sydney to Melbourne. An accountant probably won’t think about the identity of their profession in discussions with other accountants, but will be very aware of what it means to be an accountant when having a discussion with someone in sales. So, we may pick and choose which of our social identities are salient to the situation, or we may find that our social identities are in conflict, such as the identities of business leader and parent.
Our social identities help us understand who we are and where we fit in with other people, and research indicates they bring us better health and lower levels of depression because we become less likely to attribute negative situations to internal or insurmountable reasons. To experience these good outcomes, however, we need to feel that our social identities are positive.
Until now, we’ve discussed social identities primarily in a cultural context. However, the identity we may feel with respect to our organisation is only one aspect of our work-related identities. Within our organisations and work groups we can develop many identities through (1) relational identification, when we connect with others because of our roles and (2) collective identification, when we connect with the aggregate characteristics of our groups. We can identify with groups within our team, our work group and our organisations. Often, our identification with our work groups is stronger than with our organisations, but both are important to positive outcomes in attitudes and behaviours. The strength of our identification may vary, depending on how unique a group is within an organisation. Low identification to the group may lead to problems. If we have low identification with our organisations, we may experience decreased satisfaction and engage in fewer organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Similarly, we’re less likely to apply to organisations that don’t correspond to our collective identities.
Stages of group development
Punctuated-equilibrium model
The first meeting sets the group’s direction.
The first phase of group activity is inertia.
A transition takes place when the group has used up half its allotted time.
This transition initiates major changes.
A second phase of inertia follows the transition.
The group’s last meeting is characterised by markedly accelerated activity.
Temporary task groups working under a time-constrained deadline
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One of the most interesting discoveries made in studies of groups was that each group experienced its transition at the same point in its calendar—precisely halfway between its first meeting and its official deadline—despite the fact that some groups spent as little as an hour on their project while others spent 6 months. It was as if the groups universally experienced a midlife crisis at this point. The midpoint appears to work like an alarm clock, heightening members’ awareness that their time is limited and they need to get moving. This transition ends phase 1 and is characterised by a concentrated burst of changes, a dropping of old patterns and the adoption of new perspectives. The transition sets a revised direction for phase 2, a new equilibrium or period of inertia in which the group executes plans created during the transition period. The group’s last meeting is characterised by a final burst of activity to finish its work.
In summary, the punctuated-equilibrium model characterises groups as exhibiting long periods of inertia interspersed with brief revolutionary changes triggered primarily by members’ awareness of time and deadlines. Keep in mind, however, that this model doesn’t apply to all groups. It’s essentially limited to temporary task groups working under a time-constrained completion deadline.
Exhibit 8.1
The punctuated-equilibrium model
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Temporary groups with finite deadlines pass through a unique sequencing of actions (or inactions) called the punctuated-equilibrium model, which is shown in Exhibit 8.1. The stages in this model include (1) the first meeting sets the group’s direction, (2) the first phase of group activity is one of inertia and therefore slower progress, (3) a transition takes place exactly when the group has used up half its allotted time, (4) this transition initiates major changes, (5) a second phase of inertia follows the transition and (6) the group’s last meeting is characterised by markedly accelerated activity.
Alternative models suggest that teams progress through a formation stage; a conflict resolution or ‘storming’ stage; a ‘norming’ stage, where members agree on roles and make decisions; and a ‘performing’ stage, where members begin to work collaboratively. The forming, storming, norming and performing stages may occur at phase 1 of the punctuated-equilibrium model, while a second performing and conforming stage may occur in the second phase, following a short period of reforming group norms and expectations.
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Stages of group development
Bruce Tuckman
Forming
Storming – conflict resolution
Norming – agrees on roles and make decisions
Performing – work collaboratively
Mary Jensen
5. Adjourning
O’reilly.com
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Alternative models suggest that teams progress through a formation stage; a conflict resolution or ‘storming’ stage; a ‘norming’ stage, where members agree on roles and make decisions; and a ‘performing’ stage, where members begin to work collaboratively. The forming, storming, norming and performing stages may occur at phase 1 of the punctuated-equilibrium model, while a second performing and conforming stage may occur in the second phase, following a short period of reforming group norms and expectations.
Group property 1: roles
Role perception – One’s view of how one is supposed to act in a given situation
Role expectations
How others believe a person should act in a given situation
Psychological contract – unwritten agreement
Role conflict
Inter-role conflict
Role-play and assimilation
Comply with our role perceptions and expectations even when we don’t agree with them initially
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Role perception - An individual’s view of how they are supposed to act in a given situation.
Role expectations are the way others believe you should act in a given context. The role of an Australian federal court judge is viewed as having propriety and dignity, while rugby league coaches may be seen as aggressive, dynamic and inspiring to their players.
https://www.hrzone.com/hr-glossary/what-is-a-psychological-contract
The psychological contract refers to the unwritten set of expectations of the employment relationship as distinct from the formal, codified employment contract. Taken together, the psychological contract and the employment contract define the employer-employee relationship.
Originally developed by organisational scholar Denise Rousseau, the psychological contract includes informal arrangements, mutual beliefs, common ground and perceptions between the two parties.
The psychological contract develops and evolves constantly based on communication, or lack thereof, between the employee and the employer. Promises over promotion or salary increases, for example, may form part of the psychological contract.
Managing expectations is a key behaviour for employers so that they don’t accidentally give employees the wrong perception of action which then doesn’t materialise. Employees should also manage expectations so that, for example, difficult situations or adverse personal circumstances that affect productivity aren’t seen by management as deviant.
Perceived breaches of the psychological contract can severely damage the relationship between employer and employee, leading to disengagement, reduced productivity and in some cases workplace deviance. Fairness is a significant part of the psychological contract, bound up in equity theory – employees need to perceive that they’re being treated fairly to sustain a healthy psychological contract.
Role conflict - When compliance with one role requirement might make it difficult to comply with another, the result is role conflict. At the extreme, two or more role expectations are mutually contradictory. For example, if you, as a manager, were to provide a performance evaluation of a person you mentored, your roles as evaluator and mentor may conflict. Similarly, we can experience interrole conflict when the expectations of our different, separate groups are in opposition.
Role-play and assimilation - The degree to which we comply with our role perceptions and expectations—even when we don’t agree with them initially—can be surprising
Group property 2: norms
Norms and emotions
individual’s emotions influence group’s emotions, people grew to interpret their shared emotions in the same way.
Norms and conformity
Groups place pressures on individual members to change their attitudes and behaviour to conform to the group’s standard.
Individuals conform to groups they consider important - reference groups
Norms and behaviour
Hawthorne’s study: Group dynamics influence behaviour, more than work environment
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Have you ever noticed how the emotions of one member of your family, especially strong emotions, can influence the emotions of the other members? A family can be a highly normative group. So can a task group whose members work together on a daily basis, because frequent communication can increase the power of norms. A recent study found that, in a task group, individuals’ emotions influenced the group’s emotions, and vice versa. This may not be surprising, but researchers also found that norms dictated the experience of emotions for the individuals and for the groups—in other words, people grew to interpret their shared emotions in the same way.31 As we discovered in Chapters 4 and 6, our emotions and moods can shape our perspective, so the normative effect of groups can have a powerful influence on group attitudes and outcomes.
Norms and conformity
As a member of a group, you desire acceptance by the group. Therefore, you are susceptible to conforming to the group’s norms. There’s considerable evidence that groups can place strong pressures on individual members to change their attitudes and behaviours to conform to the group’s standard.32 The impact that group pressures for conformity can have on an individual member’s judgement was demonstrated in now-classic studies by Solomon Asch.33 Asch made up groups of seven or eight people, who were asked to compare two cards held by the experimenter. One card had one line and the other had three lines of varying length, one of which was identical to the line on the one-line card, as Exhibit 8.2 shows. The difference in line length was quite obvious; in fact, under ordinary conditions, subjects made fewer than 1% errors in announcing aloud which of the three lines matched the single line.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html
Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform.
He believed that the main problem with Sherif's (1935) conformity experiment was that there was no correct answer to the ambiguous autokinetic experiment. How could we be sure that a person conformed when there was no correct answer?
Asch (1951) devised what is now regarded as a classic experiment in social psychology, whereby there was an obvious answer to a line judgment task.
If the participant gave an incorrect answer it would be clear that this was due to group pressure.
Experimental Procedure
Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity, whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’
Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates/stooges. The confederates had agreed in advance what their responses would be when presented with the line task.
The real participant did not know this and was led to believe that the other seven confederates/stooges were also real participants like themselves.
Each person in the room had to state aloud which comparison line (A, B or C) was most like the target line. The answer was always obvious. The real participant sat at the end of the row and gave his or her answer last.
There were 18 trials in total, and the confederates gave the wrong answer on 12 trails (called the critical trials). Asch was interested to see if the real participant would conform to the majority view.
Asch's experiment also had a control condition where there were no confederates, only a "real participant."
Findings
Asch measured the number of times each participant conformed to the majority view. On average, about one third (32%) of the participants who were placed in this situation went along and conformed with the clearly incorrect majority on the critical trials.
Over the 12 critical trials, about 75% of participants conformed at least once, and 25% of participant never conformed.
In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederates, less than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer.
Conclusion
Why did the participants conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar.
A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct.
Apparently, people conform for two main reasons: because they want to fit in with the group (normative influence) and because they believe the group is better informed than they are (informational influence).
Norms can cover any aspect of group behaviour [The Hawthorne Studies].
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-organizationalbehavior/chapter/the-hawthorne-effect/
During the 1920s, a series of studies that marked a change in the direction of motivational and managerial theory was conducted by Elton Mayo on workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in Illinois. Previous studies, in particular Frederick Taylor’s work, took a “man as machine” view and focused on ways of improving individual performance. Hawthorne, however, set the individual in a social context, arguing that employees’ performance is influenced by work surroundings and coworkers as much as by employee ability and skill. The Hawthorne studies are credited with focusing managerial strategy on the socio-psychological aspects of human behavior in organizations. The studies originally looked into the effects of physical conditions on productivity and whether workers were more responsive and worked more efficiently under certain environmental conditions, such as improved lighting. The results were surprising: Mayo found that workers were more responsive to social factors—such as their manager and coworkers—than the factors (lighting, etc.) the researchers set out to investigate. In fact, worker productivity improved when the lights were dimmed again and when everything had been returned to the way it was before the experiment began, productivity at the factory was at its highest level and absenteeism had plummeted.
What happened was Mayo discovered that workers were highly responsive to additional attention from their managers and the feeling that their managers actually cared about and were interested in their work. The studies also found that although financial incentives are important drivers of worker productivity, social factors are equally important.
There were a number of other experiments conducted in the Hawthorne studies, including one in which two women were chosen as test subjects and were then asked to choose four other workers to join the test group. Together, the women worked assembling telephone relays in a separate room over the course of five years (1927–1932). Their output was measured during this time—at first, in secret. It started two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they were assigned to a supervisor who discussed changes with them and, at times, used the women’s suggestions. The researchers then spent five years measuring how different variables affected both the group’s and the individuals’ productivity. Some of the variables included giving two five-minute breaks (after a discussion with the group on the best length of time), and then changing to two ten-minute breaks (not the preference of the group).
Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. Researchers concluded that the employees worked harder because they thought they were being monitored individually. Researchers hypothesized that choosing one’s own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase.
The Hawthorne studies showed that people’s work performance is dependent on social issues and job satisfaction. The studies concluded that tangible motivators such as monetary incentives and good working conditions are generally less important in improving employee productivity than intangible motivators such as meeting individuals’ desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making and work.
Norms and group outcomes
Positive norms and group outcomes
Strong politically correct norms increase group creativity because clear expectations reduce uncertainty about group expectations/stereotype norms.
Positive norms begets positive outcomes but individual personalities and social identification matter too.
Negative norms and group outcomes
Deviant workplace behaviour: voluntary behaviour that violates organisational norms. Antisocial behaviour.
Norms and culture
Individual orientation can change in groups
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Exhibit 8.3
Typology of deviant workplace behaviour
Sources: Based on S. L. Robinson and R. J. Bennett, ‘A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: a multidimensional scaling study’, Academy of Management Journal, April 1995, p. 565, copyright 1995 by Academy of Management, New York; S. H. Appelbaum, G. D. Iaconi and A. Matousek, ‘Positive and negative deviant workplace behaviors: causes, impacts, and solutions’, Corporate Governance 7, no. 5, 2007, pp. 586–98; and R. W. Griffin and A. O’Leary-Kelly (eds), The Dark Side of Organizational Behavior, New York: Wiley, 2004.
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Chris is frustrated by a colleague who constantly spreads malicious and unsubstantiated rumours about him. Debra is tired of a member of her work team who, when confronted with a problem, takes out his frustration by yelling and screaming at her and other members. And Olivia recently quit her job as a dental hygienist after being constantly sexually harassed by her employer.
What do these three episodes have in common? They represent employees exposed to acts of deviant workplace behaviour.Deviant workplace behaviour (also called antisocial behaviour or workplace incivility) is voluntary behaviour that violates significant organisational norms and, in doing so, threatens the well-being of the organisation or its members. Exhibit 8.3 provides a typology of deviant workplace behaviours, with examples of each.
Like norms in general, individual employees’ antisocial actions are shaped by the group context in which they work. Evidence demonstrates that antisocial behaviour exhibited by a work group is a significant predictor of an individual’s antisocial behaviour at work. In other words, deviant workplace behaviour is likely to flourish where it’s supported by group norms. Workers who socialise either at or outside work with people who are frequently absent from work are more likely to be absent themselves. What this means for managers is that, when deviant workplace norms surface, employee cooperation, commitment and motivation are likely to suffer. This, in turn, can reduce employee productivity and job satisfaction, and increase turnover.
What are the consequences of workplace deviance for teams? Some research suggests a chain reaction occurs in a group with high levels of dysfunctional behaviour. The process begins with negative behaviours such as shirking, undermining co-workers or being generally uncooperative. As a result of these behaviours, the team collectively starts to have negative moods. These negative moods then result in poor coordination of effort and lower levels of group performance.
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Group property 3: status, and group property 4: size and dynamics
Status – a socially defined position or rank
What determines status?
The power a person wields over others - group’s resources, control the outcome
A person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals – contribution critical to group’s success have higher status
An individual’s personal characteristics valued by the group eg intelligence, friendly personality, good looks
Status and norms eg high status better able to resist conformity pressure
Status and group interaction – high status tend to be more assertive
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How do status and size differences affect group performance? Group size does affect performance. More than 12 people are considered a large group, and seven or fewer are considered a small group. As a manager, you need to build in individual accountability. To prevent social loafing, a manager can:
Set group goals.
Increase intergroup competition.
Use peer evaluation.
Select members who have high motivation and prefer to work in groups.
Distribute group rewards based on individual effort.
Status
Status—a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others—permeates every society. Even the smallest group will develop roles, rights and rituals to differentiate its members. Status is a significant motivator and has major behavioural consequences when individuals perceive a disparity between what they believe their status is and what others perceive it to be.
status
A socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others.
What determines status?
According to status characteristics theory, status tends to derive from one of three sources:54
status characteristics theory
A theory stating that differences in status characteristics create status hierarchies within groups.
The power a person wields over others. Because they usually control the group’s resources, people who control the outcomes tend to be perceived as high status.
A person’s ability to contribute to a group’s goals. People whose contributions are critical to the group’s success tend to have high status.
An individual’s personal characteristics. Someone whose personal characteristics are positively valued by the group (good looks, intelligence, money or a friendly personality) typically has higher status than someone with fewer valued attributes.
Status and norms
Status has some interesting effects on the power of norms and pressures to conform. High-status individuals may be more likely to deviate from norms when they have low identification (social identity) with the group.55 They also eschew pressure from lower-ranking members of other groups. For instance, physicians actively resist administrative decisions made by lower-ranking medical insurance company employees.56 High-status people are also better able to resist conformity pressures than their lower-status peers. An individual who is highly valued by a group but doesn’t need or care about the group’s social rewards is particularly able to disregard conformity norms.57 In general, bringing high-status members into a group may improve performance, but only up to a point, perhaps because these members may introduce counterproductive norms.58
What are the strengths and weaknesses of group (versus individual) decision making?
Group strengths:
Generate more complete information and knowledge
Offer increased diversity of views and greater creativity
Increased acceptance of decisions
Generally more accurate (but not as accurate as the most accurate group member).
Group weaknesses:
Time-consuming activity
Conformity pressures in the group
Discussions liable to be dominated by a few members
A situation of ambiguous responsibility.
Group property 3: status, and group property 4: size and dynamics
Status inequity: perceived inequity creates disequilibrium, resentment
Status and stigmatization: the status of people with whom you are affiliated can affect other people’s view of you.
Group status: ingroups represent the dominant forces in a society and are given high status
Size and dynamics
Larger groups are more effective in fact-finding, idea-generation.
Social loafing – tendency to do less when working collectively than when working individually. Reasons: others not doing much, diffuse responsibility.
Employees with stronger work ethics are less likely to engage in social loafing
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Status and stigmatization
Although it’s clear that your own status affects the way people perceive you, the status of people with whom you are affiliated can also affect other people’s views of you. Studies have shown that people who are stigmatised can ‘infect’ others with their stigma. This ‘stigma by association’ effect can result in negative opinions and evaluations of the person affiliated with the stigmatised individual, even if the association is brief and purely coincidental. Of course, many of the foundations of cultural status differences have no merit in the first place. For example, men interviewing for a job were viewed as less qualified when they were sitting next to an obese woman in a waiting room. Another study looking at the effects of being associated with an overweight person found that even when onlookers were told the target person and the overweight person were unrelated, the target person was still devalued.64
Group status
Early in life, we acquire an ‘us and them’ mentality.65 You may have correctly surmised that if you’re in an outgroup, your group is of lower status in the eyes of the associated ingroup’s members. Culturally, sometimes ingroups represent the dominant forces in a society and are given high status, which can create discrimination against their outgroups. Low-status groups, perhaps in response to this discrimination, are likely to leverage ingroup favouritism to compete for higher status.66 When high-status groups then feel the discrimination from low-status groups, they may increase their bias against the outgroups.67 With each cycle, the groups become more polarised.
Size and dynamics
The size of a group affects the group’s overall behaviour, but the effect depends on what dependent variables you look at. Groups with a dozen or more members are good for gaining diverse input. If the goal is fact-finding or idea-generating, then larger groups should be more effective. maller groups of about seven members are better at doing something productive.
One of the most important findings about the size of a group concerns social loafing, the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively rather than alone. As mentioned in our discussion of groups at the beginning of this chapter, this is a common phenomenon and can be very frustrating for group members. It directly challenges the logic that the productivity of the group as a whole should at least equal the sum of the productivity of the individuals in that group, no matter what the group size.
Social loafing - The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually.
Social loafing could be caused by a belief that others in the group aren’t carrying their fair share. If you see others as lazy or inept, you can re-establish equity by reducing your effort. But simply failing to contribute may not be enough for someone to be labelled a free rider. Instead, the group must believe the social loafer is acting in an exploitative manner (benefitting at the expense of other team members). Another explanation for social loafing is the diffusion of responsibility. Because group results can’t be attributed to any single person, the relationship between an individual’s input and the group’s output is clouded. Individuals may then be tempted to become free riders and coast on the group’s efforts.
The implications for OB are significant. When managers use collective work situations, they must also be able to identify individual efforts. Greater performance diversity creates greater social loafing the longer a group is together, which decreases satisfaction and performance.
Social loafing appears to have a Western bias. It’s consistent with individualistic cultures, such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States, which are dominated by self-interest. It’s not consistent with collective societies, in which individuals are motivated by in-group goals. In studies comparing US employees with employees from China and Israel (both collectivist societies), the Chinese and Israelis showed no propensity to engage in social loafing and actually performed better in a group than alone.
Research indicates that the stronger an individual’s work ethic is, the less likely that person is to engage in social loafing. Also, the greater the level of conscientiousness and agreeableness in a group, the more likely that performance will remain high whether there is social loafing or not. There are ways to prevent social loafing: (1) set group goals so the group has a common purpose to strive towards, (2) increase intergroup competition, which focuses on the shared group outcome, (3) engage in peer evaluations, (4) select members who have high motivation and prefer to work in groups and (5) base group rewards in part on each member’s unique contributions.79 Recent research indicates that social loafing can be counteracted by publicly posting individual performance ratings for group members, too.80 Although no magic bullet will prevent social loafing, these steps should help minimise its effect.
Group property 5: cohesiveness
Cohesiveness – the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group
Ways to encourage group cohesiveness:
Make the group small
Encourage agreement with group goals
Increase the time members spend together
Increase the group’s status
Stimulate competition with other groups
Give rewards to the group
Physically isolate the group
jcu.edu.au
https://study.com/academy/lesson/group-cohesiveness-definition-factors-importance-consequences.html
Group Cohesiveness Defined
Imagine you are on a work project with three co-workers and aren't able to make progress because of conflict. Or maybe you are in a therapy group for depression and feel connected to, and safe with, the other group members. These are examples of group cohesion types that one can experience while being a member of a group.
Group cohesiveness can be defined as a bond that pulls people toward membership in a particular group and resists separation from that group. In addition, group cohesion generally has three characteristics. They include the following:
Interpersonal Attraction
This means group members have a preference or want to interact with each other. Group members enjoy this interaction and seek it out.
Group Pride
This involves group members viewing their membership to a specific group with fondness. They feel proud of their group membership, and staying in the group feels valuable.
Commitment to the Work of the Group
Group members value the work of the group and believe in its goals. They are willing to work together to complete tasks which are aligned with these group goals, even through adversity.
Factors
The ability of a group to be more or less cohesive is dependent on several factors. Here are some important factors that have been found to impact group cohesiveness.
Similarity
When the group members are similar, it's easier for the group to become cohesive. The similarity can be due to several factors, such as having similar values, beliefs, life circumstances, or pressing life issues.
Example: A group of patients with depression might be more cohesive than a group of ten members each with different mental health diagnoses.
Group Openness to New Members
When a group is open and welcoming to new members, group members more easily develop cohesion. Often over time, group membership will change due to various life circumstances or changing individual needs.
Example: Josh's bowling team lost Frank when he moved out of town. James joined the team in Frank's place. The rest of the bowling team welcomed James with open arms. James felt accepted and began to really look forward to bowling nights.
Trust
When group members feel they can trust each other, group cohesiveness is more easily developed.
Example: A veteran shares with his PTSD support group things he did in Iraq for which he feels guilty. The other veterans in the group provide reassurance and don't judge him. The group is closer as a result.
Stage of the Group
When a new group forms, there tends to be an initial burst in group cohesiveness because the first goal of any group is often to form.
Example: Jaime joined a new weight loss group to help her keep her weight loss on track. When Jaime and the other new group members went to the first meeting, they started sharing their weight loss struggles. Jaime instantly felt close to the other members and was happy she joined the group.
Past Group Experiences
When members of a new group have had previous positive group experiences, they are more easily able to establish group cohesion. When members have had past group experiences that were unfavorable, they will resist developing cohesion.
Example: Last year Julie was involved with a work group project that had lots of tension and conflict. The group had so much difficulty working together that the project was never completed, and the group was disbanded. When Julie was assigned a new work group this year, she dreaded it and kept her distance from the other group members.
Exhibit 8.4
The relationship between group cohesiveness, performance norms and productivity
Norms = acceptable standards of behaviour
jcu.edu.au
Groups differ in their cohesiveness—that is, the degree to which members are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group. Some work groups are cohesive because the members have spent a great deal of time together, the group’s small size facilitates high interaction or external threats have brought members close together.
Cohesiveness - the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group.
Cohesiveness is important because it affects group productivity.81 Studies consistently show that the relationship between cohesiveness and productivity depends on the group’s performance-related norms. If performance-related norms for quality, output and cooperation with outsiders, for instance, are high, a cohesive group will be more productive than will a less cohesive group. But if cohesiveness is high and performance norms are low, productivity will be low. If cohesiveness is low and performance norms are high, productivity increases, but less than in the high-cohesiveness/high-norms situation. When cohesiveness and performance-related norms are both low, productivity tends to fall into the low-to-moderate range. These conclusions are summarised in Exhibit 8.4.
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Group property 6: diversity
Diversity: the extent to which group members are similar to, or different from, on another.
One possible side effect in diverse teams is faultlines
Faultlines are perceived divisions that split groups into two or more subgroups based on individual differences such as gender, race, age, work experience and education.
jcu.edu.au
https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
Striving to increase workplace diversity is not an empty slogan — it is a good business decision. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean.
In a global analysis of 2,400 companies conducted by Credit Suisse, organizations with at least one female board member yielded higher return on equity and higher net income growth than those that did not have any women on the board.
In recent years a body of research has revealed another, more nuanced benefit of workplace diversity: nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter. Working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance. Let’s dig into why diverse teams are smarter.
They Focus More on Facts
People from diverse backgrounds might actually alter the behavior of a group’s social majority in ways that lead to improved and more accurate group thinking. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists assigned 200 people to six-person mock jury panels whose members were either all white or included four white and two black participants. The people were shown a video of a trial of a black defendant and white victims. They then had to decide whether the defendant was guilty.
It turned out that the diverse panels raised more facts related to the case than homogenous panels and made fewer factual errors while discussing available evidence. If errors did occur, they were more likely to be corrected during deliberation. One possible reason for this difference was that white jurors on diverse panels recalled evidence more accurately.
Other studies have yielded similar results. In a series of experiments conducted in Texas and Singapore, scientists put financially literate people in simulated markets and asked them to price stocks. The participants were placed in either ethnically diverse or homogenous teams. The researchers found that individuals who were part of the diverse teams were 58% more likely to price stocks correctly, whereas those in homogenous groups were more prone to pricing errors, according to the study, published in the journal PNAS.
Diverse teams are more likely to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective. They may also encourage greater scrutiny of each member’s actions, keeping their joint cognitive resources sharp and vigilant. By breaking up workplace homogeneity, you can allow your employees to become more aware of their own potential biases — entrenched ways of thinking that can otherwise blind them to key information and even lead them to make errors in decision-making processes.
Faultlines
One possible side effect in diverse teams—especially those that are diverse in terms of surface-level characteristics—is faultlines, or perceived divisions that split groups into two or more subgroups based on individual differences such as gender, race, age, work experience and education.
Faultlines - The perceived divisions that split groups into two or more subgroups based on individual differences such as gender, race, age, work experience and education.
For example, let’s say group A is comprised of three men and three women. The three men have approximately the same amount of work experience and backgrounds in marketing. The three women have about the same amount of work experience and backgrounds in finance. Group B has three men and three women, but they all differ in terms of their experience and backgrounds. Two of the men are relatively experienced, while the other is new to the company. One of the women has worked at the company for several years, while the other two are new. In addition, two of the men and one woman in group B have backgrounds in marketing, while the other man and the remaining two women have backgrounds in finance. It’s therefore likely that a faultline will result in subgroups of males and females in group A but not in group B.
Research on faultlines has shown that splits are generally detrimental to group functioning and performance. Subgroups may wind up competing with each other, which takes time away from core tasks and harms group performance. Groups that have subgroups learn more slowly, make riskier decisions, are less creative and experience higher levels of conflict. Subgroups are less likely to trust each other. Finally, although the overall group’s satisfaction is lower when faultlines are present, satisfaction with subgroups is generally high.
Are faultlines ever a good thing? One study suggested that faultlines based on differences in skill, knowledge and expertise could be beneficial when the groups were in organisational cultures that strongly emphasised results because a results-driven culture focuses people’s attention on what’s important to the company rather than on problems arising from subgroups.Another study showed that problems stemming from strong faultlines based on gender and educational major were counteracted when their roles were cross-cut and the group as a whole was given a common goal to strive for. Together, these strategies force collaboration between members of subgroups and focus their efforts on accomplishing a goal that transcends the boundary imposed by the faultline. Faultlines that are split along task-relevant characteristics may boost performance in certain organisations by promoting division of labour.
Overall, although research on faultlines suggests that diversity in groups is a potential double-edged sword, recent work indicates they can be strategically employed to improve performance.
Group decision making
Groups versus the individual
Strengths of group decision making
More input into decision making process, increase diversity of view, more alternatives, increase acceptance of solutions
Weaknesses of group decision making
Time consuming, conformity pressures, ambiguous responsibility
Affects group’s effectiveness and efficiency
Groupthink and groupshift
Groupthink – norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative course of actions
Groupshift or group polarization (shift in decision risk; conservative, greater risk)
jcu.edu.au
https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Gr-Int/Group-Decision-Making.html
Group decision making is a type of participatory process in which multiple individuals acting collectively, analyze problems or situations, consider and evaluate alternative courses of action, and select from among the alternatives a solution or solutions. The number of people involved in group decision-making varies greatly, but often ranges from two to seven. The individuals in a group may be demographically similar or quite diverse. Decision-making groups may be relatively informal in nature, or formally designated and charged with a specific goal. The process used to arrive at decisions may be unstructured or structured. The nature and composition of groups, their size, demographic makeup, structure, and purpose, all affect their functioning to some degree. The external contingencies faced by groups (time pressure and conflicting goals) impact the development and effectiveness of decision-making groups as well.
In organizations many decisions of consequence are made after some form of group decision-making process is undertaken. However, groups are not the only form of collective work arrangement. Group decision-making should be distinguished from the concepts of teams, teamwork, and self managed teams. Although the words teams and groups are often used interchangeably, scholars increasingly differentiate between the two. The basis for the distinction seems to be that teams act more collectively and achieve greater synergy of effort. Katzenback and Smith spell out specific differences between decision making groups and teams:
The group has a definite leader, but the team has shared leadership roles
Members of a group have individual accountability; the team has both individual and collective accountability.
The group measures effectiveness indirectly, but the team measures performance directly through their collective work product.
The group discusses, decides, and delegates, but the team discusses, decides, and does real work.
Groupthink
Groupthink appears closely aligned with the conclusions Solomon Asch drew in his experiments with a lone dissenter. Individuals who hold a position different from that of the dominant majority are under pressure to suppress, withhold or modify their true feelings and beliefs. As members of a group, we find it more pleasant to be in agreement—to be a positive part of the group—than to be a disruptive force, even if disruption is necessary to improve the effectiveness of the group’s decisions. Groups that are more focused on performance than on learning are especially likely to fall victim to groupthink and to suppress the opinions of those who do not agree with the majority.98
However, groupthink doesn’t affect all groups. It seems to take place most often when there’s a clear group identity, when members hold a positive image of their group that they want to protect and when the group perceives a collective threat to this positive image.99 Groupthink is not a dissenter-suppression mechanism as much as it is a means for a group to protect its positive image. One study showed that those influenced by groupthink were more confident about their course of action early on;100 however, groups that believe too strongly in the correctness of their course of action are more likely to suppress dissent and encourage conformity than groups that are more sceptical about their course of action.
There are several ways managers can minimise groupthink.101 First, they can monitor group size. People grow more intimidated and hesitant as group size increases and, although there’s no magic number that will eliminate groupthink, individuals are likely to feel less personal responsibility when groups get larger than about ten members. Managers should also encourage group leaders to play an impartial role. Leaders should actively seek input from all members and avoid expressing their own opinions, especially in the early stages of deliberation. In addition, managers should appoint one group member to play the role of devil’s advocate; this member’s role is to overtly challenge the majority position and offer divergent perspectives. Still another suggestion is to use exercises that stimulate active discussion of diverse alternatives without threatening the group and intensifying identity protection. For example, you could have group members talk about dangers or risks in a decision and to delay discussion of any potential gains. Requiring members to first focus on the negatives of an alternative makes the group less likely to stifle dissenting views and more likely to gain an objective evaluation.
Groupshift or group polarisation
There are differences between group decisions and the individual decisions of group members.Sometimes group decisions are more conservative. More often, they lean towards greater risk. We can view this group polarisation as a special case of groupthink. The group’s decision reflects the dominant decision-making norm—towards greater caution or more risk—that develops during discussion.
The shift towards polarisation has several explanations.It’s been argued, for instance, that discussion makes the members more comfortable with each other and therefore more willing to express extreme versions of their original positions. Another argument is that the group diffuses responsibility. Group decisions free any single member from accountability for the group’s final choice, so a more extreme position can be taken. It’s also likely that people take extreme positions because they want to demonstrate how different they are from the outgroup.People on the fringes of political or social movements take on ever-more-extreme positions just to prove they’
Group decision making
Group decision-making techniques
Interacting groups – members interact face-to-face
Brainstorming – encourage all alternatives, withhold criticism
Nominal group technique
Members meet as a group, but first each member writes down ideas on the problem
Each member presents one idea to the group
The group discusses the ideas
Each group member rank-orders the ideas
jcu.edu.au
https://blog.teamweek.com/2018/09/6-group-decision-making-techniques-your-team-needs-now/
1. Brainstorm Ideas
When you think of a thunderstorm, they tend to be scattered, sporadic, and unpredictable. While the same can be said of a team brainstorming session, they are done with an end result in mind. Even if that end result is just to get potential ideas, this group decision making technique offers a great way for free-flowing thoughts to be shared with the rest of the team.
The main point of these brainstorming meetings is to generate as many suggestions as possible. Oftentimes, these gatherings are more geared toward developing new ideas than they are in making a final decision. But in some cases, one idea will stand out from the others and be chosen as the resolution.
2. Nominal Group Technique
This unique group decision making strategy takes brainstorming one step further by including a voting process. But the Nominal Group Technique is not as simple as counting how many hands are raised for each available option. Instead, each member of the group is given the opportunity to place their vote and also give an explanation as to why they feel it is the best choice.
There are a handful of ways to use this technique, depending on the topic of discussion. If it is a highly controversial subject, you may want to have every team member share their personal opinion in a confidential email and then present the final results and explanations without using names. Otherwise, you can allow the members to express their feelings during an open discussion and take each vote after their viewpoint has been shared.
3. Delphi Technique
When a team truly struggles to reach a consensus for a major decision, you may need to step in and narrow down the options for them. The Delphi Technique takes all the ideas and compiles them for the manager of the group to break down into a smaller amount of possibilities. He or she then takes the remaining options back to the group for their consideration.
If the team continues to grapple over the resolution, the manager will condense the choices even further until they can make a decision. It gets easier for groups to reach an agreement when there are fewer outcomes available.
4. Put it to a Vote
In situations where the decision will be the direct result of a basic yes or no answer, a straightforward vote may be the simplest solution. This tactic can be an easy way to resolve small issues or determine the best course of action for basic questions. As the team manager, it will be up to you to decide when a basic vote is all that will be needed.
This type of decision can be done without the need for a scheduled meeting. To save time, simply request a vote via an email poll or use the communication features in your project management software to get everyone’s response.
5. Rank the Possibilities
Rankings work for determining who is the best within sport leagues like the NFL and MLB, so why wouldn’t they work for a business as well? Whether you decide on an idea’s ranking by using a voting system or working as a team to prioritize them, it can be a great group decision making process for issues or questions that have many potential outcomes.
This technique can be organized through email, an online communication tool, or in a brief meeting. One specific way to determine how the possible scenarios should be ranked is by having everyone make a personal list of how they would rank them. Then, combine the lists and do some basic math to determine the average spot where each possibility should be represented.
The most common form of group decision making takes place in interacting groups. Members meet face-to-face and rely on both verbal and non-verbal interaction to communicate. Brainstorming and the nominal group technique can reduce problems inherent in the traditional interacting group. Interacting group - typical groups in which members interact with each other face-to-face.
Exhibit 8.5
Evaluating group effectiveness
jcu.edu.au
The nominal group technique restricts discussion or interpersonal communication during the decision-making process, hence the term nominal. Group members are all physically present, as in a traditional committee meeting, but they operate independently. Specifically, a problem is presented and then the group takes the following steps:
Members meet as a group, but before any discussion takes place each member independently writes down ideas on the problem.
After this silent period, each member presents one idea to the group. No discussion takes place until all ideas have been presented and recorded.
The group discusses the ideas for clarity and evaluates them.
Each group member silently and independently rank-orders the ideas. The idea with the highest aggregate ranking determines the final decision.
Nominal group technique - A group decision-making method in which individual members meet face-to-face to pool their judgements in a systematic but independent fashion.
The chief advantage of the nominal group technique is that it permits a group to meet formally but doesn’t restrict independent thinking, as does an interacting group. Research generally shows that nominal groups outperform brainstorming groups.
Each of the group-decision techniques—interacting, brainstorming and nominal—has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The choice depends on what criteria you want to emphasise and the cost–benefit trade-off. As Exhibit 8.5 indicates, an interacting group is good for achieving commitment to a solution, brainstorming develops group cohesiveness and the nominal group technique is an inexpensive means for generating a large number of ideas.
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Summary
The impact of size on a groups’ performance depends on the type of task.
Cohesiveness may influence a group’s level of productivity, depending on the group’s performance-related norms.
Diversity seems to have a mixed impact on group performance.
Groups can be carefully managed towards positive organisational outcomes and optimal decision making.
jcu.edu.au
We can draw several implications from our discussion of groups. First, norms control behaviour by establishing standards of right and wrong. Second, status inequities create frustration and can adversely influence productivity and willingness to remain with an organisation. Third, the impact of size on a group’s performance depends on the type of task. Fourth, cohesiveness may influence a group’s level of productivity, depending on the group’s performance-related norms. Fifth, diversity appears to have a mixed impact on group performance, with some studies suggesting that diversity can help performance and others suggesting the opposite. Sixth, role conflict is associated with job-induced tension and job dissatisfaction.110 Groups can be carefully managed towards positive organisational outcomes and optimal decision making.
Implications for managers
Recognise that groups can have a dramatic impact on individual behaviour in organisations, to either positive or negative effect. Therefore, pay special attention to roles, norms and cohesion—to understand how these are operating within a group is to understand how the group is likely to behave.
To decrease the possibility of deviant workplace activities, ensure that group norms don’t support antisocial behaviour.
Pay attention to the status aspect of groups. Because lower status people tend to participate less in group discussions, groups with high-status differences are likely to inhibit input from lower-status members and reduce their potential.
Use larger groups for fact-finding activities and smaller groups for action-taking tasks. With larger groups, provide measures of individual performance.
To increase employee satisfaction, make certain people perceive their job roles accurately.
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Topic 9
Understanding work teams
jcu.edu.au
23
Few trends have influenced jobs as much as the massive movement to introduce teams into the workplace. The shift from working alone to working in teams requires employees to cooperate with others, share information, confront differences, and sublimate personal interests for the greater good of the team.
Effective teams have common characteristics. They have adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions. These teams have individuals with technical expertise as well as problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills, and the right traits, especially conscientiousness and openness.
Effective teams also tend to be small—with fewer than ten people, preferably from diverse backgrounds. They have members who fill role demands and who prefer to be part of a group. And the work that members do provides freedom and autonomy; the opportunity to use different skills and talents; the ability to complete a whole, identifiable task or product; and has a substantial impact on others.
Effective teams have members who believe in the team’s capabilities and are committed to a common plan and purpose; an accurate shared mental model of what is to be accomplished; share specific team goals; maintain a manageable level of conflict; and a minimal degree of social loafing.
Because individualistic organisations and societies attract and reward individual accomplishments, it can be difficult to create team players in these environments.
To make the conversion, management should try to select individuals who have the interpersonal skills to be effective team players, provide training to develop teamwork skills, and reward individuals for cooperative efforts.
What is the difference between a group and a team? A group may just be individuals who are together. A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help each group member perform within his or her area of responsibility. A work team generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a performance that is greater than the sum of the individual input. Teams have member commitment to a common purpose, establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, a managed level of conflict and minimisation of social loafing.
Learning Objectives
Analyse the growing popularity of teams in organisations
Compare and contrast groups versus teams
Evaluate the characteristics of effective teams
jcu.edu.au
Why Have Teams Become So Popular?
Teams typically outperform individuals when the tasks being done require multiple skills, judgment and experience.
Teams are flexible and responsive to changing events.
Teams can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband.
https://www.managementstudyguide.com/understanding-team.htm
What is a team ?
A team is a group of individuals, all working together for a common purpose. The individuals comprising a team ideally should have common goals, common objectives and more or less think on the same lines. Individuals who are not compatible with each other can never form a team. They should have similar if not the same interests, thought processes, attitude, perception and likings.
Difference between Group and Team
A group is not necessarily a team. A group can have individuals with varied interests, attitude as well as thought processes. It is not necessary that the group members would have a common objective or a common goal to achieve.
What happens in a political rally ? The political leader appeals to the individuals to cast the votes in his favour only. Do you think all of them would cast the votes in favour of the leader ? There would always be some individuals who would support his opponent. This is example of a group. All individuals gathered on a common platform but had dissimilar interests and likings. Some were in favour of the leader while some against.
A team must have individuals with a common objective to achieve. They should all work together and strive towards the achievement of a common goal.
What happens in a cricket team ?
All the players have a common focus and a common objective. Everyone, the captain, the wicketkeeper, the bowlers, the fielders all work together to achieve a common target i.e. win the game. No one ever thinks of losing the game.
It is not only the individuals who form a team; even animals can constitute a team. Go to any hill station and one can spot many horses all working for a common goal i.e. Carry people to the hill top and bring them back.
Team members
The team members must complement each other. All team members should help each other and work in unison. Personal interests must take a back seat and all of them must deliver their level best to achieve the team objective. Team members must not argue among themselves or underestimate the other member.
Organizations have a sales team, administration team, human resources team operation team and so on. All the members of the sales team would work together to achieve the sales target and generate revenues for the organization.
Team Size
The team size depends on the complexity of the task to be accomplished. Ideally a team should consist of 7-10 members. Too many members also lead to confusions and misunderstandings.
It is not always that we require a team. Teams should be formed when the task is a little complicated. A single brain can sometimes not take all critical decisions alone, thus a team is formed where the team members contribute equally making the task easy. A team can actually create wonders if all the team members work in unison.
Introduction
Teams are increasingly the primary means of organising work in contemporary organisations.
This topic addresses how we can maximise A team’s performance, what conditions affect their potential, and how members work together.
jcu.edu.au
https://study.com/academy/lesson/types-of-contemporary-organizational-designs-matrix-team-network-designs.html
Team Design Structures
There are times when things go badly at for organizations. An organization might adopt a team organizational design, whereby groups of employees are formed from various functional areas for the purpose of solving problems and exploring possibilities. Teams can be both horizontal and vertical. The objective of a team structure is to break down functional barriers among departments to strengthen working relationships and mprove efficiency. Having a group member from each department ensures that everyone’s interests are being represented during the problem-solving and decision-making process.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/toolkits/pages/developingandsustaininghigh-performanceworkteams.aspx
Characteristics of High-Performance Work Teams
Although there is no simple measure of performance effectiveness for groups, and no team is identical, there seems to be a shared understanding of what makes an effective group work. High-performance work teams are generally composed of a combination of purpose and goals, talent, skills, performance ethics, incentives and motivation, efficacy, leadership, conflict, communication, power and empowerment, and norms and standards.
Team purpose, goals and roles
High-performing teams are synergistic social entities that work toward the achievement of a common goal or goals—short term and long term. They often exemplify a total commitment to the work and to each other. Team members do better work when their roles are clear: They know how to do their jobs and why they are doing them. Each member must understand and support the meaning and value of the team's mission and vision. Clarifying the purpose and tying it to each person's role and responsibilities enhances team potential, as does the inclusion of "stretch" goals that increase the challenge necessary to motivate team members.
Talent, skills and work ethic
High-performance teams begin by recruiting and retaining their best talent while quickly helping low-performing members find other places to work. Morale typically increases as performance increases. After selecting for talent, it is critical to ensure that the team members possess complementary skills (e.g., technical, problem-solving, decision-making and interpersonal skills). Team members must exhibit a sustained commitment to performance excellence, exercise candor and mutual respect, and hold themselves and their organizations accountable at both the individual and team levels.
Incentives, motivation and efficacy
Both monetary and nonmonetary systems that encourage high performance have a positive impact on tactical implementation of the team's goals. Over the long term, intrinsic motivators such as personal satisfaction at work and working on interesting projects provide the greatest impact on performance. In addition, a belief in one's self and abilities encourages people to take more strategic risks to achieve team goals.
Leadership
High-performing leaders generally accompany high-performance work teams. Essential leadership qualities include the ability to a) keep the purpose, goals and approach relevant and meaningful; b) build commitment and confidence; c) ensure that team members constantly enhance their skills; d) manage relationships from the outside with a focus on the removal of obstacles that might hinder group performance; e) provide opportunities for others without seeking credit; and f) get in the trenches and do the real work required. There is widespread agreement that effective team leaders focus on purpose, goals, relationships and an unwavering commitment to results that benefit the organization and each individual.
Conflict and communication
Conflict management is an essential part of becoming a high-performance team. Open communication in such teams means a focus on coaching instead of on directing and a focus on the ability to immediately address issues openly and candidly. The key to team performance is open lines of communication at all times to provide motivation, maintain interest and promote cooperation.
Power and empowerment
Empowered work teams increase ownership, provide an opportunity to develop new skills, boost interest in the project and facilitate decision-making. Researchers refer to the ideal situation as being "loose-tight," such that specific decision-making boundaries are constructed with enough room for individuals to make empowered choices.
Norms and standards
Like rules that govern group behavior, norms can be helpful in improving team development and performance. Norms for high-performance teams include open lines of communication, early resolution of conflict, regular evaluation of both individual and team performance, high levels of respect among members, a cohesive and supportive team environment, a strong work ethic that focuses on results, and shared recognition of team successes. The key is that high-performing teams actually discuss and agree to their operating rules—standards that each team member agrees to uphold and for which they hold each other accountable
Why have teams become so popular?
Teams are more flexible and responsive to changing events.
Teams can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus and disband.
They help to democratise organisations and increase employee involvement.
jcu.edu.au
How do you explain the growing popularity of teams in organisations? As organisations have restructured themselves to compete more effectively and efficiently, they have turned to teams as a better way to use employee talents. Some of the reasons include:
Teams are a great way to use employee talents.
Teams are more flexible and responsive to changes in the environment.
They can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus and disband.
They can facilitate employee involvement.
They can increase employee participation in decision making.
They can democratise an organisation and increase motivation.
https://www.57lbs.com/insights/why-are-work-teams-popular-in-organizations-today
Teamwork in business is nothing new. Actually, seeing a team come together to achieve a successful outcome is a true sight to behold. Unfortunately, teams are often plagued with delays and dependencies and tend to fumble toward an outcome that is only painfully realized, and sometimes not at all. To help eliminate stagnation, the agile methodology utilizes cross-functional work teams. When organized and managed correctly, agile work teams have much to offer businesses.
The Importance of work teams for companies
Agile was originally developed to improve the process of software development. Now, companies are embracing the non-linear methods of the agile philosophy to manage other projects. The struggle with work teams often become apparent when teams are put on hold, awaiting the work of another team or approval of some kind. With agile work teams, these delays are no longer a problem.
Using outcomes to drive autonomous work teams
Work teams create autonomous groups of experts working toward a common goal. Outlining outcomes as a starting point and allowing work teams to develop the steps it takes to get there creates a seamless process. Work teams are in the trenches. They understand what needs to happen to produce an effective product and they usually have a greater understanding of what customers want to see. Because the work team is also in control of outlining the process, unnecessary steps are eliminated, which reduces the time to market and allows non-critical team members to focus their efforts to other projects.
Removing dependencies from work teams leads to higher productivity
Agile teams are more efficient. One of the great benefits of a truly agile work team is the removal of dependencies. It’s a common complaint around offices: “I can’t get anything done until I hear from [enter other department],” or “I have everything ready, I’m just waiting on Bill to get the approval.”
Work teams remove these dependencies so that only essential team members are in control of delivering their portion of the project. No more holdups.
High-quality products result from work teams
Empowering teams to make decisions regarding end results is sometimes intimidating for organizations. But, it is important to remember that agile work teams are not without checks and balances. Work teams perform short sprints and own only a portion of an overall product, making it easy to make corrections along the way or roll back something that is unsuccessful. In fact, the term agile is derived from the adaptable nature of the overall process. Modifications are encouraged to continuously refine and improve the overall process.
Another benefit that often leads to improved results is the ability to identify exactly where gaps or delays are occurring. Because teams are assigned ownership of only one feature or chunk of the overall process, it becomes easier to pinpoint where deficiencies are happening.
Work teams make simple work of scaling
Most businesses are consistently directing their attention towards growth. Work teams make it simple to expand. As long as you continue to adhere to agile best practices, you can add teams to handle larger projects without affecting the other sections of a project. With autonomous teams, scaling is simply a matter of defining outcomes and gathering your team.
Differences between groups and teams
A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within their area of responsibility.
A work team generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those individual inputs.
jcu.edu.au
The nature of technology and the work flow system of the organisation is a major determinant of the operation of groups, and the attitude and behaviour of their members. Low morale and a negative attitude towards management and the job are often associated with a large number of workers undertaking similar work. A number of dif- ferent early studies have drawn attention to the relationship between technology and work groups.36 The nature of technology and the work organisation can result in a feeling of alienation, especially among manual workers. Factors which have been shown to affect alienation include the extent to which the work of the individual or the group amounts to a meaningful part of the total production process, and the satisfaction which workers gain from relationships with fellow workers and group membership. New technological methods resulted in changes to the previous system of group working and disrupted traditional social relationships and the integration of small groups.
Technology is clearly a major influence on the pattern of group operation and behaviour. The work organisation may limit the opportunities for social interaction and the extent to which individuals are able to identify themselves as members of a cohesive work group. This in turn can have possible adverse effects on attitudes to work and the level of job satisfaction. In many assembly line production systems, for example, relationships between individual workers are determined by the nature of the task, the extent to which individual jobs are specified, and the time cycle of operations.
Exhibit 9.1
Comparing work groups and work teams
jcu.edu.au
Arguably all teams are groups, but not all groups are teams. A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within their area of responsibility. Work groups have no need or opportunity to engage in collective work that requires joint effort; their performance is merely the summation of each group member’s individual contribution. There’s no positive synergy that would create an overall level of performance greater than the sum of the inputs.
Work group - A group that interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help each group member perform within their area of responsibility.
A work team, on the other hand, generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those individual inputs. Exhibit 9.1 highlights the differences between work groups and work teams.
Work team - A group whose individual efforts result in performance that is greater than the sum of the individual inputs.
These definitions help clarify why so many organisations have recently restructured work processes around teams. Management is looking for positive synergy that will allow the organisation to increase performance. The extensive use of teams creates the potential for an organisation to generate greater outputs with no increase in inputs. Notice, however, that we said potential. There’s nothing inherently magical in the creation of teams that will ensure the achievement of positive synergy. Merely calling a group a team doesn’t automatically improve its performance. Sue, the volunteer leader in the chapter’s opening vignette, faces the daily challenge of helping random groups of volunteers develop into cohesive teams and, although she always uses the word ‘team’, she’s the first to recognise that this is not always successful. As we’ll see later in the chapter, effective teams have certain common characteristics. If management hopes to improve organisational performance by using teams, they must possess these characteristics.
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Types of teams
Problem-solving teams
Self-managed work teams – take on responsibilities of their former supervisors
Cross-functional teams
Virtual teams
Multi-team systems – A collection of two or more interdependent teams that share a superordinate goal; a team of teams.
jcu.edu.au
What are the main types of teams?
Problem-solving teams: groups of five to 12 employees from the same department who meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency and the work environment.
Self-managed work teams: groups of 10 to 15 people who take on the responsibilities of their former supervisors.
Cross-functional teams: employees from about the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
Virtual teams: teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.
Multi-team system: A collection of two or more interdependent teams that share a superordinate goal; a team of teams.
https://www.heflo.com/blog/business-management/different-types-of-work-teams/
What are the different types of work teams – from a different perspective:
Each of these different types of work teams has a specific purpose that justifies their creation according to each model.
See details of each of them:
1- Functional work team
In this work team, all the members belong to the same functional area and respond to a single manager, responsible for the management of the whole group.
It’s very common in companies with rigid hierarchies and you’ll recognize them for the examples we are going to give: such as Accounting and HR departments or the Maintenance team and other specialized groups like these.
2- Inter-working team
In this case, the work team is made up of members from different areas of activity, and its members usually have the same hierarchical level.
This type of work team is usually formed to develop work with a multidisciplinary view, in which each area represented by team members complements the knowledge of others, bringing more creative and comprehensive results.
Examples of these types of work teams would be committees and councils, where members from different areas work together to solve specific problems, such as a Sustainability Committee, for example; or strategic, as is the case with the Boards of Directors of companies.
3- Troubleshooting team
Organizations employ these teams usually to improve processes to find out how to solve the problems that are harming them.
When determining the options for solving the causes of problems, they are sent to the departments responsible, as this kind of work team does not implement the solutions it suggests.
4- Self-managed teams
Groups of employees who work in an extremely integrated and collaborative way because they don’t have a formal leader.
Members define the division of labor, responsibilities and the distribution of tasks, as well as make decisions and even control and supervise themselves.
5- Project team
These are work groups an organization creates to implement a specific project until completion. Afterward, the group dissolves as it achieved its objectives.
Typically, members come from different areas of the company and perform other tasks related to their home department.
But, as far as the project is concerned, they answer to the project leader.
6- Task Force team
This is one of the most interesting types of work teams. They form only when emergency situations emerge which the organization needs to solve.
Its members are usually the best of the company in the area. During the resolution of the emergency, they will dedicate themselves exclusively to this task. Their goal is to do this in the best way and in the shortest possible time.
Creating effective teams
Contextual factors
Adequate resources
Leadership and structure
Climate of trust
Performance evaluation and reward systems
jcu.edu.au
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/5-steps-to-building-an-effective-team_b_7132406
Five steps to building a productive and effective team this year:
Step 1: Establish leadership.
If your employees trust your judgement, they will work effectively even when you’re not around. Before you can start team building, you need to develop the right kind of leadership skills. This doesn’t mean asserting authority, instead try to foster trust through honesty and transparency. Especially in larger organizations, managers can’t be everywhere at once, but if your employees trust your judgements they will work effectively even when you’re not around.
Step 2: Establish relationships with each of your employees.
Try to learn more about each member of your team, their skill sets, how they are motivated and their likes and dislikes. This knowledge is invaluable to leaders, as it allows them to match each employee’s expertise and competencies to specific problems, which will help increase their productivity and job satisfaction.
As well as this, try to include your employees in the decision making process where possible. Instead of delegating tasks, give your team’s open-ended projects and allow them to determine the best solution. This will encourage them to cooperate and develop problem solving skills.
Step 3: Build relationships between your employees.
As your team starts to cooperate more, examine the way they work together and take steps to improve communication, cooperation and trust amongst the team. If there are any conflicts, try to resolve them amicably. Listen to both sides of the argument and act as a mediator. One way to do this is to brainstorm solutions, which helps to empower your employees and may lead to new solutions to the problem.
Step 4: Foster teamwork.
Once you have established relations with and between your employees, it’s time to help them work together effectively. Encourage your team to share information, both amongst themselves and within the wider organisation. Also, try to communicate more with your team. This goes beyond simply holding meetings, and includes things like being open to suggestions and concerns, asking about each team member’s work and offering assistance where necessary, and doing everything you can to communicate clearly and honestly with your team.
Step 5: Set ground rules for the team.
Finally, you can begin officially establishing your team through creating team values and goals, as well as evaluating team performance alongside individual performance. Be sure to include your team in this process, so they know what’s required and agree with it.
Team building is one of the most important responsibilities a manager has. It isn’t something that can be achieved in a short time and then forgotten. It is an ongoing organic process that you a will have to facilitate and guide. As this process unfolds, however, your team members will begin to trust and support one another and share their skill sets and effort in order to more effectively complete your organisation’s goals.
Contextual factors
Four important contextual factors related to team performance are resources, leadership, level of trust, and performance evaluation and reward systems.
Adequate resources
Teams are part of a larger organisation system; every work team relies on resources outside the group to sustain it. A scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of a team to perform its job effectively and achieve its goals. As one study concluded, ‘perhaps one of the most important characteristics of an effective work group is the support the group receives from the organisation’.This support includes timely information, proper equipment, adequate staffing, encouragement and administrative assistance.
Leadership and structure
Teams function poorly if members can’t agree on who does what, so that everyone shares the workload. Agreeing on the specifics of work and how these fit together to integrate individual skills requires leadership and structure, either from management or the team members themselves. In self-managed teams, team members fulfil many of the duties typically assumed by managers. Leader personality, engagement and leadership style all have an impact on team effectiveness. As mentioned before, leadership is especially important in multi-team systems. Here, leaders delegate responsibility to their teams, ensuring they work together rather than against one another.
Climate of trust
Trust is the foundation of leadership, allowing a team to accept and commit to the leader’s goals and decisions. Members of effective teams exhibit trust in their leaders and also trust each other. Interpersonal trust facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each other’s behaviour and bonds individuals who know others won’t take advantage of them. Members are more likely to take risks and expose vulnerabilities when they trust their team-mates. The overall level of trust is important, but the way trust is dispersed among team members also matters. Trust levels that are asymmetric and imbalanced among team members can mitigate the performance advantages of a high overall level of trust—in such cases, coalitions can form that undermine the team as a whole.
Trust can be vulnerable to shifting conditions in a team environment. Also, trust is not unequivocally desirable. For instance, research in Singapore found that, in high-trust teams, individuals are less likely to claim and defend personal ownership of their ideas, but individuals who do still claim personal ownership are rated as lower contributors by team members. This ‘punishment’ by the team may reflect resentments that create negative relationships, increased conflicts and reduced performance.
Performance evaluation and reward systems
Individual performance evaluations and incentives may interfere with the development of high-performance teams. Therefore, hybrid performance systems that recognise individual and team outcomes are preferable to wholly individual-based systems. Group-based appraisals, profit sharing, small-group incentives and other system modifications can reinforce team effort and commitment, although wholly extrinsically oriented reward systems have questionable value anyway.
Exhibit 9.3
Team effectiveness model
jcu.edu.au
What conditions or context factors determine whether teams are effective? The four contextual factors most significantly related to team performance are (1) adequate resources, (2) effective leadership, (3) a climate of trust, and (4) a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions.
The key components of an effective team are in three general categories including context, composition and process. Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum and commitment for members.
Many researchers have developed models to help understand what makes a team effective. Exhibit 9.3 summarises current thinking. As you’ll see, it builds on many of the group concepts. First, when considering this model, bear in mind that teams differ in form and structure, so the relative role of particular factors may differ across team types. Second, the model assumes that teamwork is preferable to individual work. Creating ‘effective’ teams when individuals can do the job better is like perfectly solving the wrong problem. Third, there are a number of ways to evaluate team effectiveness. For example, effectiveness can include various measures of productivity, managers’ ratings of team performance and measures of member satisfaction.
31
Creating effective teams
Team composition
Abilities of members
Personality of members
Allocation of roles (Belbin’s team role – next slide)
Diversity of members (organisational demography)
Cultural differences
Size of teams
Member preferences
jcu.edu.au
Team composition
Jon, the volunteer manager from the opening vignette, identified four types of team member or role: the politicians (good with people), the planners (good with logistics), the problem solvers (the creative ones) and the doers (happy to get on with the job). These are important qualities, but they’re not all that we should consider when staffing teams. Team composition variables include abilities and personalities of team members, allocation of roles, diversity, cultural differences, size of the team and members’ preferences for teamwork. As you would expect, opinions vary widely about the types of members that leaders want on their teams, and some evidence suggests that compositions may be more important at different stages of team development.
Abilities of members
It’s true that we can read about an athletic team of mediocre players who, because of excellent coaching, determination and precision teamwork, beat a far more talented group. But such cases make the news precisely because they’re unusual. A team’s performance depends in part on the knowledge, skills and abilities of individual members. Ability limits what members can do and how effectively they can perform within a team. For example, when solving a complex problem such as reengineering an assembly line, high-ability teams—composed of mostly intelligent members—do better than lower ability teams. High-ability teams are also more adaptable to changing situations; they can apply existing knowledge more effectively to new problems. Finally, a team leader’s ability matters; for example, smart leaders can help less able members struggling with a task. Less intelligent leaders can neutralise the performance of a high-ability team.
Personality of members
Personality significantly influences individual behaviour. Some dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model are particularly relevant to team effectiveness. Conscientiousness is especially important to teams. Conscientious people are good at backing up other team members and sensing when their support is needed. Conscientious teams also have other advantages—one study found that behavioural tendencies such as organisation, achievement orientation and endurance were all related to higher levels of team performance.
Analysis of individual personalities can contribute to group formation. Suppose an organisation needs to create 20 teams of four people each and has 40 highly conscientious people and 40 who score low on conscientiousness. Would it be preferable to (1) form 10 teams of highly conscientious people and 10 teams of members low on conscientiousness or (2) ‘seed’ each team with two people who scored high and two who scored low on conscientiousness? Perhaps surprisingly, evidence suggests option 1 is preferable; performance across the teams will be higher if the organisation forms ten highly conscientious teams and ten teams low in conscientiousness. This is because a team with varying conscientiousness levels will not work to the peak performance of its highly conscientious members. Instead, a group normalisation dynamic (or simple resentment) will complicate interactions and force the highly conscientious members to lower their expectations, thereby reducing the group’s performance.
What about other traits? Teams with a high level of openness to experience tend to perform better and research indicates that constructive task conflict enhances this. Open team members communicate better with one another and throw out more ideas, which can contribute to a team’s creativity and innovation.
Task conflict also enhances performance for teams with high levels of emotional stability. It’s not so much that the conflict itself drives team performance, but that teams characterised by openness and emotional stability are able to handle conflict and leverage it to improve performance. The minimum level of team member agreeableness matters too. Teams do worse when they have one or more highly disagreeable members, and a wide span in individual levels of agreeableness can lower productivity. Research is not clear on the outcomes of extraversion, but at least one study has indicated that high levels of extraversion in a team can increase the level of helping behaviours, particularly in a climate of cooperation. Accordingly, both the personality traits of individuals and shared personality characteristics of the team contribute to performance.
Exhibit 9.4
Belbin’s team roles
Action-oriented roles
Shaper
Implementer
Completer-Finisher
People oriented
Coordinator
Team worker
Resource investigator
Thought oriented
Plant
Monitor-evaluator
Specialist
jcu.edu.au
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_83.htm
Creating More Balanced Teams
Belbin suggests that, by understanding your role within a particular team, you can develop your strengths and manage your weaknesses as a team member, and so improve how you contribute to the team.
Team leaders and team development practitioners often use the Belbin model to help create more balanced teams.
Teams can become unbalanced if all team members have similar styles of behavior or team roles. If team members have similar weaknesses, the team as a whole may tend to have that weakness. If team members have similar team-work strengths, they may tend to compete (rather than cooperate) for the team tasks and responsibilities that best suit their natural styles.
Knowing this, you can use the model with your team to help ensure that necessary team roles are covered, and that potential behavioral tensions or weaknesses among the team member are addressed.
Understanding Belbin's Team Roles Model
Belbin identified nine team roles and he categorized those roles into three groups: Action Oriented, People Oriented, and Thought Oriented. Each team role is associated with typical behavioral and interpersonal strengths.
Belbin also defined characteristic weaknesses that tend to accompany each team role. He called the characteristic weaknesses of team roles the "allowable" weaknesses; as for any behavioral weakness, these are areas to be aware of and potentially improve.
The nine team roles are:
Action Oriented Roles
Shaper (SH)
Shapers are people who challenge the team to improve. They are dynamic and usually extroverted people who enjoy stimulating others, questioning norms, and finding the best approaches for solving problems. The Shaper is the one who shakes things up to make sure that all possibilities are considered and that the team does not become complacent.
Shapers often see obstacles as exciting challenges and they tend to have the courage to push on when others feel like quitting.
Their potential weaknesses may be that they're argumentative, and that they may offend people's feelings.
Implementer (IMP)
Implementers are the people who get things done. They turn the team's ideas and concepts into practical actions and plans. They are typically conservative, disciplined people who work systematically and efficiently and are very well organized. These are the people who you can count on to get the job done.
On the downside, Implementers may be inflexible and can be somewhat resistant to change.
Completer-Finisher (CF)
Completer-Finishers are the people who see that projects are completed thoroughly. They ensure that there have been no errors or omissions and they pay attention to the smallest of details. They are very concerned with deadlines and will push the team to make sure the job is completed on time. They are described as perfectionists who are orderly, conscientious and anxious.
However, a Completer-Finisher may worry unnecessarily, and may find it hard to delegate.
People Oriented Roles
Coordinator (CO)
Coordinators are the ones who take on the traditional team-leader role and have also been referred to as the chairmen. They guide the team to what they perceive are the objectives. They are often excellent listeners and they are naturally able to recognize the value that each team member brings to the table. They are calm and good-natured, and delegate tasks very effectively.
33
Creating effective teams
Team processes
Common plan and purpose
Specific goals
Team efficacy – collective belief that they can succeed at their tasks
Team identity – affinity and sense of belongness
Team cohesion
Mental models – knowledge and beliefs about how work should be done
Conflict levels
Social loafing
jcu.edu.au
Common plan and purpose
Effective teams are likely to begin by analysing their mission, developing goals to achieve that mission and creating strategies to achieve the goals. Teams that consistently perform well have a clear sense of what needs to be done and how. This sounds obvious, but many teams ignore this fundamental process. Members of successful teams put much time and effort into discussing, shaping and sharing a purpose that belongs to them collectively and individually. This common purpose becomes like a GPS for a ship’s captain, providing direction and guidance under any conditions. Like a ship following the wrong course, teams that lack good planning skills are in danger of losing their way. Teams need to agree on whether they should learn to master a task or simply perform the task. Evidence suggests that different perspectives on learning versus performance lead to lower levels of team performance overall. Teams that emphasise learning are more likely to agree on shared goals, and identification with a team is easier when members strongly identify with these goals.
Effective teams show reflexivity, meaning they reflect on and adjust their purpose when necessary. A good plan is important, but members need to be willing and able to adapt when conditions call for it. Reflexivity is especially important for teams that have a poor past performance. Some evidence also suggests that reflexive teams are better able to adapt if members’ individual plans and goals conflict.
Reflexivity - A team characteristic of reflecting on and adjusting a master plan when necessary.
Specific goals
Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable and realistic performance goals. Specific goals facilitate clear communication. They help teams maintain their focus on getting results. Consistent with the research on individual goals, team goals should be challenging. Difficult but achievable goals raise team performance on those criteria for which they’re set. For instance, goals for quantity tend to increase quantity; goals for accuracy increase accuracy, and so on.
Team efficacy
Effective teams have confidence in themselves; they believe they can succeed. We call this team efficacy. Successful teams tend to raise their beliefs about future success, which in turn motivates future effort. In addition, teams with shared knowledge of individual capabilities can strengthen the link between team members’ self-efficacy and their individual creativity because members can solicit informed opinions from their team-mates more effectively.
Team efficacy - A team’s collective belief that they can succeed at their tasks.
What can management do to increase team efficacy? Two options are to help the team achieve small successes to build confidence and to provide training to improve members’ technical and interpersonal skills. The greater the abilities of team members, the more likely the team will develop confidence and the ability to deliver on that confidence.
Team identity
Social identity is important n people’s lives. As with groups, when people connect emotionally with the teams they join, they’re more likely to invest in their relationship with those teams. For example, research on Dutch soldiers indicated that those who felt included and respected by team members would work harder for their teams, even beyond normal military dedication to their units. Similarly, when team identity is strong, members who are highly motivated by performance goals are more likely to direct their efforts towards team goals rather than individual goals. Therefore, by recognising individuals’ specific skills and abilities, as well as creating a climate of respect and inclusion, leaders and members can foster positive team identity
The key components making up effective teams can be subsumed into 4 general categories:
Work Design: The first category is work design.
Composition: The second relates to the team’s composition.
Context: Third Is the resources and other contextual influences that make teams effective.
Process: Finally, process variables reflect those things that go on in the team that influences the effectiveness.
https://iedunote.com/creating-effective-team
What does team effectiveness mean in this model? (An alternate view with many overlapping or similar concepts)
Typically this has included objective measures of the team’s productivity, managers’ ratings of the team’s performance, and aggregate measures of member satisfaction.
Work Design
Effective teams need to work together and take collective responsibility to complete significant tasks. They must be more than a “team-in-name-only.
The work design category includes variables like freedom and autonomy, the opportunity to use different skills and talents, the ability to complete a whole and identifiable task or product, and working on a task that has a substantial impact on others. The evidence indicates that these characteristics enhance member motivation and increase their effectiveness.
These work design characteristics motivate because they increase members’ sense of responsibility and ownership over the work and because they make the work more interesting to perform.
Composition
This category includes variables relate to how teams should be staffed. In this section, we will address the ability and personality of team members, allocating roles and diversity, size of the team, member flexibility, and members’ preference for teamwork.
Abilities of members
To perform effectively, a team requires three different types of skills.
First, it needs people with technical expertise.
Second, it needs people with problem-solving and decision-making skills to be able to identify problems, generate alternatives, evaluate those alternatives, and make competent choices and other interpersonal skills.
Personality
Personality has a significant influence on individual employee behavior. This can also be extended to team behavior.
Many of the dimensions identified in the Big Five personality model Specifically, teams that rate higher in means levels of extroversion, agreeableness, consciousness, and emotional stability tend to receive higher managerial ratings for team performance.
Allocating roles and diversity
Teams have different needs, and people should be selected for a team to ensure that there is diversity and that all various roles are filled. Successful work teams have people to fill all these roles and have selected people to play in these roles based on their skills and preferences.
Size of teams
A president of a certain technology company says the secret to a great team is: ‘Think small. Ideally, your team should have seven to nine people”. His advice is supported by evidence.
Generally speaking, the most effective teams have fewer than 10 members. And experts suggest using the smallest number of people who can do the task.
Member flexibility
Teams made up of flexible individuals have members who can complete each others’ tasks. This is an obvious plus to a team because it greatly improves its adaptability and makes it less reliant on any single member.
So selecting members who themselves value flexibility, then cross-training them to be able to do each other’s jobs, should lead to higher team performance over time.
Members’ preferences
Not every employee is a team player.
Given the option, many employees will select themselves out of team participation.
When people who would prefer to work alone are required to team-up, there is a direct threat to the team’s morale and to individual member satisfaction.
This suggests that, when selecting team members, individual preferences should be considered as well as abilities, personalities, and skills. High-performing teams are likely to be composed of people who prefer working as part of a group.
Context
The four contextual factors that appear to be most significantly related to team performance are the presence of adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust, and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions.
Adequate Resources
All work teams rely on resources outside the group to sustain it. And the scarcity of resources directly reduces the ability of the team to perform its job effectively.
As one set of researchers concluded, after looking many factors potentially related to group performance, “perhaps one of the most important characteristics of an effective workgroup is the support the group receives from the organization”. This support from management and the larger organization if they are going to succeed in achieving their goals.
Leadership and Structure
Team members must agree on who is to do what and ensure that all members contribute equally to sharing the workload. In addition, the team needs to determine how schedules will be set, what Skills need to be developed, how the group will resolve conflict, and how the group will make and modify decisions.
Agreeing on the specifics of work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires team leadership and structure.
Climate of Trust
Members of effective teams trust each other. And they also exhibit trust in their leader’s Interpersonal trust among team members facilitates cooperation, reduces the need to monitor each others’ behavior, and bonds members around the belief that others on the team won’t take advantage of them.
Performance Evaluation and Reward Systems
How do you get team members to be both individually and jointly accountable?
The traditional, individually oriented evaluation and reward system must be modified to reflect team performance.
Individual performance evaluations, fixed hourly wages, individual incentives, and the like are not consistent with the development of high-performance teams.
So, in addition to evaluating and rewarding employees for their individual contributions, management should consider group-based appraisals, profit sharing, gain sharing, small group incentives, and other system modifications that will reinforce team effort and commitment.
Process
The final category related to team effectiveness is processed variables. These include member commitment to a common purpose, the establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, a managed level of conflict, and minimizing social loafing.
A common purpose
Effective teams have a common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum, and commitment for members. This purpose is vision. It’s broader than specific goals.
Specific goals
Successful teams translate their common purpose into specific, measurable, and realistic performance goals. Goals lead individuals to higher performance, goals also energize teams.
These specific goals facilitate clear communication. They also help teams maintain their focus on getting results.
Team efficacy
Effective teams have confidence in themselves. They believe they can succeed. We call this team efficacy.
Success breeds success. Teams that have been successful raise their beliefs about future success which in turn motivates them to work harder.
Conflict levels
Conflict on a team is not necessarily bad. Teams that are completely void of conflict are likely to become apathetic and stagnant. So conflict can actually improve team effectiveness. But not all types of conflict.
Social loafing
It is common that individuals can hide inside a group. They car engage in social loafing and coast on the group’s effort because their individual contributions can’t be identified. Effective teams undermine this tendency by holding themselves accountable at both individual and team level.
Successful teams make members individually and jointly accountable for the team’s purpose, goals, and approach. They are clear on what they are individually responsible for and what they are jointly responsible for.
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Exhibit 9.5
Effects of group processes
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Team processes
Our final category related to team effectiveness includes process variables such as the establishment of specific team goals, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion, mental models, a managed level of conflict and minimised social loafing. These variables are especially important in larger teams and in teams that are highly interdependent. Exhibit 9.5 illustrates how group processes can have an impact on a group’s actual effectiveness. Teams are often used in research laboratories because they can draw on the diverse skills of various individuals to produce more meaningful research than researchers working independently—that is, they produce positive synergy, and their process gains exceed their process losses.
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Turning individuals into team players
Selection: selecting team players
Training: creating team players
Rewarding: providing incentives to be a good team player
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A team can be described as a group whose individual efforts result in performance is greater than the sum of the individual inputs. A team creates positive synergy through coordinated effort.
Teams are important in that when effectiviely used help increase employee motivation due to participation in activities and decision making and are more flexible and responsive to changing events. They have better decision making, are more efficient, and have more personal ownership.
Some options to turn individuals to team players are discussed below.
Hiring the right Individuals
Some individuals will have already the interpersonal skills to be effective team players. Usually, when hiring staff, apart from their technical skills, it is important to ensure that the candidates have the necessary skills to fulfil their roles as team members.
There are various ways to check if individuals have capacity to be team members. These would include tests with different type of scenarios that the individual would be involved in a see how much of a team member / team role he would play.
According to Daniel(2007)Some questions that can be asked to show ability to work in a team are as follows “Share an experience that required you to build a team. What criteria did you use in selecting team members? What challenges and successes did the team have? How did you address members who were not being part of the team?”
Some candidates never have team skills when being employed. Usually in such a situation a manager can either decide to have them trained in an effort to try and convert them into team players, or transfer the individual to another unit that doesn’t require teams, or decide not hire the candidate.
On this note getting rid of bad employees helps create a good environment. Individuals remaining in the organization should be those that create a good working atmosphere, and owing to that will be willing to come to come to work since they love the enviroment and people they are working with.
Training
There are different ways in which individuals can be trained to become team players.
There are trainining exercises that can be used to show the importance of team accomplishments, and to go through the satisfaction that team work can provide.
Workshops can be offered to help employees improve their skills. These skills include communication, problem solving, negotiation and conflict management, amongst other skills.
They should be taken through different models of group development, such as the five stage group-delevopment model which emphasises on the five stages that groups should go through. These stages are the forming stage, storming stage, norming stage, performing stage and the adjourning stage.
Training also includes team building exercises and retreats which help team members to increase their trust and openness.
Employees during should always be reminded that teams take longer time to make decisions than individuals and thus have to learn to become a bit more patient.
Proper rewarding systems
Organization’s reward systems should be reworked to encourage cooperative efforts rather than competitive ones. Group-based appraisals should be encouraged to reinforce team effort and commitment.
Promotions, pay raises, and other forms of recongnition should be given to individuals who work effectively as collaborative team members.
Examples that should be rewarded include training new members, sharing information with colleagues, resolving team conflicts.
Another way to turn an individual into a team player is to try and introduce him in to a climate of trust. Members of effective teams exhibit trust amongst each other and their leaders. Trust is what will facilitate cooperation and brings bonds and belief that the other members will not take advantage of them / their efforts.
The individuals should also be placed in positions that they can utilize all their potential strenghts and talents. Positions that they will feel best suited for.
With all these discussed above, you can turn individuals in to a team, benefiting the individuals and the organization.
Beware! Teams aren’t always the answer
Three tests:
Can the work be done better by more than on person?
Does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that is more than the aggregate of individual goals?
Determine whether the members of the group are interdependent.
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Teamwork often takes more time and more resources than individual work. Teams have increased communication demands, conflicts to manage and meetings to run. So the benefits of using teams have to exceed the costs, and that’s not always possible.
How do you know whether the work of your group would be better done in teams? You can apply three tests. First, can the work be done better by more than one person? Good indicators are the complexity of the work and the need for different perspectives. Simple tasks that don’t require diverse input are probably better left to individuals. Second, does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the people in the group that is more than the aggregate of individual goals? Many new-vehicle dealers have introduced teams into service departments, linking customer service employees, mechanics, parts specialists and sales representatives. Such teams can better manage collective responsibility for meeting customer needs.
The final test is to determine whether the members of the group are interdependent. Using teams makes sense when tasks are interdependent—overall success depends on the success of each member, and individual success depends on the success of the others. For example, soccer is an obvious team sport. Success requires a great deal of coordination among interdependent players. Conversely, swim teams (except possibly for relays) aren’t really teams. They’re groups of individuals performing individually and whose total performance is merely the aggregate summation of their individual performances
Summary
Working in teams requires employees to cooperate, share information, confront differences, and supersede personal interests for the greater good of the team.
Understanding the distinctions between types of teams helps determine appropriate applications for team-based work.
For teams to function optimally, attention must be given to hiring, creating and rewarding team players.
Teams are not always the best method for getting the work done efficiently.
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Few trends have influenced jobs as much as the introduction of teams into the workplace. Working in teams requires employees to cooperate with others, share information, confront differences and supersede personal interests for the greater good of the team. Understanding the distinctions between problem solving, self-managed, cross-functional, virtual teams and multi-team systems helps determine appropriate applications for team-based work. Concepts such as reflexivity, team efficacy, team identity, team cohesion and mental models bring to light important issues relating to team context, composition and processes. For teams to function optimally, careful attention must be given to hiring, creating and rewarding team players. Still, effective organisations recognise that teams aren’t always the best method for getting the work done efficiently. Careful discernment and an understanding of organisational behaviour are needed.
Implications for managers
Effective teams have adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflects team contributions. These teams have individuals with technical expertise and the right traits and skills.
Effective teams tend to be small. They have members who fill role demands and who prefer to be part of a group.
Effective teams have members who believe in the team’s capabilities, are committed to a common plan and purpose and have an accurate shared mental model of what’s to be accomplished.
Select individuals who have the interpersonal skills to be effective team players provide training to develop teamwork skills, and reward individuals for cooperative efforts.
Don’t assume that teams are always needed. When tasks won’t benefit from interdependency, individuals may be the better choice.
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Workshop Activity
Topic: Should you use self-managed teams?
Assume you work for a large technology company that has recently acquired a local start-up firm with more expertise in a market your company is trying to enter. To utilise employees from the start-up fully, you are forming new teams with members from the parent company and the newly acquired firm for your research and development (R&D) division. Many of the employees from the start-up were part of self-managed teams before the company was acquired. Your must decide whether to adopt a traditional management style or allow the teams to be self managed.
Answer ALL these questions. Apply the learnings from today’s lecture in your answers.
What issues could affect the productivity of a self-managed team? Are these likely to be issues in a team with members from different companies? How could these issues be related to members from a new company? How could these issues be resolved?
How would you change, if at all, the reward structure for performance if the team were self-managed? Why?
After you have posted your answers to the above questions, thoughtfully reply to at least One other post in this discussion board.
This discussion board is open till 14 Dec, 2021 noon Singapore time
Go to Subject home page – Workshop Discussions – Workshop 5: Self-managed teams
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