MGT302 M3 Case (Trident University)

Organizational Behavior and Teamwork

Organizational Behavior and Teamwork

Boundless, Trident College

CONTENTS

Organizational BehaviorOrganizational Behavior ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................11 • Individual Perceptions and Behavior ................................................................................................................. 1 • Personality ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 • Drivers of Behavior .......................................................................................................................................... 11

Motivating an OrganizationMotivating an Organization................................................................................................................................................................................................................2626 • Motivating an Organization .............................................................................................................................. 26 • Employee Needs and Motivation ..................................................................................................................... 32 • Job Design and Motivation .............................................................................................................................. 38 • Compensation and Motivation ......................................................................................................................... 44

Groups, Teams, and TeamworkGroups, Teams, and Teamwork................................................................................................................................................................................................5252 • Defining Teams and Teamwork....................................................................................................................... 52 • Types of Teams ............................................................................................................................................... 63 • Building Successful Teams.............................................................................................................................. 69 • Factors Influencing Team Performance........................................................................................................... 77 • Managing Conflict ............................................................................................................................................ 84

Diversity in a Global Business WorldDiversity in a Global Business World ................................................................................................................................................................................9393 • Culture ............................................................................................................................................................. 93 • Shaping Organizational Culture..................................................................................................................... 101 • Diversity in Organizations .............................................................................................................................. 106 • Creating a Diverse Workforce........................................................................................................................ 114 • Challenges to Achieving Diversity ................................................................................................................. 122

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTIONS AND BEHAVIOR

The Perceptual Process

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information to represent and understand the environment.

Learning Objectives

Outline the internal and external factors that influence the perceptual selection process

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The perceptual process consists of six steps: the presence of objects, observation, selection, organization, interpretation, and response.

• Perceptual selection is driven by internal (personality, motivation ) and external (contrast, repetition) factors.

• Perceptual organization includes factors that influence how a person connects perceptions into wholes or patterns. These include proximity, similarity, and constancy, among others.

Key Terms

• factorfactor:An integral part. • PerceptionPerception:That which is detected by the five senses; that which is detected within consciousness as

a thought, intuition, or deduction.

Perceptual Process

The perceptual process is the sequence of psychological steps that a person uses to organize and interpret information from the outside world. The steps are:

• Objects are present in the world. • A person observes. • The person uses perception to select objects.

11

• The person organizes the perception of objects. • The person interprets the perceptions. • The person responds.

The selection, organization, and interpretation of perceptions can differ among different people. Therefore, when people react differently in a situation, part of their behavior can be explained by examining their perceptual process, and how their perceptions are leading to their responses.

Multistability: The Necker cube and Rubin vase can be perceived in more than one way. The vase can be seen as either a vase or two faces.

Perceptual Selection

Perceptual selection is driven by internal and external factors.

Internal factors include: • Personality—Personality traits influence how a person selects perceptions. For instance, conscientious

people tend to select details and external stimuli to a greater degree. • Motivation—People will select perceptions according to what they need in the moment. They will favor

selections that they think will help them with their current needs, and be more likely to ignore what is irrelevant to their needs.

• Experience—The patterns of occurrences or associations one has learned in the past affect current perceptions. The person will select perceptions in a way that fits with what they found in the past.

External factors include: • Size—A larger size makes it more likely an object will be selected. • Intensity—Greater intensity, in brightness, for example, also increases perceptual selection. • Contrast—When a perception stands clearly out against a background, there is a greater likelihood of

selection. • Motion—A moving perception is more likely to be selected. • Repetition—Repetition increases perceptual selection. • Novelty and familiarity—Both of these increase selection. When a perception is new, it stands out in a

person’s experience. When it is familiar, it is likely to be selected because of this familiarity.

Perceptual Organization

After certain perceptions are selected, they can be organized differently. The following factors are those that determine perceptual organization:

22

• Figure-ground—Once perceived, objects stand out against their background. This can mean, for instance, that perceptions of something as new can stand out against the background of everything of the same type that is old.

• Perceptual grouping—Grouping is when perceptions are brought together into a pattern. • Closure—This is the tendency to try to create wholes out of perceived parts. Sometimes this can result in

error, though, when the perceiver fills in unperceived information to complete the whole. • Proximity—Perceptions that are physically close to each other are easier to organize into a pattern or

whole. • Similarity—Similarity between perceptions promotes a tendency to group them together. • Perceptual Constancy—This means that if an object is perceived always to be or act a certain way, the

person will tend to infer that it actually is always that way. • Perceptual Context—People will tend to organize perceptions in relation to other pertinent perceptions,

and create a context out of those connections.

Each of these factors influence how the person perceives their environment, so responses to their environment can be understood by taking the perceptual process into account.

Cognitive Biases

Perceptual distortions, such as cognitive bias, can result in poor judgement and irrational courses of action.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the complex cognitive patterns that can complicate employee perception and behavior

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior that can cause deviations in judgement that produce negative consequences for an organization.

• Understanding how perception can be distorted is particularly relevant for managers because they make many decisions, and deal with many people making assessments and judgments, on a daily basis.

• Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These include information-processing shortcuts ( heuristics ), mental noise and the mind’s limited information processing capacity, emotional and moral motivations, and social influence.

• A few examples of perceptual distortions include confirmation bias, self-serving bias, causality, framing, and belief bias.

Key Terms

• cognitivecognitive:The area of mental function that deals with logic, as opposed to affective functions which deal with emotion.

• heuristicheuristic:Experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. An exhaustive search is impractical, so heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution.

A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment that occurs in particular situations and can lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality. Implicit in the concept of a pattern of deviation is a standard of comparison with what is normative or expected; this may be the judgment

33

of people outside those particular situations, or a set of independently verifiable facts. Essentially, there must be an objective observer to identify cognitive bias in a subjective individual.

Optical illusion: In this optical illusion all lines are actually parallel. Perceptual distortion makes them seem crooked.

Bias arises from various processes that can be difficult to distinguish. Bias is not inherently good or bad—it is pointedly subjective or contrary to reactions or decisions that one might objectively expect. Ways in which biases are derived include:

• Information-processing shortcuts (heuristics) • Mental noise • The mind’s limited information processing capacity • Emotional and moral motivations • Social influence

The notion of cognitive biases was introduced by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972 and grew out of their experience of people’s innumeracy, or inability to reason intuitively with greater orders of magnitude. They and their colleagues demonstrated several replicable ways in which human judgments and decisions differ from rational choice theory. They explained these differences in terms of heuristics, rules which are simple for the brain to compute but which introduce systematic errors.

Perceptual Distortions and Management

The ways in which we distort our perception are particularly relevant for managers because they make many decisions, and deal with many people making assessments an judgments, on a daily basis. Managers must be

44

aware of their own logical and perceptive fallacies and the biases of others. This requires a great deal of organizational behavior knowledge. A few useful perceptual distortions managers should be aware of include:

1. Confirmation bias—Simply put, humans have a strong tendency to manipulate new information and facts until they match their own preconceived notions. This inappropriate confirmation allows for poor decision-making that ignores the true implications of new data.

2. Self-serving bias—Another common bias is the tendency to take credit for success while passing the buck on failure. Managers must monitor this in employees and realize when they are guilty themselves. Being objective about success and failure enables growth and ensures proper accountability.

3. Belief bias—Individuals often make a decision before they have all the facts. In this situation, they believe that their confidence in their decision is founded on a rational and logical assessment of the facts when it is not.

4. Framing—It is quite easy to be right about everything if you carefully select the context and perspective on a given issue. Framing enables people to ignore relevant facts by narrowing down what is considered applicable to a given decision.

5. Causality—Humans are pattern-matching organisms. People analyze past events to predict future outcomes. Sometimes their analysis is accurate, but sometimes it is not. It is easy to see the cause- effect relationship in completely random situations. Statistical confidence intervals are useful in mitigating this perceptive distortion.

Impression Management

Impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others.

Learning Objectives

Outline the way in which impressions and impressions management affect management, organizations, and branding

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Influencing others and gaining rewards, along with other motives, govern impression management from a general perspective.

• Impression management theory states that an individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their stakeholder groups.

• Organizations use branding and other impressions management strategies to convey a consistent and repeatable image to external and internal audiences.

• Management must also consider the impressions they make on others, both subordinates and business partners. Every organization has an image to maintain—and so does its management.

Key Terms

• impressionimpression:The overall effect of something, e.g., on a person.

In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal -directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of others about a person, object, or event. Impression management is performed by controlling or shaping information in social interactions. It is usually synonymous with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence how others perceive their image.

55

Impression management is used by communications and public relations professionals to shape an organization’s public image.

While impression management and self-presentation are often used interchangeably, some argue that they are not the same. In particular, Schlenker believed that self-presentation should be used to describe attempts to control “self-relevant” images projected in “real or imagined social interactions.” This was because people manage impressions of entities other than themselves, such as businesses, cities, and other individuals.

Application to Management

From the managerial and/or organizational frame, the basic premise is the same. Organizations put forward a self-proclaimed (and strategized and refined) organizational perception. This is most commonly referred to as brand image or brand perception. Management must ensure that all aspects of the organization conform to and fulfill the desired brand image, and communicate it to the public.

Managers must also consider the impressions they make on others, both subordinates and business partners. Managers have to ensure that they too are promoting the company brand image. Maintaining a consistent and reliable impression in a professional context that is conducive to the organizational impression is a central communicative skill managers must practice to be successful.

Impression Management Theory

Impression management theory states that any individual or organization must establish and maintain impressions that are congruent with the perceptions they want to convey to their stakeholder groups. From both a communications and public relations viewpoint, impression management encompasses ways of communicating congruence between personal or organizational goals and their intended actions in order to influence public perception.

The idea that perception is reality is the basis for this sociological and social psychology theory. Perception of an individual—a manager or employee—fundamentally shapes how the public perceives an organization and its products.

Motives and Strategies

There are several motives that govern impression management. One is instrumental: we want to influence others and gain rewards. Giving the right impression facilitates desired social and material outcomes. Social outcomes can include approval, friendship, assistance, or power, and conveying an impression of competency in the workforce. These can trigger positive material rewards like higher salaries or better working conditions.

The second motive of self-presentation is expressive. We construct an image of ourselves to claim personal identity, and present ourselves in a manner that is consistent with that image. If people feel that their ability to express themselves is restricted, they react negatively, often by becoming defiant. People resist those who seek to curtail self-presentation expressiveness by adopting many different impression management strategies. One of them is ingratiation, the use of flattery or praise to highlight positive characteristics and increase social attractiveness. Another strategy is intimidation, which is aggressively showing anger to get others to hear and obey.

Basic Factors Governing Impression Management

There are a range of factors governing impression management. Impression management occurs in all social situations because people are always aware of being observed by others. The unique characteristics of a given social situation are important: cultural norms determine the appropriateness of particular verbal and nonverbal behaviors in different situations. These behaviors and actions have to be appropriate to the culture and the audience in order to positively influence impression management.

66

A person’s goals are another factor governing impression management. Depending on how they want to influence their audience regarding a certain topic, presenting themselves in different ways can shape different impressions and reactions in their audience.

Self-efficacy is also important to consider; this describes whether a person is confident that s/he can convey the intended impression successfully. If they aren’t confident, the audience will be able to tell.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• File:Multistability.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Multistability.svg&page=1. LicenseLicense: • Perception. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Perception. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Perception. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • factor. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/factor. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Optical-illusion-checkerboard. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Optical-illusion-checkerboard.svg. LicenseLicense: • Cognitive bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • cognitive. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cognitive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • heuristic. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heuristic. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Impression management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • impression. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impression. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

PERSONALITY

The Big Five Personality Traits

The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Learning Objectives

Apply the “Big Five” personality traits identified in psychology to organizational behavior

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The concept of the “Big Five” personality traits is taken from psychology and includes five broad domains that describe personality. The Big Five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

• These five factors are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. They were defined and described by several different researchers during multiple periods of research.

• Employees are sometimes tested on the Big Five personality traits in collaborative situations to determine what strong personality traits they can add to a group dynamic.

• Businesses need to understand their people as well as their operations and processes. Understanding the personality components that drive the employee behavior is a very useful informational data point for management.

Key Terms

• neuroticismneuroticism:The tendency to easily experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

77

Questionnaires for the Big Five personality traits: The Big Five personality traits are typically examined through surveys and questionnaires.

The concept of the “Big Five” personality traits is taken from psychology and includes five broad domains that describe personality. These five personality traits are used to understand the relationship between personality and various behaviors.

These five factors are assumed to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. These five factors were defined and described by several different researchers during multiple periods of research. However, as a result of their broad definitions, the Big Five personality traits are not nearly as powerful in predicting and explaining actual behavior as are the more numerous lower-level, specific traits.

The Five Traits

The traits are: 1. Openness—Openness to experience describes a person’s degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and

preference for novelty and variety. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret this factor, which is sometimes called intellect.

2. Conscientiousness—Conscientiousness is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement. Conscientiousness also refers to planning, organization, and dependability.

3. Extraversion—Extraversion describes energy, positive emotions, assertiveness, sociability, talkativeness, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.

4. Agreeableness—Agreeableness is the tendency to be compassionate and cooperative towards others rather than suspicious and antagonistic.

5. Neuroticism—Neuroticism describes vulnerability to unpleasant emotions like anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability. Neuroticism also refers to an individual’s level of emotional stability and impulse control and is sometimes referred to as emotional stability.

Applicability to Organizational Behavior

When scored for individual feedback, these traits are frequently presented as percentile scores. For example, a conscientiousness rating in the 80th percentile indicates a relatively strong sense of responsibility and orderliness, whereas an extraversion rating in the 5th percentile indicates an exceptional need for solitude and quiet.

Employees are sometimes tested on the Big Five personality traits in collaborative situations to determine what strong personality traits they can add to the group dynamic. Personality tests can also be part of the behavioral interview process when a company is hiring to determine an individual’s ability to act on certain personality characteristics.

Understanding its people is as important to a company as understanding its operations and processes. Understanding what personality components drive the behavior of subordinates is a highly useful informational data point for management that can be used to determine what type of assignments should be set, how motivation should be pursued, what team dynamics may arise, and how to best approach conflict and/or praise when applicable.

88

The Myers-Briggs Personality Types

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a commonly used personality test exploring 16 personality types.

Learning Objectives

Summarize the Myers-Briggs (MBTI) personality assessment perspective and the four personality types it measures

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a questionnaire that measures the psychological preferences that influence how people perceive the world and make decisions. The MBTI sorts psychological differences into four opposite pairs, resulting in 16 possible personality types.

• None of these types are good or bad; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that societies as a whole naturally prefer one overall type.

• The four type preferences are Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judgment vs. Perception. One possible classification of a personality type could be ESTJ: extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J).

• Myers-Briggs tests are frequently used in the areas of career counseling, team building, group dynamics, professional development, marketing, leadership training, executive coaching, life coaching, personal development, marriage counseling, and workers’ compensation claims.

Key Terms

• Forced-choiceForced-choice:A type of question used in psychological tests that only allows the individual to choose between one of two possible answers to each question.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a questionnaire designed to measure the psychological preferences that shape how people perceive the world and make decisions. The original developers of the personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. They began work on a questionnaire during World War II to help women who were entering the industrial workforce as part of the war effort to understand their own personality preferences and use that knowledge to identify the jobs that would be best for them. That initial questionnaire grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which was first published in 1962. The MBTI focuses on normal populations and emphasizes the value of naturally occurring differences between people.

99

MBTI personality types: The dimensions of the MBTI are seen here, along with temperament descriptions associated with each personality trait.

MBTI Defined

The MBTI sorts psychological differences into four opposite pairs, or dichotomies, resulting in 16 possible psychological personality types. None of these types are good or bad; however, Briggs and Myers theorized that societies as a whole naturally prefer one overall type. In the same way that writing with the left hand is hard work for a right-handed person, people find that using their opposite psychological preferences is difficult, even if they can become proficient by practicing and developing those different ways of thinking and behaving.

The 16 Personality Types

The 16 personality types are typically referred to by an abbreviation of four letters—the initial letters of each of their four type preferences. The four type preferences are: Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and Judgment vs. Perception.

One possible classification of a personality type is ESTJ: extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J). Another example is INFP: introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), perception (P); and so on for all 16 possible type combinations. In this situation, extroversion means “outward turning” and introversion means “inward turning.” People who prefer judgment over perception are not necessarily more judgmental or less perceptive; they simply prefer one over the other. The most common combination from the Myers-Briggs test is ISFJ or Introvert, Sensing, Feeling, and Judgment.

The current North American English version of the Myers-Briggs test includes 93 forced-choice questions. Forced-choice means that the individual has to choose only one of two possible answers to each question. Myers- Briggs tests are frequently used in the areas of career counseling, team building, group dynamics, professional development, marketing, leadership training, executive coaching, life coaching, personal development, marriage counseling, and workers’ compensation claims.

1010

Relevance to Management

One of the most common contexts for using the MBTI is team-building and employee personality identification. Managers are tasked with creating work groups and teams with a variety of human resources, which is a complicated social process of intuitively estimating who would complement who in group dynamics. The MBTI test is an excellent tool to measure and more accurately predict how individuals will interact in a group and what types of skills they may bring to the table.

One particularly good example is in the IE relationship. Understanding which employees in a team are naturally introverted is a useful way to ensure that a manager doesn’t miss out on these employees’ opinions just because they are naturally quiet. The manager could meet with them privately and informally—over coffee, for instance—and get their opinions. Similarly, knowing which members tend to be intuitive thinkers (NT) and which tend to understand emotions and be observant (SF) can lead the manager to give them very different tasks, though the two might work well together in a group setting since they balance each other. Management can use this tool to minimize conflict and optimize performance.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Perfect ScoreOpenclipartPerfect Scoremazeo. Provided byProvided by: Open ClipArt. Located atLocated at: http://openclipart.org/people/mazeo/perfect_score.svg. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright • Big Five personality traits. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Big Five personality traits. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • neuroticism. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/neuroticism. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • All sizes | Whooo arrre youuu?!?n| Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eraphernalia_vintage/4664199330/sizes/o/in/photostream/. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known

Copyright • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Forced-choice. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced-choice. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

DRIVERS OF BEHAVIOR

Defining Attitude

An attitude is generally defined as the way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively.

Learning Objectives

Define attitude within the context of behavioral norms for employees in an organization

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• An attitude could be generally defined as a way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively. The precise definition of attitude is nonetheless a source of some discussion and debate.

• Work environment can affect a person’s attitude. • Some attitudes are a dangerous element in the workplace, one that can spread to those closest to

the employee and affect everyone’s performance.

1111

• Attitudes are the confluence of an individual and external stimuli, and therefore everyone is in a position of responsibility to improve them (managers, employees, and organizations ).

• A strong work environment is vital for an effective and efficient workplace.

Key Terms

• attitudeattitude: Disposition or state of mind.

Overview

An attitude could be generally defined as the way a person responds to his or her environment, either positively or negatively. The definition of attitude is nonetheless a source of some discussion and debate.

When defining attitude, it is helpful to bear two useful conflicts in mind. The first is the existence of ambivalence or differences of attitude towards a given person, object, situation etc. from the same person, sometimes at the same time. This ambivalence indicates that attitude is inherently more complex than a simple sliding scale of positive and negative, and defining these axes in different ways is integral to identifying the essence of attitude. The second conflict to keep in mind is the degree of implicit versus explicit attitude, which is to say subconscious versus conscious. Indeed, people are often completely ignorant of their implicit attitudes, complicating the ability to study and interpret them accurately.

The takeaway here is to be specific when discussing attitudes, and define terms carefully. For a manager to say that somebody has attitude, or that somebody is being negative or positive about something, is vague and nonconstructive. Instead, a manager’s job is to observe and to try to pinpoint the possible causes and effects of a person’s perspective on something.

Attitudes in the Workplace

Everyone has attitudes about many things; these are not necessarily a bad thing. One aspect of employees’ attitude is the impact it can have on the people around them. People with a positive attitude can lift the spirits of their co-workers, while a person with a negative attitude can lower their spirits. Sometimes, though, this principle works in reverse, and attitudes are often more complex than positive or negative. Attitudes may affect both the employee’s work performance and the performances of co-workers.

Attitude: A person’s attitude can be influenced by his or her environment, just as a person’s attitude affects his or her environment.

1212

Can Management Change People’s Attitudes?

Some attitudes represent a dangerous element in the workplace that can spread to those closest to the employee and affect everyone’s performance. Is it a manager’s responsibility to help change the person’s attitude? Should the employee alone be responsible? The answer is that attitudes are the confluence of an individual and external stimuli, and therefore everyone is in a position of responsibility.

Still, a manager may be able to influence a employee’s attitude if the root cause relates to work conditions or work environment. For example, employees may develop poor attitudes if they work long hours, if the company is having difficulties, or if they have relationship issues with the manager or another employee. Similarly, if employees feel believe there is little chance for advancement or that their efforts go unappreciated by the organization, they may develop a negative attitude. To the extent they are able, managers should strive to remedy these situations to encourage an effective work environment.

A strong work environment is vital for an effective and efficient workplace. Employees who are in a positive, encouraging work environment are more likely to seek solutions and remain loyal, even if the company is having financial difficulties. Even so, employees have some responsibility to alter their own attitudes. If management does everything in its power to create a positive environment and the employee refuses to participate, then managers can do little else to help. At times, attitudes are beyond the reach of the business to improve.

How Attitude Influences Behavior

Attitudes can positively or negatively affect a person’s behavior, regardless of whether the individual is aware of the effects.

Learning Objectives

Explain how differing attitudes can have a meaningful effect on employee behavior

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Attitudes are infectious and can affect the people that are near the person exhibiting a given attitude, which in turn can influence their behavior as well.

• Understanding different types of attitudes and their likely implications is useful in predicting how individuals’ attitudes influence their behavior.

• Daniel Katz identifies four categories of attitudes: utilitarian, knowledge, ego-defensive and value - expressive.

• Organizations can influence a employee’s attitudes and behavior by using different management strategies and by creating strong organizational environments.

• As people are affected in different ways by varying influences, an organization may want to implement multiple strategies.

Key Terms

• behavior changebehavior change: Any transformation or modification of human habits or patterns of conduct.

1313

Individual Attitudes and Behaviors

Attitudes can positively or negatively affect a person’s behavior. A person may not always be aware of his or her attitude or the effect it is having on behavior. A person who has positive attitudes towards work and co-workers (such as contentment, friendliness, etc.) can positively influence those around them. These positive attitudes are usually manifested in a person’s behavior; people with a good attitude are active and productive and do what they can to improve the mood of those around them.

In much the same way, a person who displays negative attitudes (such as discontentment, boredom, etc.), will behave accordingly. People with these types of attitudes towards work may likewise affect those around them and behave in a manner that reduces efficiency and effectiveness.

Attitudinal Categories

Attitude and behavior interact differently based upon the attitude in question. Understanding different types of attitudes and their likely implications is useful in predicting how individuals’ attitudes may govern their behavior. Daniel Katz uses four attitude classifications:

1. Utilitarian: Utilitarian refers to an individual’s attitude as derived from self or community interest. An example could be getting a raise. As a raise means more disposable income, employees will have a positive attitude about getting a raise, which may positively affect their behavior in some circumstances.

2. Knowledge: Logic, or rationalizing, is another means by which people form attitudes. When an organization appeals to people’s logic and explains why it is assigning tasks or pursuing a strategy, it can generate a more positive disposition towards that task or strategy (and vice versa, if the employee does not recognize why a task is logical).

3. Ego-defensive: People have a tendency to use attitudes to protect their ego, resulting in a common negative attitude. If a manager criticizes employees’ work without offering suggestions for improvement, employees may form a negative attitude and subsequently dismiss the manager as foolish in an effort to defend their work. Managers must therefore carefully manage criticism and offer solutions, not simply identify problems.

4. Value-expressive: People develop central values over time. These values are not always explicit or simple. Managers should always be aware of what is important to their employees from a values perspective (that is, what do they stand for? why do they do what they do?). Having such an awareness can management to align organizational vision with individual values, thereby generating passion among the workforce.

Organizational Attitudes and Behaviors

Attitudes can be infectious and can influence the behavior of those around them. Organizations must therefore recognize that it is possible to influence a person’s attitude and, in turn, his or her behavior. A positive work environment, job satisfaction, a reward system, and a code of conduct can all help reinforce specific behaviors.

One key to altering an individual’s behavior is consistency. Fostering initiatives that influence behavior is not enough; everyone in the organization needs to be committed to the success of these initiatives. It is also important to remember that certain activities will be more effective with some people than with others. Management may want to outline a few different behavior-change strategies to have the biggest effect across the organization and take into consideration the diversity inherent in any group.

Defining Values

Values are guiding principles that determine individual morality and conduct.

1414

Learning Objectives

Define values in the context of organizational ethics and organizational behavior

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Personal values are people’s internal conception of what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, constructive, etc.

• Values such as honesty, hard work, and discipline can increase an employee’s efficacy in the workplace and help them serve as a positive role model to others.

• Employees should not impose their own values on their co-workers. • Management must take values into consideration when hiring to ensure that employee values align

with the company’s, as well as those of other co-workers.

Key Terms

• valuesvalues: A collection of guiding principles; what an individual considers to be morally right and desirable in life, especially regarding personal conduct.

Overview

Personal values can be influenced by culture, tradition, and a combination of internal and external factors. Values determine what individuals find important in their daily life and help to shape their behavior in each situation they encounter. Since values often strongly influence both attitude and behavior, they serve as a kind of personal compass for employee conduct in the workplace. Values help determine whether an employee is passionate about work and the workplace, which in turn can lead to above-average returns, high employee satisfaction, strong team dynamics, and synergy.

How Are Values Formed?

Values are usually shaped by many different internal and external influences, including family, traditions, culture, and, more recently, media and the Internet. A person will filter all of these influences and meld them into a unique value set that may differ from the value sets of others in the same culture.

Values are thought to develop in various stages during a person’s upbringing, and they remain relatively consistent as children mature into adults. Sociologist Morris Massey outlines three critical development periods for an individual’s value system:

• Imprint period (birth to age seven): Individuals begin establishing the template for what will become their own values.

• Modeling period (ages eight to thirteen): The individual’s value template is sculpted and shaped by parents, teachers, and other people and experiences in the person’s life.

• Socialization period (ages thirteen to twenty-one): An individual fine-tunes values through personal exploration and comparing and contrasting with other people’s behavior.

1515

Values in the Workplace

Values can strongly influence employee conduct in the workplace. If an employee values honesty, hard work, and discipline, for example, he will likely make an effort to exhibit those traits in the workplace. This person may therefore be a more efficient employee and a more positive role model to others than an employee with opposite values.

Conflict may arise, however, if an employee realizes that her co-workers do not share her values. For example, an employee who values hard work may resent co-workers who are lazy or unproductive without being reprimanded. Even so, additional conflicts can result if the employee attempts to force her own values on her co- workers.

Hiring for Values

If the managers of a business create a mission statement, they have likely decided what values they want their company to project to the public. The mission statement can help them seek out candidates whose personalities match these values, which can help reduce friction in the workplace and foster a positive work environment.

Skills-based hiring is important for efficiency and is relatively intuitive. However, hiring for values is at least as important. Because individual values have such strong attitudinal and behavioral effects, a company must hire teams of individuals whose values do not conflict with either each other’s or those of the organization.

Hard work: A strong work ethic is a personal value.

How Values Influence Behavior

Values influence behavior because people emulate the conduct they hold valuable.

1616

Learning Objectives

Discuss the positive relationship between meaningful corporate and employee values and behavior in the workplace

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Values are an important element that affects individuals and how they behave towards others. • Companies can influence a person’s behavior with codes of conduct, ethics and vision statements,

ethics committees, and a punishment -and-reward system. • A gap sometimes exists between a person’s values and behavior. Organizational strategies, such as

a reward system, can close that gap. • Culture is also largely relevant to how values shape behavior, as a given organizational culture can

create camaraderie and social interdependence.

Key Terms

• behaviorbehavior: The way a living creature acts.

Overview

Values are defined as perspectives about an appropriate course of action. If a person values honesty, then he or she will strive to be honest. People who value transparency will work hard to be transparent. Values are one important element that affects individual character and behavior towards others. The relationship between values and behavior is intimate, as values create a construct for appropriate actions.

Values and Behavior in the Workplace

A work environment should strive to encourage positive values and discourage negative influences that affect behavior. All individuals possess a moral compass, defined via values, which direct how they treat others and conduct themselves. People who lack strong or ethical values may participate in negative behavior that can hurt the organization. While a company cannot do anything about the influences that shape a person’s values and behavior before hiring, the organization can try to influence employee behavior in the workplace.

Means of Encouraging or Discouraging Behavior

Training programs, codes of conduct, and ethics committees can inform employees of the types of behavior that the company finds acceptable and unacceptable. While these efforts will not necessarily not change an individual’s values, they can help them decide not to participate in unethical behavior while at work. Managers must emphasize not only an employee’s responsibilities, but also what the organization expects with respect to values and ethics. Ethics statements and vision statements are useful tools in communicating to employees what the company stands for and why.

A system of punishments and rewards can also help foster the type of values the company wants to see in its employees, essentially filtering behavior through conditioning. If people see that certain behaviors are rewarded, then they may decide to alter their behavior and in turn alter their values. In addition, a gap sometimes exists

1717

between a person’s values and behavior. This gap can stem from a conscious decision not to follow a specific value with a corresponding action. This decision can be influenced by how deeply this value affects the person’s character and by the surrounding environment.

Culture is also largely relevant to how values shape behavior, as a given organizational culture can create camaraderie and social interdependence. Conforming to the expectations and values of the broader organization is a common outcome of organizations with strong ethos and vision. Such an organization promotes passion and positive behavior in their employees. Of course, a company’s culture can work in both directions. Some industries are inherently competitive, valuing individual dominance over other individuals (for example, sales, stock trading, etc.). While some may view such a culture as objectively negative, it is subjectively useful for the organization to instill and develop these values to create certain behaviors (such as hard work and high motivation).

Defining Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction is the level of contentment employees feel about their work, which can affect performance.

Learning Objectives

Define job satisfaction in the context of the driving forces in organizational behavior

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Job satisfaction can be influenced by a person’s ability to complete required tasks, the level of communication in an organization, and the way management treats employees.

• Measuring job satisfaction can be challenging, as the definition of satisfaction can be different for different people.

• If an organization is concerned about employee job satisfaction, management may conduct surveys to determine what type of strategies to implement. This approach helps management define job satisfaction objectively.

• Superior-subordinate communication, or the relationship between supervisors and their direct report(s), is another important influence on job satisfaction in the workplace.

Key Terms

• job satisfactionjob satisfaction: The level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her work.

What Is Job Satisfaction?

Job satisfaction is the level of contentment a person feels regarding his or her job. This feeling is mainly based on an individual’s perception of satisfaction. Job satisfaction can be influenced by a person’s ability to complete required tasks, the level of communication in an organization, and the way management treats employees.

Job satisfaction falls into two levels: affective job satisfaction and cognitive job satisfaction. Affective job satisfaction is a person’s emotional feeling about the job as a whole. Cognitive job satisfaction is how satisfied employees feel concerning some aspect of their job, such as pay, hours, or benefits.

1818

Measuring Job Satisfaction

Many organizations face challenges in accurately measuring job satisfaction, as the definition of satisfaction can differ among various people within an organization. However, most organizations realize that workers’ level of job satisfaction can impact their job performance, and thus determining metrics is crucial to creating strong efficiency.

Despite widespread belief to the contrary, studies have shown that high-performing employees do not feel satisfied with their job simply as a result of to high-level titles or increased pay. This lack of correlation is an significant concern for organizations, since studies also reveal that the implementation of positive HR practices results in financial gain for the organizations. The cost of employees is quite high, and creating satisfaction relevant to the return on this investment is paramount. Simply put: positive work environments and increased shareholder value are directly related.

Some factors of job satisfaction may rank as more important than others, depending on each worker’s needs and personal and professional goals. To create a benchmark for measuring and ultimately creating job satisfaction, managers in an organization can employ proven test methods such as the Job Descriptive Index (JDI) or the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ). These assessments help management define job satisfaction objectively.

Important Factors

Typically, five factors can be used to measure and influence job satisfaction: 1. Pay or total compensation 2. The work itself (i.e., job specifics such as projects, responsibilities ) 3. Promotion opportunities (i.e., expanded responsibilities, more prestigious title) 4. Relationship with supervisor 5. Interaction and work relationship with coworkers

Management and Communication

In addition to these five factors, one of the most important aspects of an individual’s work in a modern organization concerns communication demands that the employee encounters on the job. Demands can be characterized as a communication load: “the rate and complexity of communication inputs an individual must process in a particular time frame.” If an individual receives too many messages simultaneously, does not receive enough input on the job, or is unsuccessful in processing these inputs, the individual is more likely to become dissatisfied, aggravated, and unhappy with work, leading to a low level of job satisfaction.

Superior—subordinate communication, or the relationship between supervisors and their direct report(s), is another important influence on job satisfaction in the workplace. The way in which subordinates perceive a supervisor’s behavior can positively or negatively influence job satisfaction. Communication behavior—such as facial expression, eye contact, vocal expression, and body movement—is crucial to the superior—subordinate relationship.

How Job Satisfaction Influences Behavior

Job satisfaction can affect a person’s level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the way in which job satisfaction reflects upon work behaviors in an organization

1919

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• If people are satisfied with the work they are doing, it feels less like work, thus motivating a more positive attitude and higher levels of passion.

• Individuals who are committed to their job will likely be more willing to work longer hours or take on additional responsibilities without an increase in pay.

• Satisfaction can be improved through effective management strategies. Managers are responsible for understanding what motivates employee satisfaction and creating a positive work environment conducive to it.

Key Terms

• job turnoverjob turnover: The number of employees who leave an organization of their own free will and need to be replaced.

• job descriptionjob description: An outline of the tasks and responsibilities in a post within an organization.

The Influence of Job Satisfaction on Behavior

Job satisfaction can affect a person’s level of commitment to the organization, absenteeism, and job turnover rate. It can also affect performance levels, employee willingness to participate in problem-solving activities, and the amount of effort employees put in to perform activities outside their job description. When people are satisfied with the work they are doing, then their job feels less like work and is a more enjoyable experience. Those who are satisfied in their jobs usually do not find it difficult to get up and go to work.

2020

Job satisfaction: Job satisfaction can affect relationships.

Job satisfaction also reduces stress, which can affect job performance, mental well-being, and physical health. Stress can also affect decision-making—possibly leading to unethical or nonstrategic choices. Satisfied employees, on the other hand, maintain a more positive and carefree perspective about work. This positive outlook often spreads to co-workers and can have a positive experience on everyone’s performance. There are some indications that job satisfaction is directly tied to job performance; nonetheless, feeling less stressed can positively affect a person’s behavior.

Methods for Increasing Job Satisfaction

To determine if employees are actually satisfied with the work they do, organizations frequently conduct surveys to measure employees’ level of job satisfaction and to identify areas—on-boarding, job training, employee incentive programs, etc.—for improvement and job enrichment. Because job satisfaction varies for each individual, management teams employ several different strategies to help the majority of employees within an organization feel satisfied with their place in the company.

One proven way to enhance job satisfaction is rewarding employees based on performance and positive behavior. When employees go above and beyond their job description to complete a project or assist a colleague, their actions can be referred to as organizational citizenship behavior or OCB (see Bommer, Miles, and Grover, 2003). Bommer, Miles, and Grover state:

Social-information processing is predicated on the notion that people form ideas based on information drawn from their immediate environment, and the behavior of co-workers is a very salient component of an employee’s environment. Therefore, observing frequent citizenship episodes with in a workgroup is

2121

likely to lead to attitudes that such OCB is normal and appropriate. Consequently, the individual is likely to replicate this ‘normal’ behavior.

These positive changes in behavior show that people learn from their environments and that corporate culture plays a large part in creating job satisfaction. Managers are tasked with managing this positive culture and understanding how each employee is affected by cultural influences in the workplace. No two people are the same; this is where managers come into play. Managers must be insightful and observant, identifying what motivates high levels of job satisfaction in each individual and ensuring employees get what they need. In some ways, a manager’s customers are their subordinates. Understanding this dynamic is an important component of the role of management.

How Emotion and Mood Influence Behavior

Emotion and mood can affect temperament, personality, disposition, motivation, and initial perspectives and reactions.

Learning Objectives

Describe the importance of employee moods and emotions on overall performance from an organizational perspective

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The poor decision -making effects of a given mood can hinder a person’s job performance and lead to bad decisions that affect the company.

• Emotion is a subjective lens on an objective world; decision-making should discard emotion whenever possible. This is particularly important for managers, who make significant decisions on a daily basis.

• As emotion is largely a chemical balance (or imbalance) in the mind, emotions can quickly cloud judgment and complicate social interactions without the individual being consciously aware that it is happening.

Key Terms

• moodmood: A mental or emotional state. • emotionsemotions: Subjective, conscious experiences that are characterized primarily by psycho-physiological

expressions, biological reactions, and mental states.

Emotions in the Workplace

Emotions and mood can affect temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. They can affect a person’s physical well-being, judgement, and perception. Emotions play a critical role in how individuals behave and react to external stimuli; they are often internalized enough for people to fail to notice when they are at work. Emotions and mood can cloud judgment and reduce rationality in decision-making.

2222

Mood

All moods can affect judgment, perception, and physical and emotional well-being. Long-term exposure to negative moods or stressful environments can lead to illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and ulcers. The decision-making effects of any kind of bad mood can hinder a person’s job performance and lead to poor decisions that affect the company. In contrast, a positive mood can enhance creativity and problem solving. However, positive moods can also create false optimism and negatively influence decision making.

Emotion

Emotions are reciprocal with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, and motivation. Emotions can be influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and seratonin. Dopamine can affect a person’s energy level and mood, while seratonin can affect critical-thinking skills. As emotion is largely a chemical balance (or imbalance) in the mind, emotions can quickly cloud judgment and complicate social interactions without the individual being consciously aware that it is happening.

2323

Plutchik Wheel: Emotions are complex and move in various directions. Modeling emotional feelings and considering their behavioral implications are useful in preventing emotions from having a negative effect on the workplace.

The implication for behavior is important for both managers and subordinates to understand. Workers must try to identify objectively when an emotional predisposition is influencing their behavior and judgement and ensure that the repercussions of the emotion are either positive or neutralized. Positive emotions can be a great thing, producing extroversion, energy and job satisfaction. However, both positive and negative emotions can distort the validity of a decision. Being overconfident, for example, can be just as dangerous as being under-confident.

Organizational Implications

By encouraging positive employee management relationships and employee dynamics, an organization may be able to balance a person’s mood and emotions. Improving the level of job satisfaction for employees is another

2424

way that a company can influence an employee’s mood. If a person is satisfied at work, that condition may reduce levels of stress and help influence motivation and disposition. Job satisfaction can affect a person’s mood and emotional state. Providing organizational benefits, such as a company gym, meditation classes, or company retreats, can likewise influence a person’s emotions. An active lifestyle has been shown to produce an increased level of dopamine, which can enhance energy and mood.

Managers are tasked not only with monitoring and controlling their own moods and emotions, but also with recognizing emotional issues in their subordinates. Managers should strive to balance the emotions of their subordinates, ensuring nothing negatively affects their mental well-being. This can be a difficult role for management, as many people display their emotions in different ways (and most tend to hide them, particularly at work). Managers must be both perceptive and strategic in ensuring a mental balance at work.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/My_attitude.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Attitude (psychology). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_(psychology). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • attitude. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/attitude. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Behavior change methods. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_change_methods. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • behavior change. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/behavior%20change. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Hard at work in the Tampabay Social Media Center.nI was able to finally meet some tweeps!. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Hard_at_work_in_the_Tampabay_Social_Media_Center._I_was_able_to_finally_meet_some_tweeps!.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Values. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Values. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • values. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/values. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Introduction to Sociology/Organizational Behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/Organizational_Behavior%23Attitudes.2C_Values.2C_and_Ethics. LicenseLicense: CC

BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Value-action gap. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-action_gap%23Factors_that_affect_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction%23Factors_that_influence_job_satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Introduction to Sociology/Organizational Behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/

Organizational_Behavior%23Job_Satisfaction_and_Organizational_Commitment. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • job satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/job%20satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job analysis. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_analysis. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job enlargement. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_enlargement. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job enrichment. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_enrichment. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Happy. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Happy.JPG. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • job description. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/job_description. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Introduction to Sociology/Organizational Behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Sociology/

Organizational_Behavior%23Job_Satisfaction_and_Organizational_Commitment. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction%23Factors_that_influence_job_satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Boundless. Provided byProvided by: Boundless Learning. Located atLocated at: http://www.boundless.com//management/definition/job-turnover. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Plutchik Wheel. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Mood (psychology). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mood_(psychology). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Emotions. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • mood. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mood. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • emotions. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/emotions. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

2525

MOTIVATING AN ORGANIZATION

MOTIVATING AN ORGANIZATION

The Importance of Motivation

Motivating employees can lead to increased productivity and allow an organization to achieve higher levels of output.

Learning Objectives

Identify the importance of generating high levels of motivation in employees within an organizational behavior framework

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Motivation is generally what energizes, maintains, and controls behavior. • The role of motivation in the workplace is straightforward theoretically but is difficult to actually

measure. • Salary is often enough motivation to keep employees working for an organization, but it’s not always

enough to push them to fulfill their full potential. • Motivated employees will retain a high level of innovation while producing higher- quality work at a

higher level of efficiency. • The opportunity cost in motivating employees is essentially zero.

Key Terms

• productivityproductivity:The rate at which products and services are generated relative to a particular workforce. • Opportunity costOpportunity cost:The value of investing in the next best alternative; the value forfeited by taking a

particular route. • innovationinnovation:The introduction of something new; the development of an original idea.

2626

Motivation in the Workplace

Generally speaking, motivation is what energizes, maintains, and controls behavior. As such, it is clear why it plays an important role in the workplace. But empirically measuring that role is another matter; it is challenging to capture an individual’s drive in quantitative metrics in order to ascertain the degree to which higher motivation is responsible for higher productivity. However, it is widely accepted that motivated employees generate higher value and lead to more substantial levels of achievement. The management of motivation is therefore a critical element of success in any business; with an increase in productivity, an organization can achieve higher levels of output.

Research has shown that motivated employees will: • Always look for a “better” way to complete a task • Be more quality-oriented • Work with higher productivity and efficiency

In summary, motivated employees will retain a high level of innovation while producing higher-quality work more efficiently. There is no downside—i.e., the opportunity cost of motivating employees is essentially zero, assuming it does not require additional capital to coach managers to act as effective motivators.

Internal and External Motivation

Salary is often enough to keep employees working for an organization, but it’s not always necessarily enough to push them to fulfill their full potential. Herzberg’s theory emphasizes that while salary is enough to avoid dissatisfaction, it is not necessarily enough to propel employees to increase their productivity and achievement. In fact, the output of employees whose motivation comes solely from salary and benefits tends to decline over time. To increase employees’ efficiency and work quality, managers must turn to understanding and responding to individuals’ internal and external motivations. External motives include work environment (e.g., cramped cubicle vs. airy, open office); internal motivations include thoughts and emotions (e.g., boredom with performing the same task over and over vs. excitement at being given a wide variety of project types).

2727

Internal and external motives: There are four sources of motivation. The three internal motives are needs, cognitions, and emotions. The fourth source consists of external motives.

Perspectives on Motivation

Motivation in the workplace is primarily concerned with improving employees’ focus through the use of incentives.

Learning Objectives

Compare and contrast the organizational behavior theories regarding analyzing and improving motivation in the workplace

2828

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Generally, motivation in the workplace can be thought of through one of four specific theoretical frameworks : needs-oriented, cognition-oriented, behavior -oriented, and job-oriented.

• In needs-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through fulfilling a particular employee’s needs, with anything from salary to a sense of fulfillment.

• In cognition-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through fulfilling employees’ rational expectation that they be compensated based directly on the amount of value they provide.

• In behavior-oriented theories, motivation is achieved through conditioning ( reinforcement and punishment). Conditioning is the implementation of positive incentives to promote desirable behaviors and negative consequences to discourage undesirable behaviors.

• In job-oriented theories, motivation is achieved when employees feel fulfilled and interested in their work; financial compensation is only enough to avoid dissatisfaction.

Key Terms

• conditioningconditioning:A technique of behavior modification, developed by B.F. Skinner, that utilizes positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment to alter behavior.

• incentiveincentive:A reward used to motivate employees to perform better.

From a managerial perspective, very few ideas are more important than the dynamics of motivation. Understanding what moves employees toward efficiency and fulfillment is at the core of any manager’s responsibilities. Motivation in the workplace is primarily concerned with improving employees’ focus, often through pursuing positive incentives and avoiding negative ones.

Theories of motivation are of course rooted in psychology. An individual must direct their attention toward a task, generate the necessary effort to achieve that task, and persist in working toward it despite potential distractions. Various theories have attempted to identify the factors that contribute to effective employee motivation, most of which are easily divided into four broad categories:

• Needs-oriented theories • Cognition-oriented theories • Behavior-oriented theories • Job-oriented theories

Needs-Oriented Theories

At its most basic, motivation can be defined as the fulfillment of various human needs. These needs can encompass a range of human desires, from basic, tangible needs of survival to complex, emotional needs surrounding an individual’s psychological well-being.

Hierarchy of Needs

The most well-known example of a needs-oriented theory of motivation is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow postulated that needs should be fulfilled in a particular scaffolded order, with food, water, and shelter in the bottom, most fundamental two tiers and intangible needs such as fulfillment, self-esteem, and a sense of belonging in the upper three tiers. While this framework makes a certain amount of logical sense, critics have noted that there have been minimal data that suggest employees strive to satisfy needs in the workplace in accordance with this hierarchical framework. But the fundamental idea behind Maslow’s model is that individuals have various tangible and intangible desires that can be leveraged in the use of motivational incentives.

2929

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs postulates that need must be fulfilled in a hierarchical order, from basic needs such as food and water to more intangible needs such as self-esteem and a sense of belonging.

Need for Achievement Theory

Atkinson and McClelland proposed the Need for Achievement Theory, which highlights three particular needs in the context of the workplace: achievement, authority, and affiliation. Atkinson and McClelland hypothesized that every individual has a need for all three of these intangible segments of fulfillment but that most individuals lean more toward one of the three. For example, a salesman with a quota to fulfill would be best paired with an achievement-oriented manager, as such a goal-oriented approach toward, for example, a specific number of sales would be highly motivating.

Cognition-Oriented Theories

Cognition-oriented theories generally revolve around expectations and deriving equitable compensation for a given effort or outcome. There are two main cognition-oriented theories: equity theory and expectancy theory.

Equity Theory

Equity Theory is based on the basic concept of exchange. It values the culmination of employee experience, skills, and performance against their respective compensation and advancement opportunities.

3030

Expectancy Theory

Expectancy Theory is similarly derived, but it states this relationship through an equation: Motivation = Expectation (Σ Instrumentality × Valence ). Instrumentality simply refers to the belief that a level of performance will result in a level of outcome; valence refers to the value of that outcome.

Essentially, Expectation Theory and Equity Theory demonstrate the value of rewarding an employee’s investment of time and effort with appropriate compensation.

Behavior-Oriented Theories

The underlying concept of behavioral approaches to motivation is rooted in theories of “conditioning,” particularly the work of psychologist B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism stipulates that an employer should promote positive behavior and deter negative behavior, generally through a basic rewards system. Variable compensation, as found in many sales jobs, is a prime example of this concept. When an employee makes a sale, the employer provides a certain portion of income to the employee that executed that sale. This positive reinforcement serves as a behavior modifier, motivating the employee to repeat this behavior and make more sales.

Job-Oriented Theories

Job-oriented theories adhere to the view that employees are motivated to complete tasks effectively because of an innate desire to be fulfilled or to contribute and that compensation and other forms of incentives are less important to them.

Two-Factor Theory

Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory is the most well known of the job-oriented theories, despite the fact that it has not been supported by empirical evidence. Herzberg states that salary, benefits, status, and other tangible benefits for employees can only reduce dissatisfaction and that intangibles—such as autonomy, natural interest, recognition, and the responsibility of the work itself—are the true basis of motivation.

Work Engagement Theory

Other theories, such as Work Engagement Theory, similarly propose that intellectually fulfilling and emotionally immersive work is the foundation of a motivated workforce.

Clearly, our understanding of workplace motivation could benefit from further research and empirical analysis. But the variety of theories also highlights the fact that people can be motivated by different things in different circumstances. Effective organizational management requires an understanding of these theories as well as of their possible limitations.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Hierarchy_of_the_four_sources_of_motivation_(flowchart),_Wikiversity_Motivation_and_emotion,_Slide_1.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

• Opportunity cost. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Opportunity+cost. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Work engagement. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_engagement. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Motivation. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • innovation. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/innovation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • opportunity. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opportunity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • productivity. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/productivity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg/320px-Maslow's_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-

ShareAlike • Work motivation. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_motivation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational Behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational%20Behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • incentive. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incentive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Empirical Evidence. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Empirical+Evidence. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

3131

EMPLOYEE NEEDS AND MOTIVATION

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helps managers understand employees’ needs in order to further employees’ motivation.

Learning Objectives

Diagram Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in the context of organizational motivation and employee behaviors

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Maslow is best known for his theory, the Hierarchy of Needs. Depicted in a pyramid, the theory explains the different levels and importance of human psychological and physical needs. It can be used by business managers to better understand employee motivation.

• The general needs in Maslow’s hierarchy include physiological needs (food and clothing), safety needs (job security), social needs (friendship), self- esteem, and self-actualization.

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs relates to organizational theory and behavior due to it’s exploration of worker motivation, enabling better managerial practices and higher job satisfaction.

• Managers must be perceptive and empathetic to their employees—they must listen to what their employees’ needs are and work to fulfill them.

Key Terms

• self-actualizationself-actualization:The final level of psychological development, which can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled.

Abraham Maslow was a social psychologist who focused on the entirety of human psychological needs rather than on individual psychological problems. Maslow is best known for his theory, the Hierarchy of Needs. Depicted in a pyramid, the theory explains the different levels of importance of human psychological and physical needs.

The general needs in Maslow’s hierarchy include physiological needs (food and clothing), safety needs (job security), social needs (friendship), self-esteem, and self-actualization. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be used by managers to better understand employees’ needs and motivations, allowing them to best provide for employees’ needs and generate high productivity and job satisfaction.

3232

The Hierarchy of Needs: Levels of the Pyramid

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Each level of Maslow’s hierarchy outlines a specific category of need, each of which must be accomplished in a bottom-up order. Managers should correlate their managerial style with the needs of their employees.

At the bottom of the pyramid are the physiological (or basic) needs of a human being: food, water, sleep, and sex. The next level is safety needs: security, order, and stability. These two levels are important to the physical survival of the person. Once individuals have basic nutrition, shelter, and safety, they attempt to accomplish more.

The third level of need is love and belonging, which are psychological needs; when individuals have taken care of themselves physically, they are ready to share themselves with others, such as with family and friends. The fourth level is achieved when individuals feel comfortable with what they have accomplished. This is the esteem level, which includes the need to feel competent and recognized, such as through status and level of success. Then there is the cognitive level, where individuals intellectually stimulate themselves and explore. After that is the aesthetic level, which includes the need for harmony, order, and beauty.

At the top of the pyramid, self-actualization occurs when individuals reach a state of harmony and understanding because they have achieved their full potential. Once people have reached the self-actualization stage they focus on themselves and try to build their own image. They may look at this in terms of feelings such as self-confidence, or by accomplishing a set goal.

Hierarchy of Needs and Organizational Theory

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs relates to organizational theory and behavior because it explores a worker’s motivation. For example, some people are prepared to work just for money, but others like going to work because of the friends they have made there or the fact that they are respected by others and recognized for their good work. One conclusion that can be made from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in the workforce is, “If a lower need is not met, then the higher ones are ignored.” For example, if employees are worried that they will be fired, and have no job security, they will be far more concerned about capital accumulation and ensuring their lower rungs can

3333

continue to be met (paying rent, paying bills, etc.) than about friendship and respect at work. However, if employees are wealthy enough to fulfill their basic needs, praise for good work and meaningful group relationships may be a more important motivation.

If a need is not met, staff may become very frustrated. For example, if someone works hard for a promotion and does not achieve the recognition they want, they may become demotivated and put in less effort. When a need is met it will no longer motivate the person, but the next need in the hierarchy will become important to that person. Keep in mind that it is not quite as simple in reality as in a model, and that individuals may have needs that are more complex or difficult to quantify than the hierarchy suggests. Managers must be perceptive and empathetic to their employees, they must listen to what their needs are and work to fulfill them.

Alderfer’s ERG Theory

Alderfer’s ERG theory, based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, outlines three core needs: existence, relatedness, and growth.

Learning Objectives

Discuss Clayton Alderfer’s ERG Theory relative to employee needs and motivation within an organization

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• ERG Theory posits that there are three groups of core needs: existence (E), relatedness (R), and growth (G)—hence the acronym “ERG”. These groups align with the levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

• The “existence” needs describe our basic material requirements for living. • The “relatedness” needs concern the maintaining of important interpersonal relationships. • The “growth” needs relate to self-actualization and self-esteem. • Alderfer also proposed that if an individual’s needs in a certain category are not met, then they will

redouble their efforts toward fulfilling needs in a lower category.

Key Terms

• existenceexistence:The state of being or occurring. • relatednessrelatedness:The state of being connected, especially by kinship.

Clayton Paul Alderfer (b. 1940) is an American psychologist who further developed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs into his own ERG Theory. ERG Theory posits that there are three groups of core needs: existence (E), relatedness (R), and growth (G)—hence the acronym “ERG.” These groups align with the Maslow’s levels of physiological needs, social needs, and self-actualization needs, respectively.

The “existence” needs describe our basic material requirements for living. These include what Maslow categorized as physiological needs (such as air, food, water, and shelter) and safety-related needs (such as health and secure employment and property).

The “relatedness” needs concern the maintaining of important interpersonal relationships. These needs are based in social interactions with others and align with Maslow’s levels of love/belonging-related needs (such as friendship, family, and sexual intiamcy) and esteem-related needs (such as respect of and by others).

3434

Finally, the “growth” needs describe our intrinsic desire for personal development. These needs align with Maslow’s levels of esteem-related needs (such as self-esteem, confidence, and achievement) and self- actualization needs (such as morality, creativity, problem-solving, and acceptance of facts).

Alderfer proposed that if an individual’s needs in a certain category are not met, then they will redouble their efforts toward fulfilling needs in a lower category. For example, if an individual’s self-esteem is suffering, they will invest more effort in the relatedness category of needs.

McClelland’s Need Theory

David McClelland describes three central motivational paradigms: achievement, affiliation and power.

Learning Objectives

Examine what McClelland’s Need Theory proposes regarding motivating employees and fulfilling their needs

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• McClelland’s Need Theory, created by psychologist David McClelland, is a motivational model that attempts to explain how the needs for achievement, power, and affiliation affect people’s actions in a management context.

• People who are achievement-motivated are driven by the desire to master tasks and situations. • People who are affiliation-motivated are driven by the desire to create and maintain social

relationships. They enjoy belonging to a group and want to feel loved and accepted. • People who are power-motivated are driven by the desire to influence, teach, or encourage others. • Each individual is motivated by varying degrees of each of these three categories of needs.

Key Terms

• zero-sumzero-sum:Of any system in which all gains are offset by exactly equal losses. • achievementachievement:The act of performing, obtaining, or accomplishing. • affiliationaffiliation:The relationship that results from combining one thing with another.

3535

David McClelland: Psychologist David McClelland created Need Theory.

Psychologist David McClelland developed Need Theory, a motivational model that attempts to explain how the needs for achievement, power (authority), and affiliation affect people’s actions in a management context. Need Theory is commonly often taught in management and organizational-behavior classes.

Achievement

People who are strongly achievement-motivated are driven by the desire for mastery. They prefer working on tasks of moderate difficulty in which outcomes are the result of their effort rather than of luck. They value receiving feedback on their work.

Affiliation

People who are strongly affiliation-motivated are driven by the desire to create and maintain social relationships. They enjoy belonging to a group and want to feel loved and accepted. They may not make effective managers because they may worry too much about how others will feel about them.

Power

People who are strongly power-motivated are driven by the desire to influence, teach, or encourage others. They enjoy work and place a high value on discipline. However, they may take a zero-sum approach to group work—for one person to win, or succeed, another must lose, or fail. If channeled appropriately, though, this can positively support group goals and help others in the group feel competent about their work.

Application of Need Theory

Need Theory does not claim that people can be categorized into one of three types. Rather, it asserts that all people are motivated by all of these needs in varying degrees and proportions. An individual’s balance of these needs forms a kind of profile that can be useful in determining a motivational paradigm for them. It is important to note that needs do not necessarily correlate with competencies; it is possible for an employee to be strongly affiliation-motivated, for example, but to still be successful in a situation in which his affiliation needs are not met.

McClelland proposes that those in top management positions should have a high need for power and a low need for affiliation. He also believes that although individuals with a need for achievement can make good managers, they are not generally suited to being in top management positions.

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory states that certain factors cause job satisfaction and other factors cause dissatisfaction.

Learning Objectives

Analyze Frederick Herzberg’s perspective on motivating employees through his Two-Factor Theory (also known as Motivation-Hygiene Theory)

3636

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• According to Herzberg, intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators have an inverse relationship: intrinsic motivators tend to create motivation when they are present, whereas extrinsic motivators tend to reduce motivation when they are absent.

• Intrinsic motivators tend to represent less tangible, more emotional needs, such as challenging work, recognition, relationships, and growth potential.

• Extrinsic motivators tend to represent more tangible, basic needs, such as status, job security, salary, and fringe benefits.

• Extrinsic motivators are expected and so cause dissatisfaction if they are absent. Intrinsic motivators, on the other hand, can provide extra motivation. Because of this, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are independent; one does not necessarily increase exactly as the other decreases.

• Management is tasked with differentiating when more job satisfaction is needed (providing intrinsic motivators) and when less job dissatisfaction is needed (providing extrinsic motivators).

Key Terms

• hygiene factorshygiene factors:Elements of life or work that do not increase satisfaction but that can lead to dissatisfaction if they are missing.

• Two-Factor TheoryTwo-Factor Theory:A framework, developed by Frederick Herzberg, that suggests there are certain factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and a separate set of factors can cause dissatisfaction.

The Two Factors: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators

Frederick Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, also known as Motivation-Hygiene Theory or intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, concludes that there are certain factors in the workplace that can cause job satisfaction and a separate set of factors that can cause dissatisfaction. It is critical to emphasize that this is not a linear relationship: the factors that cause satisfaction do not necessarily negate those that cause dissatisfaction; one does not necessarily increase exactly as the other decreases.

Extrinsic Motivators (Hygiene Factors)

Extrinsic motivators tend to represent more tangible, basic needs—i.e., the kinds of needs identified in McClelland’s “existence” category of needs in his ERG Theory or in the lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Extrinsic motivators include status, job security, salary, and fringe benefits. Managers must realize that not providing the appropriate and expected extrinsic motivators will sow dissatisfaction and unmotivated behavior among employees.

Intrinsic Motivators (Motivation Factors)

Intrinsic motivators tend to represent less tangible, more emotional needs—i.e., the kinds of needs identified in McClelland’s “relatedness” and “growth” categories of needs in his ERG Theory and in the higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Intrinsic motivators include challenging work, recognition, relationships, and growth potential. Managers must recognize that while these needs may be outside the more traditional scope of what the workplace should provide, they are absolutely critical in empowering strong individual and team performance.

3737

Herzberg’s Theory in Context

Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, McClelland’s Need Theory, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs all talk about higher-level psychological needs such as achievement, recognition, responsibility, and advancement. The key factor that differentiates Two-Factor Theory is the idea of expectation.

According to Herzberg, intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators have an inverse relationship. This is to say that intrinsic motivators tend to inspire motivation when they are present, while extrinsic motivators tend to reduce motivation when they are absent. This is because of expectation. Extrinsic motivators (e.g., salary, benefits) are expected and so will not increase motivation when they are in place, but they will cause dissatisfaction when they are missing. Intrinsic motivators (e.g., challenging work), on the other hand, can be a source of additional motivation.

If management wants to increase employees’ job satisfaction, they should be concerned with the nature of the work itself—the opportunities it presents employees for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and achieving self-realization. If, on the other hand, management wishes to reduce dissatisfaction, then it must focus on the job environment—policies, procedures, supervision, and working conditions. To ensure a satisfied and productive workforce, managers must pay attention to both sets of job factors.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Maslow. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • self-actualization. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/self-actualization. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Abraham Maslow. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • GCSE Business Studies/Motivation and Rewards. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GCSE_Business_Studies/Motivation_and_Rewards. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • GCSE Business Studies/Motivation and Rewards. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GCSE_Business_Studies/Motivation_and_Rewards. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Motivation theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_theory%23Alderfer.27s_ERG_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • ERG theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERG_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Motivation. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Clayton Alderfer. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Alderfer. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Relatedness. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/relatedness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Aspirations Management. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspiration_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • DavidMcClelland. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DavidMcClelland.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Need theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Need for achievement. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_achievement. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • achievement. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/achievement. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • feedback. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feedback. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • zero-sum. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/zero-sum. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • need. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/need. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Two-factor theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Two-factor theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Motivation theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_theory%23Herzberg.27s_two-factor_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • hygiene. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hygiene. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • motivation. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/motivation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Two-factor theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

JOB DESIGN AND MOTIVATION

Defining Job Design

Job design is the systematic and purposeful allocation of tasks to individuals and groups within an organization.

Learning Objectives

Compare and contrast the multitude of job-design approaches and perspectives available in the organizational field

3838

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The key inputs for a strong job design are a task, motivation, resource allocation and a compensation system.

• Taylorism, or scientific management, is the original job-design theory. It stresses standardization of tasks and proper training of workers to administer the tasks for which they are responsible.

• The Socio-Technical Systems Approach is a theory that maps the evolution from individual work to work groups. The organization itself is structured to encourage group autonomy and productivity.

• The Core Characteristics Model connects job characteristics to the psychological states that the worker brings to the job. It emphasizes designing jobs so that they lead to desired outcomes.

• Taking into account these various theoretical models, job design is best described as specifying a task with enough context to communicate clearly and concisely what is expected of a given employee.

Key Terms

• empowerempower:To give people more confidence or strength to do something, often by enabling them to increase their control over their own life or situation.

Job Design Overview

Job design is the allocation of specific work tasks to individuals and groups. Allocating jobs and tasks means specifying the contents, method, and relationships of jobs to satisfy technological and organizational requirements, as well as the personal needs of jobholders.

Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model (Instructional Design): The figure shows how an instructional system is designed. It represents a model of a job design with a specific application (instruction).

Key Elements of Job Design

To understand job design, it is helpful to identify some key elements and their relationship with job design processes.

• A task can be best defined as a piece of assigned work expected to be performed within a certain time. Job designers must strictly and thoroughly identify tasks that need completion.

3939

• Motivation describes forces within the individual that account for the level, direction, and persistence of effort expended at work. Individuals need to be compelled, excited, and passionate to do their work. Managers should design jobs that motivate employees.

• Resource allocation occurs when an organization decides to appropriate or allocate certain resources to specific jobs, tasks, or dilemmas facing the organization. In job design, it is necessary to identify and structure jobs in a way that uses the company’s resources efficiently. Appropriate resource allocation allows large organizations to foster and develop innovation in their workforce and underscores strategy through distribution.

• Reward systems also play a role in job design. Reward systems include compensation, bonuses, raises, job security, benefits, and various other reward methods for employees. An outline or description of reward packages should be established when constructing jobs.

Theoretical Models of Job Design

Organizations may employ various theoretical approaches for job design. These include Taylorism, Socio- Technical Systems Approach, Core Characteristics Model, and Psychological Empowerment Theory. Each approach emphasizes different aspects to be considered in effective job design.

Taylorism

Taylorism, also known as scientific management, is a foundation for systematic job design. Frederick Taylor developed this theory in an effort to develop a “science” for every job within an organization according to the following principles:

• Create a standard method for each job. • Successfully select and hire proper workers. • Effectively train these workers. • Support these workers.

The Socio-Technical Systems Approach

The Socio-Technical Systems Approach is based on the evolution from individual work to work groups. This approach has the following guiding principles:

• The design of the organization must fit its goals. • Employees must be actively involved in designing the structure of the organization. • Control of variances in production or service must be undertaken as close to their source as possible. • Subsystems must be designed around relatively self-contained and recognizable units of work. • Support systems must fit in with the design of the organization. • The design should allow for a high-quality working life. • Changes should continue to be made as necessary to meet changing environmental pressures.

Core Characteristics Model

Another modern job design theory is the Core Characteristics Model, which maintains five important job elements that motivate workers and performance:

• Skill variety • Task identity • Task significance • Autonomy • Job feedback

The individual elements are then proposed to lead to positive outcomes through three psychological states: • Experienced meaningfulness • Experienced responsibility • Knowledge of results

4040

Psychological Empowerment Theory

Psychological Empowerment Theory posits that there is a distinction between empowering practices and cognitive motivational states. When individuals are aware of the impact they have, they benefit more than if they cannot attribute positive impact to any of their actions.

Overall Trend

Many more iterations of job design theory have evolved, but general trends can be identified among them: job design is moving towards autonomous work teams and placing added emphasis on the importance of meaning derived from the individual.

Job Characteristics Theory

The Job Characteristics Theory is a framework for identifying how job characteristics affect job outcomes.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the core characteristics, psychological states, and work outcomes in the Job Characteristics Theory, as identified by Hackman and Oldham

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The Job Characteristics Theory (JCT), developed by Hackman and Oldham, is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics affect job outcomes, including job satisfaction.

• The five job characteristics are skill variety, task variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. • Three different psychological states determine how an employee reacts to job characteristics:

experienced meaningfulness, experienced responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results.

• Job outcomes, such as satisfaction and motivation, are the synthesis of core characteristics and psychological states.

Key Terms

• characteristiccharacteristic:A distinguishable feature of a person or thing. • job analysisjob analysis:The formal process of identifying the content of a position within an organization in terms

of activities involved and attributes needed to perform the work, as well as major job requirements.

Core Characteristics

The Job Characteristics Theory (JCT), also referred to as Core Characteristics Model and developed by Hackman and Oldham, is widely used as a framework to study how particular job characteristics impact job outcomes, including job satisfaction. The theory states that there are five core job characteristics:

1. Skill variety 2. Task identity

4141

3. Task significance 4. Autonomy 5. Feedback

Each job has these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent. No one combination of characteristics makes for the ideal job; rather, it is the purpose of job design to adjust the levels of each characteristic to attune the overall job with the worker performing it. This alignment is important because the worker brings psychological states to bear upon the job that affect job outcomes when combined with the core characteristics.

[latex]\displaystyle\text{MPS}=\frac{\text{Skill Variety}+\text{Task Identity}+\text{Task Significance}}{3}\times\ text{Autonomy}\times\text{Feedback}[/latex]

The Job Characteristics Theory uses this equation to estimate the overall motivation inherent in a job design based upon the five core characteristics.

Psychological States

The core characteristics affect three critical psychological states of the workers doing the job: 1. Experienced meaningfulness 2. Experienced responsibility for outcomes 3. Knowledge of the actual results

The job characteristics directly derive the three states. Indeed, the first three characteristics (skill variety, task variety and task significance) pertain to the meaningfulness of the work. Autonomy directly correlates to responsibility for outcomes, and knowledge of the actual results relates to feedback. Pictured as a process flow, the characteristics and psychological states operate in continuous feedback loop that allows employees to continue to be motivated by thoroughly owning and understanding the work in which they are involved.

Work Outcomes

The combination of core characteristics with psychological states influences work outcomes such as: • Job satisfaction • Absenteeism • Work motivation

Therefore, the goal should be to design the job in such a way that the core characteristics complement the psychological states of the worker and lead to positive outcomes. The five core job characteristics can be combined to form a motivating potential score for a job that can be used as an index of how likely a job is to affect an employee’s attitudes and behaviors. Analyses of studies of the model provide some support for the validity of the Job Characteristics Theory.

Tactics for Improving Fit

Ways of improving job fit include assessing employee activities through various tools to increase employee satisfaction and efficiency.

Learning Objectives

Describe ways in which management and supervisors can improve job design to fit employee and organizational needs

4242

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The flexibility to tailor job design more precisely for both organizational effectiveness and employee job satisfaction is a significant, ongoing part of the job design process.

• If a job is well designed, then its required competencies and responsibilities are explicit and clear. • Training is meant to develop in the employee the skills required to improve job fit as the individual

enters the workforce. • Analyzing the outcomes of a given job within the organization, both from the task perspective and the

employee perspective, can assist in improving fit. • Supervisors can use interviews, surveys, observations, questionnaires, and checklists to observe

efficacy of job design and improve fit for each employee.

Key Terms

• job fitjob fit:Correlation between a given position’s roles, responsibilities, and objectives and the skills and competencies of the individual holding that position.

The Job Fit Template

The basis for improving fit between the employee and the job is striking a balance between job design and individual—crafting the job in such a way that it complements the employee’s individual skills, aspirations, personality, and attributes. Job design is usually completed prior to hiring the individual who then performs the identified duties. As a result, flexibility to tailor the job design for both organizational effectiveness and employee job satisfaction is a significant, ongoing part of the job design process.

If a job is well designed, then the competencies it requires and responsibilities it involves are explicit and clear. This design becomes the foundation for the job description, which is a more exact picture of the job’s nature and which comprises the following:

• The title and duties the job fulfills • Who supervises the employee holding the job • Experience and qualifications expected from an applicant

The job description outlines the general attributes of the person for whom the job is designed and serves as the basis for improvement and modification during the improvement process.

Training

The first step in improving fit for a given job design is training. Once an individual is hired to perform a specific set of duties, both management and human resources should assist in preparing the individual to accomplish these tasks. In this process, the organization is responsible for improving fit by supplying all of the necessary tools, contacts, and information employees will need to accomplish their objectives.

4343

Questionnaire: Employee questionnaires can be a useful method of assessing job fit.

Job Analysis

Analyzing the outcomes of a given job within the organization, both from the task perspective and the employee perspective, can assist in improving fit by ensuring that the employee is both satisfied and accomplishing the desired objective. Job analysis employs a series of steps which enable a supervisor to assess a given employee/job fit and to improve the fit, if necessary. These steps include:

• Observation: The simplest method of assessing how a job and employee fit is observing the employee at work. The manager may find it useful to ask a few questions during this process, but it is important not to make the employee uncomfortable (which would skew the results).

• Survey/Questionnaire: Providing the employee with a survey is another effective data-collection strategy. A survey should provide dimensions of the job and allow the experts in that specific role to weigh the importance of each component. Supervisors can also gather data on what is working and what is not, allowing them to edit and improve task assignments.

• Interviews: One-on-one, formal or informal interviews are also a useful tool in gathering data about the employee, allowing the supervisor to obtain more details than a survey provides. In this situation, the supervisor can also customize each discussion to become more familiar with the personality, levels of satisfaction, and perceived efficiency of each employee.

• Checklist: Another method of improving job fit is to create a checklist. Employees or the supervisor can fill these out, identifying what tasks are being done early, on-time, or later (they can also note quality and resource efficiency).

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Dick and Carey. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Dick_Carey.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Global Text Project, Selecting and Managing Your Team: Meaningful Job Design. September 17, 2013. Provided byProvided by: OpenStax CNX. Located atLocated at: http://cnx.org/content/m35402/latest/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • empower. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/empower. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • MPS. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_characteristic_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • characteristic. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/characteristic. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • job analysis. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/job%20analysis. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job Characteristics Model. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_characteristic_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Questionnaire. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Questionnaire.jpg/576px-Questionnaire.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job satisfaction. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

COMPENSATION AND MOTIVATION

Monetary Employee Compensation

Monetary compensation can be either guaranteed (base) pay or variable pay and positively correlates with job satisfaction.

4444

Learning Objectives

Identify the different cash compensation models (i.e., guaranteed and variable) and the behavioral implications of using monetary compensation

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The basic element of guaranteed pay is the base salary, paid on an hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly rate.

• Variable pay is a monetary (cash) reward, such as a bonus or commission, that is contingent on performance or results achieved.

• For many years, bonuses have been considered an incentive program that reinforces positive and efficient behavior among employees.

• Generally speaking, employees who feel that they are underpaid relative to their skill levels do not perform as well as those who feel that they are appropriately compensated.

Key Terms

• commissioncommission:A fee charged by an agent or broker for carrying out a transaction; for example, a finder’s fee.

• Variable PayVariable Pay:A monetary (cash) reward that is contingent on discretion, performance, or results achieved.

Base Pay

Monetary compensation includes both guaranteed (base) and variable pay. The basic element of guaranteed pay is the base salary, paid on an hourly, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly rate. Many countries dictate the minimum base salary by defining a minimum wage.

4545

U.S. Minimum Wage Map, 2007: A map of the United States comparing state minimum wage laws to the federal minimum wage. Kansas is the only state with a minimum wage rate lower than the federal one.

Individual skills and experience levels of employees leave room for differentiation of income levels within the job- based pay structure. In addition to base salary, other pay elements are based solely on employee/employer relations, such as salary and seniority allowance. Salaries and wages are tied to a job description that lays out the expectations and responsibilities of an employee. Management can refer to job descriptions to determine whether employees qualify for raises.

Variable Pay

Variable pay is a monetary reward that is contingent on discretion, performance, or results achieved. There are different types of variable pay plans, such as bonus schemes, sales incentives (commission), overtime pay, and more. Variable pay is common in industries such as real estate or insurance, where pay is based on commission or the amount of sales generated by the employee. In a typical variable pay plan, the salesperson might receive 50 percent of every dollar he brings in up to a defined level of revenue, after which pay increases to 85 percent for every dollar earned.

Bonuses represent another type of variable pay, one based on an employee’s performance during a certain period of time. Employees who are performing particularly well during a year may receive an additional bonus that is above their base salary or commission percentage.

4646

Monetary Compensation and Behavior

From a behavioral perspective, bonuses have been studied to ascertain their effectiveness as an employee incentive to improve performance. B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist, studied behavioral reactions to extrinsic environmental consequences such as reinforcement or punishment. Drawing on Skinner’s perspective, bonuses have served for a number of years as an incentive program to reinforce positive, efficient behavior among employees.

Additionally, behavioral and organizational psychologists have considered salaries in comparison with skill level to determine how employees perform based on their wage level. The results of these studies show that employees who feel that they are underpaid relative to their skill levels will not perform as well as they would if they felt that they were appropriately compensated.

The effect of compensation on employee job satisfaction has also been studied. Not surprisingly, employees who are paid more are more satisfied with their jobs and less inclined to leave their employers—up to a certain point (i.e., salary level). While the amount of that exact point is frequently debated, experts generally agree that somewhere beyond the ballpark of a six-figure salary range reflects diminishing returns (i.e., no additional benefit to the organization for paying the individual more).

Non-Monetary Employee Compensation

Non-monetary compensations (e.g., benefits) are essential in recruiting skilled employees and maintaining a satisfied workforce.

Learning Objectives

Discuss non-monetary compensation benefits within the larger framework of motivation

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Examples of non-monetary compensation include benefits, flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement matching, mentoring programs, tuition assistance, and childcare.

• A benefits plan is designed to address a specific need and is often provided in a non-cash form. Many countries dictate certain minimum benefits, such as paid time off, employer’s pension contribution, and sick pay.

• Many skilled laborers will not accept a position without at least a simple benefits package. It is standard practice in U.S. culture to offer a basic amount of non-monetary benefits to full-time, permanent employees.

Key Terms

• non-monetarynon-monetary:Payment in the form of benefits, flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement plans, mentoring, tuition assistance, child care, or other non-cash option.

4747

Benefits as Incentives

Non-monetary benefits are essential to attracting a productive workforce. Many skilled laborers will not accept a position that does not offer at least a simple benefits package. It is standard practice in U.S. culture to offer basic non-monetary benefits to full-time, permanent employees. Part-time and contract workers are not always offered these benefits, partly as a result of the high cost to businesses.

Offering benefits above the expected amount can be an incentive program and used to recruit highly skilled employees to an organization. For example, skilled employees may be more likely to join an organization that offers free onsite parking, retirement benefits, and extra paid time off than an organization that does not offer these fringe benefits. Companies also use non-monetary benefits to increase and maintain employee morale and satisfaction.

Benefits can be a key element in addressing the lowest level of Maslow’s needs hierarchy. If employees do not feel that an organization is treating them fairly with respect to basic needs (food, money for retirement, etc.), then they are likely to be less satisfied with their jobs, perform at a lower level, or leave. Those who do not feel their basic needs are met may also fail to reach higher levels of motivation.

Benefit Types

Employers have several options with respect to non-monetary compensation. These can include benefits (including medical or other insurance), flex-time, time off, free or discounted parking, gym membership discounts, retirement matching, mentoring programs, tuition assistance, and childcare. All of these benefits communicate to employees that their work is valued and promote a positive work-life balance. The idea behind benefits is to build a community and support system, which enables employees to focus on work rather than worry about life.

The largest category of non-monetary compensation includes benefits. Employee benefits can include paid time off, insurance (life, medical/dental, or disability coverage), and pension plans.

Legalities and Benefits

Many countries dictate different minimum benefits, such as paid time off, employer’s pension contribution, and sick pay. In the U.S., benefits may include a health plan to which the company contributes and that sometimes includes vision and dental coverage, along with basic health coverage. Some governments mandate benefits such as retirement savings matching, but organizations can offer additional retirement benefits through a matching plan.

4848

Health insurance distribution (under 65 years): Health insurance includes employer-sponsored health insurance, military health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and non-group health insurance. The largest group of insured Americans consists of middle- and upper- class employees receiving health insurance through employers. 16% of Americans remain uninsured.

Financial Rewards for Managers

Financial rewards are often used as a tool to motivate managers to perform better.

Learning Objectives

Identify the relationship between management and pay-for-performance financial incentives.

4949

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Incentive programs, also known as “pay for performance ,” provide employees, consumers, or providers with financial rewards as a way of motivating better performance.

• The view that managers are most responsible for strategic planning and decision making is part of the rationale for financial incentive programs. In this view, financial rewards such as bonuses are a performance-based incentive to improve productivity.

• One risk of incentive schemes is ethical hazard. Offering incentives to hit specific targets can result in the target becoming the primary goal, rather than the improvement of the company’s performance as a whole.

• The recession of 2008—2010 made it more difficult for businesses to offer managers monetary rewards.

Key Terms

• incentiveincentive:Reward used to motivate employees toward better performance.

Incentive programs, also known as “pay for performance,” provide employees, consumers, or providers with financial rewards as a way of motivating better performance. Various behavioral factors might be considered prior to establishing an incentive program, including the target audience’s motivation, skills, recognition, understanding of the goals, and ability to measure progress. The interest of participants plays a vital role in determining an incentive program, as the goal is to motivate their behavior.

Pay-for-Performance Jobs

Pay-for-performance programs are quite common in a number of industries, most notably sales. A sales role often features a contractual agreement that stipulates a certain percentage of a given representative’s sales contribute to that sales rep’s own salary. This motivates sales professionals to pursue higher success rates, as their own income will directly correlate with their efficacy.

Other types of pay-for-performance jobs are found in the manufacturing, restaurant, and financial industries. The basic premise is simple: the more sales or profits generated by the individual, the larger the share of the organization ‘s profit that individual will receive in return.

Incentive Programs

Managerial roles can function similarly to these pay-for-performance jobs, where the success of the company (or department) will directly affect the salary of the manager. Managers are often motivated by financial rewards. Like other pay-for-performance programs, the incentive programs for managers are designed to increase their performance as well as the overall performance of the company. These and other incentive programs are often used to reduce turnover, boost morale and loyalty, improve employee wellness, increase retention, and drive performance.

The financial rewards of upper management are often the highest in the organization. Such financial incentive programs are based on the understanding that the top managers within a business are the most responsible for strategic planning and decision making. In this view, financial rewards like bonuses serve as an incentive for senior management to improve performance.

5050

CEO pay growth compared to employee salaries, U.S. gross domestic product, and overall U.S. corporate profits: CEOs, as primary examples of upper managerial salary, receive high salaries in comparison to other gross income indicators. This contrast may be a result of the differing pay structure often associated with upper management.

A risk of incentive schemes is ethical hazards. Offering incentives to hit specific targets means the targets themselves can become the primary goal, rather than the improvement of the company’s performance as a whole. This mindset may cause a reduction in overall performance—even as the rate of hitting targets climbs. In the wake of the global recession of 2008—2010, financial incentive schemes received greater criticism and oversight, partly for this very reason.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Minimum Wage. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minimum_Wage.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Compensation and benefits. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_and_benefits. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Payment. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Variable Pay. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable%20Pay. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • commission. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commission. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Health care in the United States. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States. LicenseLicense: • Payment. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Compensation and benefits. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_and_benefits. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Non-monetary compensation. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-monetary%20compensation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • CEO Pay. Provided byProvided by: WikiPedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_compensation_in_the_United_States. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Incentive program. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive_program. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Incentive. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incentive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Behavior management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • incentive. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incentive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

5151

GROUPS, TEAMS, AND TEAMWORK

DEFINING TEAMS AND TEAMWORK

Defining a Team

A team is a group of people who collaborate on related tasks toward a common goal.

Learning Objectives

Define teams, particularly as they pertain to the business environment or organizational workplace

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• In a business setting most work is accomplished by teams of individuals. Because of this, it is important for employees to have the skills necessary to work effectively with others.

• Organizations use many kinds of teams, some of which are permanent and some of which are temporary.

• Teams are used to accomplish tasks that are too large or complex to be done by an individual or that require a diverse set of skills and expertise.

Key Terms

• teamteam:A group of people working toward a common purpose.

A team is a group of people who work together toward a common goal. Teams have defined membership (which can be either large or small) and a set of activities to take part in. People on a team collaborate on sets of related tasks that are required to achieve an objective. Each member is responsible for contributing to the team, but the group as a whole is responsible for the team’s success.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpzH1hPvf38&stop=232

The meaning of TEAMThe meaning of TEAM: A team is a group of people who work together toward a common goal.

5252

Teams in the Workplace

Sports teams are a good example of how teams work. For instance, a basketball team has individual players who each contribute toward the goal of winning a game. Similarly, in business settings most work is accomplished by teams of individuals who collaborate on activities with defined outcomes. Because teams are so prevalent in business organizations, it is important for employees to have the skills necessary to work effectively with others.

Organizations typically have many teams, and an individual is frequently a member of more than one team. Some teams are permanent and are responsible for ongoing activities. For instance, a team of nurses in a maternity ward provides medical services to new mothers. While patients come and go, the tasks involved in providing care remain stable. In other cases a team is formed for a temporary purpose: these are called project teams and have a defined beginning and end point linked to achieving a particular one-time goal.

The Purpose of Teams

Organizations form teams to accomplish tasks that are too large or complex for an individual to complete. Teams are also effective for work that requires different types of skills and expertise. For example, the development of new products involves understanding customer needs as well as how to design and build a product that will meet these needs. Accordingly, a new product-development team would include people with customer knowledge as well as designers and engineers.

Defining Teamwork

Teamwork involves a set of interdependent activities performed by individuals who collaborate toward a common goal.

Learning Objectives

Identify the processes and activities by which team work gets done

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Teamwork involves shared responsibility and collaboration toward a common outcome. • Teamwork processes can be divided into three categories: the transition process, action processes,

and interpersonal processes. • Five characteristics of effective teamwork are shared values, mutual trust, inspiring vision, skills, and

rewards.

Key Terms

• teamworkteamwork:The cooperative effort of a group of people seeking a common end. • conflict resolutionconflict resolution:Working to resolve different opinions in a team environment. • conflictconflict:Friction, disagreement, or discord arising between individuals or groups.

Teamwork involves a set of tasks and activities performed by individuals who collaborate with each other to achieve a common objective. That objective can be creating a product, delivering a service, writing a report, or

5353

Teamwork: Human skill involves the ability to work effectively as a member of a group and to build cooperative effort in a team.

making a decision. Teamwork differs from individual work in that it involves shared responsibility for a final outcome.

Teamwork Processes

While the substance of the tasks involved in teamwork may vary from team to team, there are three processes that are common to how teamwork gets done: the transition process, action processes, and interpersonal processes. During each of these processes, specific sets of activities occur.

1. The transition process is the phase during which a team is formed. Activities include:

◦ Mission analysis: establishing an understanding of the overall objective

◦ Goal specification: identifying and prioritizing the tasks and activities needed to achieve the mission

◦ Strategy formulation: developing a course of action to reach the goals and achieve the mission

2. Action processes comprise the phase during which a team performs its work. Activities include:

◦ Monitoring milestones and goals: tracking progress toward completion of tasks and activities

◦ Monitoring systems: tracking the use of resources such as people, technology, and information

◦ Coordination: organizing and managing the flow of team activities and tasks

◦ Team monitoring and support: assisting individuals with their tasks by, for example, providing feedback and coaching

3. Interpersonal processes include activities that occur during both the transition and action processes. These include:

◦ Conflict management: establishing conditions to avoid disagreement and resolving conflict when it occurs

◦ Motivation and confidence building: generating the willingness and ability of individuals to work together to achieve the mission

◦ Affect management: helping team members to regulate their emotions as they work together

Characteristics of Effective Teamwork

An effective team accomplishes its goals in a way that meets the standards set by those who evaluate its performance. For instance, a team may have a goal of delivering a new product within six months on a budget of $100,000. Even if the team finishes the project on time, it can be considered effective only if it stayed within its expected budget.

Effective teamwork requires certain conditions to be in place that will increase the likelihood that each member’s contributions—and the effort of the group as a whole—will lead to success. Effective teams share five characteristics:

• Shared values:a common set of beliefs and principles about how and why the team members will work together

• Mutual trust: confidence between team members that each puts the best interest of the team ahead of individual priorities

• Inspiring vision:a clear direction that motivates commitment to a collective effort • Skill/talent:the combined abilities and expertise to accomplish the required tasks and work productively

with others

5454

• Rewards:recognition of achievement toward objectives and reinforcement of behavior that supports the team’s work

Effective teamwork requires that people work as a cohesive unit. These five characteristics can help individuals collaborate with others by focusing their efforts in a common direction and achieving an outcome that can only be reached by working together.

The Role of Teams in Organizations

By combining various employees into strategic groups, a team-based organization can create synergies through team processes.

Learning Objectives

Recognize the role of a team in an organization, and illustrate the team process.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Due to global and technological factors, the importance of combining competencies and building strong teams is increasing.

• By combining resources (both across management levels and functional disciplines), organizations can create unique synergies and core competencies.

• Cross-functional teams utilize a wide variety of unique skill sets to build teams capable of achieving complex objectives.

• When carrying out a process in a team, it’s important to set objectives and strategy, carry out objectives, and build strong interpersonal efficiency.

Key Terms

• synergysynergy:The ability for a group to accomplish more together than they could accomplish individually. • cross-functional teamscross-functional teams:Teams with members that have diverse skill sets, enabling synergy across

core competencies.

The Modern Organization

Teams are increasingly common and relevant from an organizational perspective, as globalization and technology continue to expand organizational scope and strategy. In organizations, teams can be constructed both vertically (varying levels of management) and horizontally (across functional disciplines). In order to maintain synergy between employees and organize resources, teams are increasingly common across industries and organizational types.

The Role of Teams

The primary role of a team is to combine resources, competencies, skills, and bandwidth to achieve organizational objectives. The underlying assumption of a well-functioning team is one of synergy, which is to say that the output of a team will be greater than the sum of each individual’s contribution without a team architecture

5555

in place. As a result, teams are usually highly focused groups of employees, with the role of achieving specific tasks to support organizational success.

Cross-Functional Teams

Some organizations have a need for strong cross-functional teams that enable various functional competencies to align on shared objectives. This is particularly common at technology companies, where a number of specific disciplines are combined to produce complex products and/or services.

Team Processes

When considering the role of a team, it’s important to understand the various processes that teams will carry out over time. At the beginning of a team set up (or when redirecting the efforts of a team), a transitional process is carried out. Once the team has set strategic goals, they can begin progressing towards the completion of those goals operationally. The final team process is one of interpersonal efficiency, or refining the team dynamic for efficiency and success.

More specifically, these processes can be described as follows:

Transitional Process

• Mission analysis • Goal specification • Strategy formulation

Action Process

• Monitoring progress toward goals • Systems monitoring • Team monitoring and backup behavior • Coordination

Interpersonal Process

• Conflict management • Motivation and confidence building • Affect management

5656

The Impact of Team Building: This chart allows you to visualize data from a study on team-building, and its impact on team performance. Building a strong organizational culture for successful teams requires commitment to team processes.

Types of Teams

Depending on its needs and goals, a company can use a project team, a virtual team, or a cross-functional team.

Learning Objectives

Recognize the differences between types of teams and their uses

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• An organization may use different types of teams depending on the work that needs to be accomplished to meet its goals.

• Common teams include project teams, virtual teams, and cross- functional teams. • Project teams are created for a defined period of time to achieve a specific goal. • Virtual teams have members who work in separate locations that are often geographically dispersed. • Cross-functional teams bring together people with diverse expertise and knowledge from different

departments or specialties.

5757

Key Terms

• cross-functional teamcross-functional team:A group of people from different departments in an organization working toward a common goal.

Depending on its needs and goals, a company may use different types of teams. Some efforts are limited in duration and have a well-defined outcome. Other work requires the participation of people from different locations. Still other projects depend on people with a broad and diverse range of knowledge and expertise.

Different Kinds of Teams

Teams may be permanent or temporary, and team members may come from the same department or different ones. Common types of teams found in organizations include project teams, virtual teams, and cross-functional teams.

• Project teams are created for a defined period of time to achieve a specific goal. Members of a project team often belong to different functional groups and are chosen to participate in the team based on specific skills they can contribute to the project. Software development is most commonly done by project teams.

• Virtual teams have members located in different places, often geographically dispersed, who come together to achieve a specific purpose. Academic researchers often work on virtual teams with colleagues at other institutions.

• Cross-functional teams combine people from different areas, such as marketing and engineering, to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Healthcare services are frequently delivered by interdisciplinary teams of nurses, doctors, and other medical specialists.

It is common for an organization to have many teams, including teams of several types. Effective teamwork depends on choosing the type of team best suited to the work that needs to be accomplished.

Advantages of Teamwork

The benefits of teamwork include increased efficiency, the ability to focus different minds on the same problem, and mutual support.

Learning Objectives

Identify the sources of benefits teamwork creates

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• When a team works well together as a unit they are able to accomplish more than the individual members can do alone.

• Teamwork creates higher quality outcomes that are more efficient, thoughtful, and effective, as well as faster.

5858

• Individuals benefit from teamwork through mutual support and a great sense of accomplishment.

Key Terms

• diversediverse:Consisting of many different elements; various. • efficiencyefficiency:The extent to which a resource, such as electricity, is used for the intended purpose; the

ratio of useful work to energy expended.

The primary benefit of teamwork is that it allows an organization to achieve something that an individual working alone cannot. This advantage arises from several factors, each of which accounts for a different aspect of the overall benefit of teams.

Higher Quality Outcomes

Teamwork creates outcomes that make better use of resources and produce richer ideas. • Higher efficiency : Since teams combine the efforts of individuals, they can accomplish more than an

individual working alone. • Faster speed: Because teams draw on the efforts of many contributors, they can often complete tasks

and activities in less time. • More thoughtful ideas: Each person who works on a problem or set of tasks may bring different

information and knowledge to bear, which can result in solutions and approaches an individual would not have identified.

• Greater effectiveness : When people coordinate their efforts, they can divide up roles and tasks to more thoroughly address an issue. For example, in hospital settings teamwork has been found to increase patient safety more than when only individual efforts are made to avoid mishaps.

Better Context for Individuals

The social aspect of teamwork provides a superior work experience for team members, which can motivate higher performance.

• Mutual support: Because team members can rely on other people with shared goals, they can receive assistance and encouragement as they work on tasks. Such support can encourage people to achieve goals they may not have had the confidence to have reached on their own.

• Greater sense of accomplishment: When members of a team collaborate and take collective responsibility for outcomes, they can feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they achieve a goal they could not have achieved if they had worked by themselves.

The total value created by teamwork depends on the overall effectiveness of the team effort. While we might consider simply achieving a goal a benefit of teamwork, by taking advantage of what teamwork has to offer, an organization can gain a broader set of benefits.

Hazards of Teamwork

Teams face challenges to effective collaboration and achieving their goals.

Learning Objectives

Identify the common pitfalls teams can encounter that limit their performance

5959

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The social aspect of collaborative work makes teams vulnerable to pitfalls that can hurt performance. • Common pitfalls involve poor group dynamics such as weak norms, lack of trust, and interpersonal

conflict. • Poor team-design choices such as size, skill sets, and assignment of roles can negatively affect a

team’s ability to complete tasks.

Key Terms

• groupthinkgroupthink:A process of reasoning or decision making by a group, especially one characterized by uncritical acceptance of or conformity to a perceived majority view.

The collaborative nature of teams means they are subject to pitfalls that individuals working alone do not face. Team members may not always work well together, and focusing the efforts of individuals on shared goals presents challenges to completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible. The following pitfalls can lead to team dysfunction and failure to achieve important organizational objectives.

Individuals Shirking Their Duties

Since team members share responsibility for outcomes, some individuals may need to do additional work to make up for those not contributing their share of effort. This can breed resentment and foster other negative feelings that can make the team less effective. One cause of this is the failure of the team to establish clear norms of accountability for individual contributions to the group effort.

Skewed Influence over Decisions

Sometimes an individual or small number of team members can come to dominate the rest of the group. This could be due to strong personalities, greater abilities, or differences in status among members. When individuals either do not feel listened to or believe their ideas are not welcome, they may reduce their efforts.

Lack of Trust

Effective collaboration requires team members to have confidence that everyone shares a set of goals. When that belief is missing, some individuals may not feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the group. Lack of trust can also lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings, which can undermine the group’s efforts.

Conflicts Hamper Progress

While conflicts are a common aspect of working together and can even be beneficial to a team, they can also negatively affect team performance. For instance, conflict can delay progress on tasks or create other inefficiencies in getting work done.

Lack of Teaming Skills

When team members do not have the collaboration skills needed to work well with others, the overall ability of the team to function can be limited. As a result, conflicts may be more likely to arise and more difficult to resolve.

6060

Missing Task Skills

A team that does not have the expertise and knowledge needed to complete all its tasks and activities will have trouble achieving its goals. Poor team composition can lead to delays, higher costs, and increased risk.

Stuck in Formation

Sometimes the group cannot move from defining goals and outlining tasks to executing its work plan. This may be due to poor specification of roles, tasks, and priorities.

Too Many Members

The size of the team can sometimes affect its ability to function effectively. Coordination and communication are more complex in a larger team than in a smaller one. This complexity can mean that decisions must take into account greater amounts of information, meetings are more challenging to schedule, and tasks can take longer to complete.

Groupthink

Outcomes can suffer if team members value conflict avoidance and consensus over making the best decisions. People can feel uncomfortable challenging the group’s direction or otherwise speaking up for fear of breaking a team norm. This phenomenon is known as “groupthink.” Groupthink can limit creativity, lead to poor choices, or result in mistakes that might otherwise have been avoidable.

While teams offer many benefits, their effectiveness rests on how well members can avoid common pitfalls or minimize their negative consequences when they occur.

Differences Between Groups and Teams

All teams are groups of individuals, but not all groups are teams.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate between a group and a team

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• A group is two or more individuals who share common interests or characteristics and whose members identify with each other due to similar traits.

• Teams and groups differ in five key ways: task orientation, purpose, interdependence, formal structure, and familiarity among members.

6161

Key Terms

• teamteam:Any group of people involved in the same activity, especially referring to sports and work. • groupgroup:A number of things or persons that have some relationship to one another. A subset of a

culture or of a society.

While all teams are groups of individuals, not all groups are teams. Team members work together toward a common goal and share responsibility for the team’s success. A group is comprised of two or more individuals that share common interests or characteristics, and its members identify with each other due to similar traits. Groups can range greatly in size and scope. For example, members of the millennial generation are a group, but so is a small book club formed by neighbors who enjoy reading.

Groups differ from teams in several ways: • Task orientation: Teams require coordination of tasks and activities to achieve a shared aim. Groups do

not need to focus on specific outcomes or a common purpose. • Degree of interdependence: Team members are interdependent since they bring to bear a set of

resources to produce a common outcome. Individuals in a group can be entirely disconnected from one another and not rely on fellow members at all.

• Purpose: Teams are formed for a particular reason and can be short- or long-lived. Groups can exist as a matter of fact; for example, a group can be comprised of people of the same race or ethnic background.

• Degree of formal structure: Team members’ individual roles and duties are specified and their ways of working together are defined. Groups are generally much more informal; roles do not need to be assigned and norms of behavior do not need to develop.

• Familiarity among members: Team members are aware of the set of people they collaborate with, since they interact to complete tasks and activities. Members of a group may have personal relationships or they may have little knowledge of each other and no interactions whatsoever.

Sometimes it is difficult to draw a distinction between a team and a group. For instance, a set of coworkers might meet on occasion to discuss an issue or provide input on a decision. While such meetings typically have an agenda and thus a purpose and some structure, we would not necessarily think of those in attendance as a team. The activity scope and duration is just too small to involve the amount of coordination of resources and effort that teamwork requires.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• The meaning of TEAM. Located atLocated at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpzH1hPvf38. LicenseLicense: Public Domain: No Known Copyright. License TermsLicense Terms: Standard YouTube license • Managing Groups and Teams/Working in International Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Working_in_International_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/How Do You Build High-performing Virtual Teams?. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/How_Do_You_Build_High-

performing_Virtual_Teams%3F. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Professional and Technical Writing/Project Management/Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professional_and_Technical_Writing/Project_Management/Teams%23Team_Formations.

LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • team. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Working Together Teamwork Puzzle Concept. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Working_Together_Teamwork_Puzzle_Concept.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Concurrent Engineering/Team Building. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Concurrent_Engineering/Team_Building%23Five_Characteristics_of_Teamwork. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-

ShareAlike • Teamwork. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • teamwork. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/teamwork. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group Dynamics. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_dynamics%23Richard_Hackman. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict (process). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(process). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team_building_strategies_as_described_by_Klein.png. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Team_building_strategies_as_described_by_Klein.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Team Based Learning Organization. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Based_Learning_Organization. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High-performance teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational structure. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_structure. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cross-functional team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-functional_team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Teamwork. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team%23Types_of_teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cross-functional team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-functional_team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/How Do You Build High-performing Virtual Teams?. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/How_Do_You_Build_High-

performing_Virtual_Teams%3F. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team work. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_work. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • diverse. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diverse. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • efficiency. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/efficiency. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/How Do You Manage Global Virtual Teams?. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/

How_Do_You_Manage_Global_Virtual_Teams?%23Organizational_Development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Teamwork. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamwork%23Advantages_and_disadvantages_of_teamwork. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • group think. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/group+think. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Survey of Communication Study/Chapter 10 - Group Communication. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Survey_of_Communication_Study/Chapter_10_-

_Group_Communication%23The_Importance_of_Studying_Communication_in_Groups_and_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team%23From_groups_to_teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • groups. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groups. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • teams. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Social Group. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_group. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

6262

TYPES OF TEAMS

Task Forces

A task force is a temporary team created to address a single piece of work, a problem, or a goal.

Learning Objectives

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The term “task force” originated in the United States Navy. A naval task force was designed to provide flexibility in operations since it could be formed without the reorganization or repurposing of the fleet.

• Today, many organizations use task forces to bring together experts to assess, make recommendations, or take other actions to address a single issue or topic.

Key Terms

• entrantentrant:A participant. • substitutesubstitute:A replacement or stand-in for something that achieves a similar result or purpose.

“Task force” is a phrase that originated in the United States Navy during World War II. At the time, naval operations were performed by formal groupings such as fleets or squadrons, but the war created new challenges for the U.S. Navy that demanded flexibility in how resources were used. Formation of a task force allowed officers and equipment that formally belonged to different groups to come together for a single specific purpose, without reassigning responsibility for those assets or requiring the reorganization or repurposing of the fleet. Task forces were temporary and easily disbanded after their work was complete.

Today, in government, business, and other arenas, task forces are special ad-hoc committees created especially to deal with single problems or issues. For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) comprises independent national experts in prevention that use evidence-based and clinical preventative techniques to improve health outcomes for Americans. Examples of this kind of care would be routine screenings for disease, such as mammograms. As in the USPSTF, members of a task force are typically experts, and the group operates with a specific charge and within a specific time frame. The task force usually begins by assessing the factors that relate to its work. Next, the team typically identifies and analyzes possible solutions and develops recommendations and plans for implementing them.

Generally, a task force will not have responsibility for implementing its recommendations once they are made, although individual team members may have a role in doing so. Task forces do not have the power to compel others to accept their recommendations. Indeed, the results of their work may be accepted in part, rejected in part, or even ignored altogether.

6363

A team created by political parties to deal with campaign finance reform is an example of a task force. The task force is expected to study the issue, assess possible actions to be taken, and then make its recommendations in the form of a report. The results of the task force’s efforts then might be used by legislators to draft laws that would redefine acceptable practices for funding political campaigns.

Cross-Functional Teams

A cross-functional team comprises people from different departments and with special areas of expertise working to achieve a common goal.

Learning Objectives

Explain the purpose and benefit of cross-functional teams

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Cross- functional teams combine people with different areas of expertise from separate departments such as finance, human resources, and marketing.

• The range of knowledge on cross-functional teams creates a broader perspective that can lead to new ideas and better solutions and also avert risks and poor outcomes.

• The diversity of cross-functional teams can create challenges to effective communication and collaboration.

Cross-functional teams include members who bring different types of knowledge and experience from areas such as finance, engineering, human resources, and marketing. These teams occasionally may draw on subject-matter expertise from outside the organization by inviting external consultants or customers to join a team. By combining people with diverse task-related backgrounds, cross-functional teams can take a broader approach to addressing a problem or completing a set of activities. This can lead to new ideas and more creative solutions. It can also make a team’s efforts more efficient and effective by including information that can help avert risks or poor outcomes.

6464

Team: Cross-functional teams combine people with different knowledge and perspectives.

Example of a Cross-Functional Team

Many business activities require cross-functional collaboration to achieve successful outcomes. A common example is service improvement. To better meet customer expectations and achieve higher satisfaction rates, a company first needs to understand what customers are looking for. The marketing department is responsible for gathering that type of customer data. Operations staff members have expertise in how to design the process for delivering a service, so they would need to be involved in making any changes to that system. The human resources department oversees training, and employees may need new skills to succeed with the new process. If any information technology is involved in supporting the service improvement, then people from that department should be on the team. Finally, accountants may be needed to identify any new costs and additional savings. In this example, the team brings together people from five different functional areas.

Challenges of Cross-Functional Teams

Even though diversity of knowledge and perspective is the big advantage of cross-functional teams, it can also be a source of problems. People who work in the same discipline or area have a common understanding and a terminology for their work that is unknown to others. Shorthand expressions or common acronyms that are familiar to one person may be confusing to others. This can make communication between members of a cross- functional team difficult and subject to misunderstanding.

Cross-functional teams may be more likely than less complex teams to have members with divergent perspectives on how work gets done. For instance, engineers value precision and attention to detail, while those who come from more creative areas such as marketing may prefer a less rigid approach. These differences in styles may also be reflected in the personalities of team members. It can take extra effort to collaborate when you have to take into account the preferences and styles of widely dissimilar individuals.

6565

In some organizations certain departments have more status than others. A common distinction is between those in areas that contribute directly to revenue, such as sales and manufacturing, and those that do not, including support departments like purchasing and IT. Perceived differences in relative importance or credibility can undermine the effectiveness of cross-functional collaboration.

Virtual Teams

A virtual team is a temporary group created to accomplish specific tasks by using technology to collaborate remotely.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate among the six most common types of virtual teams and discuss the challenges they face

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Virtual teams rely upon computing and communications technology, especially Internet access. • Virtual teams are prevalent in today’s workforce, as they can be cost- effective and take advantage of

technology and the availability of distributed employees. • In order to function properly, virtual teams demand effective coordination in the form of project

management. • There are six common types of virtual teams: networked teams, parallel teams, project development

teams, functional teams, service teams, and offshore information-systems development teams.

Key Terms

• Task processesTask processes:The various ways that the virtual team accomplishes work: communication, coordination of work efforts, and a fit between the technology and the task at hand.

A virtual team is a group of individuals in different geographic locations who use technology to collaborate on work tasks and activities. The use of this kind of team has become prevalent in organizations due to the reduced costs of technology, the increased availability of collaborative technologies, the shift toward globalization in business, and greater use of outsourcing and temporary workers. Virtual teams require effective project management to facilitate communication and coordinate member activities.

Types of Virtual Teams

There are six common types of virtual teams. 1. Networked teams are loosely organized; they are usually formed to address a short-term objective and

are dissolved after they accomplish that objective. Similar to task forces and cross-functional teams, networked teams frequently bring together people with different expertise to bring broad perspectives to discussing an issue or problem.

2. Parallel teams are highly task-focused and draw on individuals from different functional areas and locations. While they generally complete their work on a defined schedule, parallel teams may not be disbanded but may instead remain to take on a subsequent set of tasks.

3. Project development teams work on complex sets of activities over a long time period. They may be formed to develop new products, deliver a new technology system, or redesign operational processes.

6666

4. Functional teams are comprised of people from the same department or area who collaborate on regular and ongoing activities, examples of which include providing training, executing marketing initiatives, and conducting research and development.

5. Service teams work with customers to address their purchasing and post-purchase needs. These teams enable a company to provide consistent service, often 24/7, to support customers wherever they are.

6. Finally, information systems development (ISD) teams make use of lower-cost labor, typically offshore, to develop software. They are typically created by dividing up the work of larger projects and assigning specific pieces to independent contractors or teams of developers.

Challenges of Virtual Teams

The geographic dispersion of team members and the lack of regular face-to-face meetings present three challenges to the success of virtual teams.

1. Coordination of tasks: A virtual team needs a clear set of objectives and a plan for how to achieve them in order to focus and direct collaboration among team members. They need clear guidelines and norms for how individuals will accomplish their work. Even more than traditional teams where individuals work in the same location and time zone, virtual teams require effective project management to facilitate communication and coordination of tasks among members.

2. Team-member skills: Beyond their functional expertise and experience, virtual team members need to be effective users of technologies such as video conferencing and other collaboration tools. They must learn to communicate well in writing to avoid misinterpretations that might be more easily avoided in a face-t0-face conversation. When virtual teams cross national boundaries, differences in language and culture require the ability to negotiate barriers to communication and collaboration.

3. Relationships: Virtual team members need to build relationships with colleagues through the use of technology, which can often seem impersonal. Distance and lack of regular personal interaction can make it difficult for trust and group cohesion to develop. When these are missing, team members can lose focus and collaboration can suffer, leading to delays, conflict, and other performance issues.

Self-Managing Teams

A self-managing team is a group of employees working together who are accountable for all or most aspects of their task.

Learning Objectives

Compare the advantages and disadvantages of self-managing teams.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Self-managing teams share work tasks and supportive or managerial tasks. • Because they are both responsible for their outcomes and in control of their decision -making

process, members of the self-managing team may be more motivated and productive than traditional teams.

• Self-managing teams are different from self-directed teams. Self-managing teams work toward goals that are set for them by outside leadership, whereas self-directed teams work toward a common goal that they define.

6767

Key Terms

• self-managing teamself-managing team:A group with a common purpose in which tasks and responsibilities are determined by the members.

A self-managing team is a group of employees working together who are accountable for most or all aspects of their task. A self-managing team has considerable discretion over how its work gets done. This means the majority of key decisions about activities are made by people with direct knowledge of, and who are most affected by, those choices. Self-managing teams are distinct from self-directed teams. While the latter define their own goals, the scope of a self-managing team’s authority is limited by goals that are established by others.

Self-management: This diagram illustrates the idea that virtual, management, and work teams can be empowered by being allowed to self-manage and monitor the quality of their own output.

Advantages of Self-Managing Teams

Organizations in various fields use self-managing teams to boost productivity and motivate employees. Members of self-managing teams plan, coordinate, direct, and control their activities. For example, they set the work

6868

schedule and assign tasks. In this way they share both the managerial and technical tasks. Team members also share responsibility for their output as a whole, which can inspire pride in their accomplishments. Because they eliminate a level of management, the use of self-managing teams can better allocate resources and even lower costs.

Disadvantages of Self-Managing Teams

There are also potential drawbacks to self-managing teams. The lack of hierarchical authority means that personal relationships can overwhelm good judgment. It can also lead to conformity, which can inhibit creativity or make it difficult for team members to be critical of each other. Self-management adds a layer of responsibility that can be time-consuming and require skills that some team members may not have. Members of a self-managing team often need training to assist them in succeeding at jobs that have a broad scope of duties.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Task force. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_force. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • FEMA - 34581 - FEMA Community Relations Team (CR) in a meeting in Georgia. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FEMA_-_34581_-

_FEMA_Community_Relations_Team_(CR)_in_a_meeting_in_Georgia.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cross-functional team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-functional_team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Virtual team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Emerald | Team Performance Management | Sustaining self-managed teams: a process approach to team wellness. Provided byProvided by: Emerald Insight. Located atLocated at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/

journals.htm?articleid=882784&show=html. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • self-managed teams - Search results - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=self-managed+teams&title=Special:Search. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • cross-functional team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cross-functional%20team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team%23Types_of_teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

BUILDING SUCCESSFUL TEAMS

Setting Team Goals and Providing Team Feedback

Periodic performance assessments help a team identify areas for improvement so it can better achieve its goals.

Learning Objectives

Apply effective performance management procedures to the process of goal setting and feedback

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• How a team functions is as important an indicator of its performance as the quality of what it produces.

• Periodic assessments help a team identify its strengths and weakness and create plans to improve how members work together.

• Methods of collecting assessment data include discussions, surveys, and personality diagnostic tests.

6969

Key Terms

• performanceperformance:The act of performing; carrying into execution or action; achievement; accomplishment. • implementimplement:To bring about; to put into practice. • feedbackfeedback:Critical assessment of information produced.

Setting Goals and Providing Feedback

The way team members function as a group is as important to the team’s success as the quality of what it produces. Because how they work together is so important to achieving the team’s goals, members need to be attentive to how they interact and collaborate with each other. Periodic self-assessments that consider the team’s progress, how it has gotten there, and where it is headed allow the team to gauge its effectiveness and take steps to improve its performance.

To assess its performance, a team seeks feedback from group members to identify its strengths and its weaknesses. Feedback from the team assessment can be used to identify gaps between what it needs to do to perform effectively and where it is currently. Once they have identified the areas for improvement, members of the team and others (such as managers) can develop a plan to close the gaps.

A team can gather the necessary data by holding a meeting in which members discuss what has gone well and what they would like to change about how they work together. It can be beneficial to have a non—team member such as a supervisor or a member of the human resources department solicit opinions through a brief written survey. The team can then use the results as a starting point for its discussion.

Poor communication and conflict can disrupt a team’s performance, and sometimes these disruptions are caused by personality clashes between members. Another type of team assessment involves using diagnostic tests to identify the dominant personality traits of each member. Characteristics such as being an extrovert or an introvert can shape how people prefer to work and communicate. Having an understanding of personality differences among team members can prove useful for changing how they interact with each other.

Accountability in Teams

Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies.

Learning Objectives

Illustrate the concept of accountability in a team-based work environment

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Accountability is the assignment of responsibility for outcomes to an individual or group to create an incentive for performance.

• Teams are accountable for achieving collective goals.

7070

• Individual team members are accountable to each other for their effort and contributions to the team. • Effective accountability for teams relies on making choices that support the team’s ability to succeed.

Key Terms

• accountabilityaccountability:The acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, and decisions.

Accountability

Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, and decisions. In a management context, accountability explicitly identifies who is responsible for ensuring that outcomes meet goals and creates incentives for success.

For teams in particular, accountability means that all members share responsibility for their collective output and for their success in achieving their goals. Because teamwork is organized at the collective level rather than on a per-person basis, its results are the sum of each member’s efforts. Organizations often use team-based rewards to hold teams accountable for their work.

Accountability for team members also implies that individuals have a responsibility to each other to complete tasks and contribute to the group effort. One benefit of teamwork is the mutual support and assistance that team members can provide each other. A sense of accountability to the team creates an incentive for individuals to provide help when needed. Since team tasks are interdependent, the quality of one person’s work affects that of the others. Teams use norms and other forms of social pressure to hold one another accountable.

Conditions for Effective Accountability

For accountability to work, teams need to have the resources, skills, and authority to do what they are being held responsible for. If leaders expect teams to accept the blame for failing to achieve an assigned goal, they should ensure that success is within the team’s reach. For this reason, the choices made about goal-setting, team composition, and process design have a direct effect on the degree of responsibility a team can assume for its performance.

7171

Government accountability: Governing authorities have the obligation to report, explain, and answer for resulting consequences of their actions.

Choosing Team Size and Team Members

Team size and composition affect team processes and outcomes.

Learning Objectives

Justify the importance of drafting a team that reflects a manageable size and conducive skill sets

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The optimal size and composition of teams will vary depending on the team’s purpose and goals. • Team size should take into account the scope and complexity of required tasks and activities. • As a whole, team members should bring all the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the team’s

goals.

Key Terms

• CompositionComposition:The proportion of different parts to make a whole.

7272

Team size and composition affect team processes and outcomes. The optimal size and composition of teams depends on the scope of the team’s goals. With too few people, a team will not have the resources and skills it needs to complete its tasks. Too many members can make communication and coordination difficult and lead to poor team performance.

Research shows that teams perform best with between five and nine members. Dr. Meredith Belbin did extensive research on teams prior to 1990 in the UK that suggested that the optimum team size is eight roles plus a specialist as needed. Fewer than five members resulted in decreased perspectives and diminished creativity. Membership in excess of twelve resulted in increased conflict and greater potential of subgroups forming that can disrupt team cohesion.

The mix of knowledge and expertise on a team is also important. Individuals should be selected for teams so that as a whole the group has all the expertise needed to achieve its goals. For this reason, cross-functional teams may be larger than groups formed to work on less complex activities. Similarly, a task force charged with making recommendations in a short time frame would benefit from having fewer members.

Teams benefit from similarities in background among members, which can reduce conflict and miscommunication. Having fewer differences can also reduce the amount of time a team takes to become an effective working group since there is less need to adjust individual work styles. On the other hand, more diversity in skills and experience brings broader perspectives and different approaches to the team’s work. Having members with different skill sets also reduces redundancies and allows for the more efficient assignment of people to various teams.

Team Building

Team building is an approach to helping a team become an effective performing unit.

Learning Objectives

Identify how to achieve team success and the underlying value of team building from a broader organizational perspective

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Team building refers to a wide range of activities intended to help a team become an effective performing unit by increasing members’ awareness of how they interact with each other.

• Team building is important as a team is being formed and can also be valuable after a team has begun its work.

• Activities that facilitate team building include introductory meetings, collaborative games, simulations, and retreats.

Key Terms

• teamteam:A group of people linked in a common purpose. • retreatretreat:An event during which people shift focus from their daily routines and responsibilities to

personal or group development.

7373

Team building refers to a wide range of activities intended to help a team become an effective performing unit. To achieve this, team building aims to increase team members’ awareness and understanding of their working relationships by focusing on their interactions with each other. The purpose is to create a cohesive group from a set of individuals and avoid common pitfalls that can undermine a team, such as conflict, miscommunication, and lack of trust.

Team-building activities require the participation of all team members. These often take place when a team is first created and can include activities such as the team working on a brief exercise to begin the process of collaboration or individuals simply introducing themselves. Sometimes organizations use more intensive and time- consuming activities such as off-site, day-long retreats with an agenda that can include interpersonal bonding exercises, simulations, personality and communication style assessments, and group-dynamics games. The human resources department may coordinate team building, though sometimes companies hire consultants or trainers skilled in facilitating those types of activities.

A team can also benefit from team building after its work has begun. Sometimes teams recognize that members are missing abilities that make collaboration easier, such as problem solving or conflict-resolution skills. Training sessions that address these deficiencies build the team’s ability to work together. After people have been working together for a while, social norms can develop that interfere with a team’s performance. Individuals might be afraid to challenge decisions if it has become unacceptable to question a team’s leader, or work habits such as tardiness to meetings may have become commonplace. A discussion among team members creates an opportunity to address factors that are standing in the way of their working together effectively.

Stages of Team Development

The Forming—Storming—Norming—Performing model of group development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate each of the stages in team development for opportunities, threats and strategy

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Teams move through a series of four phases—from when they are formed to when their work is complete.

• During the forming stage, a the team discusses it purpose, defines and assigns tasks, establishes timelines, and begins forming personal relationships.

• The often-contentious storming stage is the period when team members clarify their goals and the strategy for achieving them.

• The norming stage is when the team establishes its values for how individuals will interact and collaborate.

• Performing is the stage of team development when team members have productive relationships and are able to communicate and coordinate effectively and efficiently.

• While teams move through the four stages in sequence, the phases may overlap or be repeated.

7474

Key Terms

• formingforming:The stage of group development when the team discusses its purpose, defines and assigns tasks, establishes timelines, and begins forming personal relationships.

• performingperforming:The stage of group development when team members have productive relationships and are able to communicate and coordinate effectively and efficiently.

• stormingstorming:The stage of group development when the team clarifies its goals and its strategy for achieving them.

• normingnorming:The stage of group development when the team establishes its values for how individuals will interact and collaborate.

Teams move through a series of stages, beginning when they are formed and ending when they are disbanded. Bruce Tuckman identified four distinct phases of team development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Each has a primary purpose and a common set of interpersonal dynamics among team members. Tuckman proposed that all are inevitable and even necessary parts of a successful team’s evolution.

The Forming Stage

The first step in a team’s life is bringing together a group of individuals. Individuals focus on defining and assigning tasks, establishing a schedule, organizing the team’s work, and other start-up matters. In addition to focusing on the scope of the team’s purpose and how to approach it, individuals in the formation stage are also gathering information and impressions about each other. Since people generally want to be accepted by others, during this period they usually avoid conflict and disagreement. Team members may begin to work on their tasks independently, not yet focused on their relationships with fellow team members.

7575

Jets in formation: All teams go through a life-cycle of stages, identified by Bruce Tuckman as: forming, storming, norming, and performing.

The Storming Stage

Once their efforts are under way, team members need clarity about their activities and goals, as well as explicit guidance about how they will work independently and collectively. This leads to a period known as storming—because it can involve brainstorming ideas and also because it usually causes disruption. During the storming stage members begin to share ideas about what to do and how to do it that compete for consideration. Team members start to open up to each other and confront one another’s ideas and perspectives.

Because storming can be contentious, members who are averse to conflict will find it unpleasant or even painful. This can decrease motivation and effort by drawing attention away from tasks. In some cases storming (i.e., disagreements) can be resolved quickly. Other times a team never leaves this stage and becomes stuck and unable to do its work. Patience and consideration toward team members and their views go a long way toward avoiding this.

7676

The Norming Stage

Successfully moving through the storming stage means that a team has clarified its purpose and strategy for achieving its goals. It now transitions to a period focused on developing shared values about how team members will work together. These norms of collaboration can address issues ranging from when to use certain modes of communication, such as e-mail versus telephone, to how team meetings will be run and what to do when conflicts arise. Norms become a way of simplifying choices and facilitating collaboration, since members have shared expectations about how work will get done.

The Performing Stage

Once norms are established and the team is functioning as a unit, it enters the performing stage. By now team members work together easily on interdependent tasks and are able to communicate and coordinate effectively. There are fewer time-consuming distractions based on interpersonal and group dynamics. For this reason, motivation is usually high and team members have confidence in their ability to attain goals.

While these four stages—forming, storming, norming, and performing—are distinct and generally sequential, they often blend into one another and even overlap. A team may pass through one phase only to return to it. For example, if a new member joins the team there may be a second brief period of formation while that person is integrated. A team may also need to return to an earlier stage if its performance declines. Team-building exercises are often done to help a team through its development process.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Team building. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_building. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • feedback. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feedback. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • performance. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • implement. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/implement. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • George Bush signs the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

File:George_Bush_signs_the_Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Composition. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team building. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_building. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • team. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Red Arrows - diamond | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27466406@N00/3849984905/. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Forming-storming-norming-performing. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

FACTORS INFLUENCING TEAM PERFORMANCE

The Role of Social Norms in Teams

Social norms are shared beliefs about how people should behave that influence team performance.

Learning Objectives

Examine the way teams develop and integrate norms, both social and performance based, in the evolution of the team dynamic

7777

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Social norms create expectations and standards for acceptable behavior by team members. • Norms may develop through explicit conversation among team members or emerge implicitly through

the way they interact. • Norms are different from rules in that, while rules are imposed and required, norms are agreed upon

and reinforced through interpersonal relationships. • By creating accountability and reducing uncertainty, norms can help a team perform effectively.

Key Terms

• socializesocialize:To instruct, usually subconsciously, in the etiquette of a society. • dysfunctionaldysfunctional:Counterproductive or disruptive to effective performance. • rolerole:The expected behavior of an individual in a society.

Social norms are sets of shared beliefs about how people should behave. Teams and other types of groups develop norms to indicate acceptable ways of interacting. Norms create expectations, set standards, and reflect the collective value of the team members. Once formed, norms are not easily changed.

How Norms Emerge

Teams can create norms through discussions among team members. Often, during the forming phase of team development, members will have conversations about standards of behavior for the group. By doing so, teams can identify and develop norms that support their collaboration and productivity.

Both establishing and maintaining norms are indicators of a team’s maturity, made possible only when members have developed working relationships. Effective norms can develop on their own, especially if team members have prior experience working on successful teams. However, without explicit direction dysfunctional norms such as aversion to new ideas or conflict avoidance may take hold.

7878

Handshaking as a Norm: In some business cultures, it is a norm to shake someone’s hand upon meeting. Here, one businessman shakes another’s hand. In many situations, it would be normative for the businessman to also shake the nearby businesswoman’s hand.

Norms vs. Rules

Norms are different from rules. Rules require or prohibit behavior and are typically issued by someone with the authority to direct others to comply and to impose sanctions if they do not. People might agree or disagree with a rule, but they generally are not free to ignore them. In contrast, norms are sets of expectations, not edicts. Team members themselves agree upon and reinforce norms through how they behave with each other. The clearer and more explicit the norms, especially if they are written down, the more effective they are at influencing team members’ behavior.

Benefits of Norms

Through the process of developing shared norms of behavior, team members begin to hold each other accountable for how they contribute to the team. By pointing out when someone violates a norm, the team helps keep its performance on track.

To the extent that team members can rely on norms to shape behavior, the team may experience less uncertainty and more efficiency in how work gets done. For example, a norm about what constitutes timely completion of tasks may help focus individual efforts. Because people act in accordance with norms, their behavior can become predictable and provide stability to the team.

Team Cohesiveness

A group is in a state of cohesion when its members possess bonds linking them to one another and to the group as a whole.

Learning Objectives

Explain how team cohesion contributes to team performance

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Team cohesion is the degree to which individual members want to contribute to the group ‘s ability to continue as a functioning work unit.

• Cohesiveness develops over time out of interpersonal and group-level attraction, through collaboration, and as a result of a sense of belonging.

• Cohesive teams communicate more effectively, lead to higher member satisfaction, and can create efficiency in resource allocation.

7979

• There can also be negative consequences to group cohesion. If the social pressures of the group intensify, it may lead to conformity and resistance to change.

Key Terms

• cohesioncohesion:The state of working together or being united. • incentiveincentive:Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages.

Team cohesion is the degree to which individual members want to contribute to the group’s ability to continue as a functioning work unit. Members of cohesive teams have emotional and social bonds that link them to one another and to the group as a whole. These ties enable members to sustain their efforts on behalf of the team and make it more likely that the team will achieve its goals.

How Cohesion Develops

Team cohesion develops over time. Social scientists have explained the phenomenon of group cohesiveness in different ways. Some suggest that cohesiveness among group members develops from a heightened sense of belonging, as well as from collaboration and interdependence. Others note that cohesion comes from the interpersonal and group-level attraction common between people who share similar backgrounds and interests. Because teams have clear boundaries regarding membership, barriers to belonging also contribute to cohesion.

Consequences of Cohesion

Team cohesion is related to a range of positive and negative consequences. Cohesion creates a stronger sense of commitment to goals, which motivates higher individual effort and performance. Members of more cohesive groups tend to communicate with one another in a more positive fashion than those of less cohesive groups. As a result, members of cohesive groups often report higher levels of satisfaction and lower levels of anxiety and tension. This can improve decision making and encourage greater participation. Finally, by maintaining membership cohesive teams are able to continue to pursue new goals once they have fulfilled their original purpose. This makes allocation of resources more efficient, since an existing cohesive team can perform well and more quickly than a newly formed one.

Membership in a cohesive team can also have negative consequences. For example, cohesion can intensify social pressure to conform or limit individual expression. Cohesion can also make adaptation more difficult by making group processes inflexible or resistant to change.

Team Roles

Team roles define how each member of the group relates to the others and contributes to the team’s performance.

Learning Objectives

Identify types of team roles and how they contribute to team performance

8080

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Team roles are sets of responsibilities and behaviors that establish expectations for how each member contributes to the team’s performance.

• Roles may be assigned formally or assumed by individuals voluntarily. • Three types of roles are action-oriented, people-oriented, and idea-oriented.

Key Terms

• interdependentinterdependent:Mutually dependent; reliant on one another.

A role is a set of related duties and behaviors that exist independently from the person who acts in that role. Roles are part of a team’s structure, and having a role defines each team member’s position in the group relative to the others. Team roles establish expectations about who will do what to help the team succeed.

Roles may be assigned formally to team members or be assumed by individuals voluntarily. Each role is best suited to a person with the necessary skills and experience, since without them it is difficult to achieve credibility or influence on others. Team roles are not necessarily linked to specific work tasks and may even include responsibilities that do not directly contribute to the team’s output.

Common Team Roles

The consultant Meredith Belbin studied high-performing teams and devised a typology based on how members contributed to the group’s success. In his model there are three types of team roles: action-oriented, people- oriented, and idea-oriented.

• Action-oriented roles are pragmatic—they focus on getting things done by taking ideas and turning them in practical plans. We think of these as leadership roles, since what they do can stimulate others to achieve goals.

• People-oriented roles deal with coordinating tasks, supporting communication, and facilitating working relationships. These roles can require negotiation skills, keen perception about human behavior, and good listening abilities.

• Idea-oriented roles involve generating new approaches, analyzing information, and thinking critically about the team’s work. Often these roles are filled by specialists with deep knowledge in a functional area or another type of subject-matter expertise.

Together these roles address both a team’s tasks and how it accomplishes them. Each type of role brings something valuable to how a team functions. When a role is missing because there is no one available to fill it, team performance can suffer.

Team Communication

Effective communication is often a key to the successful performance of team tasks.

Learning Objectives

Explain the function of effective communication in team performance

8181

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• A significant part of teamwork involves oral and written communication. • Teams establish norms for the modes, frequency, and timing of communication between members

and among the group. • Teams use a mix of centralized and decentralized patterns of communication. • Barriers to effective team communication include lack of shared vocabulary, poor speaking and

writing skills, time constraints, and insensitivity to individual differences.

Key Terms

• feedbackfeedback:Critical assessment of information produced. • communicationcommunication:The exchange of information between entities.

A major part of teamwork is communication. Team members send and exchange information to convey ideas, generate discussion, prompt action, create understanding, and coordinate activities. Effective communication means transmitting a message so that the recipient understands its content and intention. When team members communicate well, they can avoid common pitfalls such as misunderstandings, lack of trust, and conflict that can undermine team performance.

Team members share information in a variety of ways, including face-t0-face meetings and other forms of verbal communication, as well as in writing—through e-mail, texts, and memos. Teams develop practices for how members will communicate with each other and with the group as a whole. Norms typically emerge about preferred modes, frequency, and timing of communication.

8282

Team communication: The basketball team here communicates by forming a huddle.

Patterns of Communication

Communication patterns describe the flow of information within the group and can be described as centralized or decentralized. When centralized, communication tends to flow from one source to all group members. Centralized communication results in consistent, standardized information being conveyed, but often restricts its flow to one direction. In contrast, decentralized communication means team members share and exchange information directly with each other and with the group. This allows information to flow more freely, but often with less consistency in format or distribution. The results can be incomplete, untimely, or poorly distributed messages. Most teams use a mix of the two approaches, choosing centralized communication for messages that are more complex, urgent, or time sensitive, and decentralized communication when discussion and idea generation are needed.

Barriers to Effective Team Communication

There are several barriers to effective communication within teams. These include lack of shared vocabulary or understanding of key task-related concepts, divergent personal styles of expression, and insensitivity to differences in individual characteristics such as age or gender. Good writing and speaking skills are essential to making oneself well understood. Limited time is often another factor in poor communication; understanding requires attention and effort, and it is easy to be distracted from one message by another. Virtual teams, especially those whose members are widely dispersed, can face additional challenges such as differences in language, culture, and time zones.

8383

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Business Meeting | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/83532250@N06/7650804342/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Norm (social). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_(social). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job performance. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team performance management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_performance_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • role. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/role. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • socialize. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/socialize. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team performance management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_performance_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Social cohesion. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cohesion. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job performance. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Which attributes are fundamental to team cohesion?. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/

Which_attributes_are_fundamental_to_team_cohesion%3F. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cohesiveness. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohesiveness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • incentive. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incentive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • cohesion. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cohesion. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • interdependent. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interdependent. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Internal control. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_control. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Role. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job performance. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team performance management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_performance_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team role inventories. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Role_Inventories%23Other_team_role_inventories. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team huddle | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/6989389380/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Communication. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job performance. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Feedback in Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Feedback_in_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team performance management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_performance_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • feedback. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/feedback. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • communication. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/communication. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

MANAGING CONFLICT

Styles of Interpersonal Conflict

Team conflict is a state of discord between individuals that work together.

Learning Objectives

Explain the distinction between substantive and affective conflicts and between intra- and inter-organizational conflict

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Conflict is a state of discord between people, or groups of people working together, caused by an actual or perceived opposition of needs, values, and/or interests.

• Substantive conflicts deal with aspects of performance or tasks and often relate specifically to the project or goals of a team or organization.

• Affective conflicts, also known as personal conflicts, revolve around personal disagreements or dislikes between individuals in a team.

• Organizational conflict may be intra-organizational, meaning it takes place across departments or within teams, or it may be inter-organizational, meaning it arises from disagreements between two or more organizations.

8484

Key Terms

• affectiveaffective:Relating to, resulting from, or influenced by emotions. • substantivesubstantive:Of the core essence or essential element of a thing or topic.

Conflict is a feature common to social life. In organizations, conflict is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values, and/or interests between people working together. Conflict on teams takes many forms and can be minor, causing only brief disruption, or major, threatening the team’s ability to function and attain its goals. We can distinguish between two type of conflict: substantive and affective.

Substantive and Affective Conflict

Substantive conflicts deal with aspects of a team’s work. For example, conflicts can arise over questions about an individual’s performance, differing views about the scope of a task or assignment, disparate definitions of acceptable quality, or the nature of a project goal. Other substantive conflicts involve how team members work together. These process conflicts often involve disagreements over the strategies, policies, and procedures the group should use in order to complete its tasks.

Affective conflict relates to trouble that develops in interpersonal relationships among team members. While these personal conflicts emerge as people work together, they may have their roots in factors separate from the team’s purpose and activities. Affective conflicts are often based on personality conflicts, differing communication styles, perceptions about level of effort, or personal dislikes based on negative past experiences.

Intra-Organizational and Inter-Organizational Conflict

Both substantive and affective conflicts can be separated into those that happen within an organization and those that happen between two or more different organizations. Intra-organizational conflicts occur across departments in an organization, within work teams and other groups, and between individuals. Inter-organizational conflicts are disagreements between people—business partners, for example, or other collaborators, vendors, and distributors—in two or more organizations.

8585

Arguing wolves: These wolves are expressing disagreement over territory or having some other type of conflict.

The Impact of Interpersonal Conflict on Team Performance

Conflict can have damaging or productive effects on the performance of a team.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the way in which conflict can both help and hurt a team’s performance

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Conflict is common within teams, especially during the storming phase of team development. • Team conflict provides benefits including resolving misunderstandings, improving processes, and

changing behaviors.

8686

• Team conflict can have negative consequences such as reduced group cohesion and lower productivity, and it can even threaten the team’s existence.

Key Terms

• interdependentinterdependent:Mutually dependent; reliant on one another. • affectiveaffective:Relating to, resulting from, or influenced by emotions.

Conflict occurs often in teamwork, especially during the storming phase of team development. While at first we might think of all conflict between team members as undesirable and harmful, the process of resolving conflicts can actually provide benefits to team performance. Whether a conflict is productive or not can depend on how team members perceive it, as well as how it affects progress toward the team’s goals.

Benefits of Team Conflict

Substantive conflicts can affect performance for the better by removing barriers caused by different assumptions or misunderstandings about a team’s tasks, strategy, or goals. Conflict can be constructive when it creates broader awareness about how team members are experiencing their work and thus leads to changes that improve members’ productivity. Conflict can also lead to process improvements, such as when it reveals a deficiency in how the team communicates, which can then be corrected. Clashes of ideas can lead to more creative solutions or otherwise provide perspectives that persuade the team to take a different approach that is more likely to lead to success.

Addressing personal conflicts that arise between members can facilitate cooperation by helping individuals adapt their behavior to better suit the needs of others. Although most people find conflict uncomfortable while they are experiencing it, they can come to recognize its value as the team progresses in its development.

Negative Consequences of Team Conflict

While sometimes conflict can lead to a solution to a problem, conflicts can also create problems. Discord caused by enmity between individuals can reduce team cohesion and the ability of team members to work together. Conflicts can create distractions that require time and effort to resolve, which can delay completion of tasks and even put a team’s goals at risk.

Communication can suffer when people withdraw their attention or participation, leading to poor coordination of interdependent tasks. Tension and heightened emotions can lower team members’ satisfaction, increase frustration, and lead to bad judgments. They can even prompt individuals to withdraw from the team, requiring the assignment of a new member or creating a resource scarcity that makes it more difficult for the team to fulfill its purpose. In extreme cases, conflict among members, if left unaddressed, can lead to the complete inability of the team to function, and thus to its disbandment.

Common Causes of Team Conflict

Team conflict is caused by factors related to individual behavior as well as disagreements about the team’s work.

Learning Objectives

Identify the causes of conflict within an organization as a conflict manager.

8787

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Team conflict arises from how people perceive the actions of others and from differing views of the team’s work and how it should be accomplished.

• Common causes of team conflict include conflicting interests, incompatible work styles, competition over resources, failure to follow norms, poor communication, and performance deficiencies.

Key Terms

• ambiguityambiguity:Something liable to more than one interpretation, explanation, or meaning. • affectiveaffective:Relating to, resulting from, or influenced by emotions.

Conflict between team members comes from several sources. Some conflicts have their basis in how people behave, while others come from disagreements about the nature of the team’s work and how it is being accomplished.

• Competing interests: Conflict can arise when people have mutually incompatible desires or needs. For example, two team members with similar skills may both want a certain assignment, leaving the one who doesn’t receive it resentful.

• Different behavioral styles or preferences: Individuals may clash over their respective work habits, attention to detail, communication practices, or tone of expression. While these can affect coordination of interdependent tasks, they can especially inhibit direct collaboration.

• Competition over resources: Members may fight over the limited resources available to accomplish the team’s tasks. For example, if two people both rely on the action of a third person to meet identical deadlines, disagreements might arise over whose work should receive that person’s attention first.

• Failure to follow team norms: A team member creates conflict when she displays attitudes or behaviors that go against the team’s agreement about how it will function. If a group norm calls for prompt arrival at meetings and prohibits the use of mobile devices during discussions, ignoring these practices can engender conflict.

• Performance deficiencies: When some team members are either not contributing their share of effort or not performing at the expected level of quality, the impositions that result can create friction, which may be heightened when critical or highly visible tasks are involved.

• Poor communication: When team members do not share relevant information with each other, people may make decisions or take actions that others consider inappropriate or even harmful. Blame and questions about motives can result, creating discord among the team.

• Ambiguity about means and ends: Lack of clarity about tasks, strategies, and/or goals can lead people to make assumptions that others do not share or agree with, which can result in conflict.

8888

Card game argument: Behavioral differences and personality clashes can cause conflict even among friends.

Constructive Team Conflict

Teams can use conflict as a strategy for enhancing performance.

Learning Objectives

Explain how conflict can be used as a strategy for improving team performance

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Team performance can benefit by using conflict to foster learning and process improvement. • Team members can establish guidelines and norms that encourage constructive conflict.

8989

Key Terms

• innovationinnovation:A change in customs; something new and contrary to established patterns, manners, or rites.

• conflictconflict:A clash or disagreement between two opposing groups or individuals.

Teams may use conflict as a strategy for continuous improvement and learning. Recognizing the benefits of conflict and using them as part of the team’s process can enhance team performance. Conflict can uncover barriers to collaboration that changes in behavior can remove. It can also foster better decisions because it makes team members consider the perspectives of others and even helps them see things in new and innovative ways.

Addressing conflict can increase team cohesion by engaging members in discussions about important issues. Team members may feel more valued when they know they are contributing to something vital to the team’s success. Conflict can reveal assumptions that may not apply in the current situation and thus allow the team to agree on a new course. It can also draw attention to norms that have developed without the explicit agreement of team members and create the opportunity to endorse or discard them.

Generating Constructive Conflict

Team members and others can follow a few guidelines for encouraging constructive conflict. First, they can start by explicitly calling for it as something that will help improve the team’s performance. This helps people view conflict as acceptable and can thus free them to speak up.

Teams can lower the emotional intensity of any conflict be establishing clear guidelines for how to express disagreements and challenge colleagues. One helpful norm is to focus on the task-related element of a conflict rather than criticizing the traits of particular individuals. Another is to emphasize common goals and shared commitments, which can keep conflict in perspective and prevent it from overwhelming the team’s efforts.

Team Conflict Resolution and Management

Some ways of dealing with conflict seek resolution; others aim to minimize negative effects on the team.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate between conflict resolution and conflict management

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Conflict resolution aims to eliminate disagreements and disputes among team members; in contrast, conflict management seeks to minimize the negative effects of conflict on team performance.

• There are three main approaches to conflict resolution: integrative, distributive, and mediating. • There are three main conflict-management tactics: smoothing, yielding, and avoiding.

9090

Key Terms

• disputedispute:An argument or disagreement. • resolutionresolution:The moment in which a conflict ends and the outcome is clear. • adversarialadversarial:Characteristic of an opponent; combative, hostile.

The way a team deals with conflicts that arise among members can influence whether and how those conflicts are resolved and, as a result, the team’s subsequent performance. There are several ways to approach managing and resolving team conflict—some leave the team and its members better able to continue their work, while others can undermine its effectiveness as a performing unit.

Conflict Resolution

Teams use one of three primary approaches to conflict resolution: integrative, distributive, and mediating. 1. Integrative approaches focus on the issue to be solved and aim to find a resolution that meets

everyone’s needs. Success with this tactic requires the exchange of information, openness to alternatives, and a willingness to consider what is best for the group as a whole rather than for any particular individual.

2. Distributive approaches find ways to divide a fixed number of positive outcomes or resources in which one side comes out ahead of the other. Since team members have repeated interactions with each other and are committed to shared goals, the expectation of reciprocity can make this solution acceptable since those who don’t get their way today may end up “winning” tomorrow.

3. Mediating approaches bring in a third party to facilitate a non-confrontational, non-adversarial discussion with the goal of helping the team reach a consensus about how to resolve the conflict. A mediator from outside the team brings no emotional ties or preconceived ideas to the conflict and therefore can help the team identify a broader set of solutions that would be satisfactory to all.

Although these three approaches all bring overt conflict to an end, team cohesion can suffer if members perceive the process itself as unfair, disrespectful, or overly contentious. The result can be resentment that festers and leads to subsequent additional conflict that a more conciliatory process might have avoided.

Conflict Management

The primary aim of conflict management is to promote the positive effects and reduce the negative effects that disputes can have on team performance without necessarily fully resolving the conflict itself. Teams use one of three main tactics to manage conflict: smoothing, yielding, and avoiding.

1. The smoothing approach attempts to minimize the differences among the people who are in conflict with each other. This strategy often focuses on reducing the emotional charge and intensity of how the people speak to each other by emphasizing their shared goals and commitments.

2. The yielding approach describes the choice some team members make to simply give in when others disagree with them rather than engage in conflict. This is more common when the stakes are perceived to be small or when the team member’s emotional ties to the issue at hand are not particularly strong.

3. In the avoiding approach, teams members may choose to simply ignore all but the most contentious disagreements. While this can have short-term benefits and may be the best option when the team is under time pressure, it is the approach least likely to produce a sense of harmony among the team.

While conflict can increase the engagement of team members, it can also create distractions and draw attention away from important tasks. Because conflict management seeks to contain such disruptions and threats to team performance, conflicts do not disappear so much as exist alongside the teamwork.

9191

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• wolves | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/laenulfean/476027925/. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • affective. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affective. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Which attributes are fundamental to team cohesion?. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/

Which_attributes_are_fundamental_to_team_cohesion%3F. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict resolution. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • substantive. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/substantive. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group behavior. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_behavior. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Job performance. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_performance. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team performance management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_performance_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • interdependent. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/interdependent. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • affective. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affective. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Jan Steen - Argument over a Card Game - WGA21735. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Steen_-_Argument_over_a_Card_Game_-_WGA21735.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • affective. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affective. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Workplace conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • ambiguity. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ambiguity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational dissent. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_dissent%23Encouraging_dissent_in_the_workplace. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict resolution. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resolution. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Group conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • innovation. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/innovation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • conflict. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conflict. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • resolution. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/resolution. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Mediation. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Conflict management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Dispute resolution. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispute_resolution. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • adversarial. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adversarial. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • dispute. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dispute. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

9292

DIVERSITY IN A GLOBAL BUSINESS WORLD

CULTURE

Defining Organizational Culture

Organizational culture can be defined as the collective behavior of people within an organization and the meanings behind their actions.

Learning Objective

Define culture and it’s conceptual development within the context of organizations and innovation

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Culture is inherently intangible, and a static definition of culture struggles to encapsulate the meaning and implications of its role in an organization.

• One way to define culture is simply as the overarching mentality and expectation of behavior within the context of a given group (e.g., an organization, business, country, etc.).

• Corporate culture is usually derived from the top down (i.e., upper management sets the tone) and comes in the form of expectation and consistency throughout the organization.

• Culture can be manipulated and altered depending on leadership and members. Instilling positive culture that promotes effective employee behavior is a manager’s primary task.

• While there are many models for and perspectives on defining culture within an organization, models such as Geert Hofstede’s, Edgar Schein’s and Gerry Johnson’s are useful in properly framing a comprehensive definition.

Key Term

culture:culture: The beliefs, values, behavior, and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.

Culture is inherently intangible, and a static definition of culture struggles to encapsulate the meaning and implications of its role in an organization. One way to define culture is simply as the overarching mentality and expectation of behavior within the context of a given group (e.g., an organization, business, country, etc.). Culture

9393

People working at Wikimedia: Even small things, such as the way an office space is set up, can set the tone for organizational culture.

provides a guiding perspective on how individuals within that group should act, and what meaning can be derived from those actions. Expectation, traditions, value, ethics, vision, and mission can all both communicate and reinforce a given group culture. Above all else, culture must be shared internally; otherwise it loses its form.

Culture in Business

Corporate culture is usually derived from the top down (i.e., upper management sets the tone) and comes in the form of expectation and consistency throughout the organization. All employees and managers must uphold these cultural expectations to generate a working environment that correlates to cultural expectations. The shared assumptions should be implicit in behavior and explicit in the mission, vision and ethics statements of the organization. Consistency between expectation and action is key here.

Culture and Adaptability

Culture can be manipulated and altered, depending on leadership and members. Let’s take the simple example of a car dealership. Selling cars is usually a commission business, where the salesperson is a central success factor. Many car dealerships find that competition is an effective cultural component and embed that into the organization. This is easily accomplished with the right tools. A car dealership owner may hire specifically for competitiveness, making it clear that this is the type of individual they want to hire. The owner can create high variable salary and low fixed salary so that high performers are much more highly prized and rewarded than ineffective salespeople. The owner could give out awards at the end of each quarter to the most successful salesperson. The list could go on and on, but the important consideration here is how strategy and culture can be intertwined to evolve together.

Perspectives on Culture

Culture is a deeply important element of organizations and societies that is studied extensively in a variety of disciplines. This has generated more definitions of culture and how to go about empirically measuring it than could be touched upon in one overview. However, a few important perspectives for a business manager include:

• Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory—Postulates that cultural differences to be aware of include different perspectives on power distance, masculinity (vs. femininity), individualism (vs. collectivism), avoidance of uncertainty, long-term orientation, and indulgence.

• Schein’s Cognitive Levels of Organizational Culture – Edgar Schein believes that culture can be viewed most simply via artifacts (e.g., facilities, dress code, etc.), more acutely through values (e.g., focus on quality, loyalty or other central values) and most complexly through tacit assumptions (i.e., unspoken rules of behavior and other intangible expectations that are very difficult to observe and measure).

• Gerry Johnson’s Cultural Web – This includes the elements of culture, which is an important aspect of how we define it. Johnson underlines the paradigm, control system, organizational structure, power structure, symbols, stories, and myths as central determinants of what a given organizational culture stands for.

While each of these theories is complex, all together they help create a clearer picture of what exactly culture is and how it applies to managers and organizations.

The Impact of Culture on an Organization

Culture is a malleable component of an organization that can adapt and evolve through influences to create value.

9494

Learning Objective

Identify the central components of an organization or company that result from the influence cultural dispositions

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Culture, particularly in large organizations that have a great deal of momentum, can be difficult to influence or change.

• Understanding how to change an organizational culture requires some insight into what creates culture in the first place and how altering those components may impact meaningful cultural development.

• Some examples of organizational facets that influence culture are mission and vision statements, control systems, organizational structures, power hierarchies, symbols, routines, and internal stories and myths.

• When integrating culture change, it is important to update mission and vision statements, ensure buy-in from upper management, update control systems and power hierarchies, hire people representative of the desired culture (and remove those who are not), and update the corporate ethos.

Key Terms

• paradigm:paradigm: A system of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.

• joint venture:joint venture: A cooperative partnership between two individuals or businesses in which profits and risks are shared.

• inertia:inertia: The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass. Figuratively, in a person, unwillingness to change.

Culture, particularly in large organizations that have a great deal of internal momentum, can be difficult to influence or change. The size of an organization and the strength of its culture are the biggest contributors to cultural inertia. Big and strong organizational cultures will have a powerful tendency to continue moving in the direction they are already moving (momentum). Therefore, managers must understand not only how to create culture, but also how to change it when necessary to ensure a positive, efficient and ethical culture.

Cultural Factors

Understanding how to change an organizational culture requires some insight into what creates culture in the first place and how altering those components may impact meaningful cultural development. Gerry Johnson’s cultural web offers great clarity about how an organizational culture responds to and reflects influencing factors. These include:

• The paradigm: The mission statement, vision, ethics statement, and other overt definitions of culture. • Control systems: The processes in place to monitor what is going on, such as an employee handbook. • Organizational structures: This comes down to the hierarchy, or who reports to whom and why. • Power structures: Similar to the organizational structure above, this pertains to who has the power to

make decisions. • Symbols: Most organizations have brand images and other symbols which represent what the culture

stands for (logos, etc.).

9595

• Rituals and routines: In the business setting this is simply the way in which group interactions are organized. One example is the weekly staff meeting.

• Stories and myths: CEOs and other figureheads often have stories or legends associated with them; this generates culture through idolatry.

While these are only a few of the elements of culture, they capture a wide variety of components that managers can use to influence and change the general cultural predisposition.

Implementing Culture Change

Cummings and Worley identify a useful way to frame the stages or steps in integrating broad organizational change through cultural reform in six stages, which correlates well with the factors identified above. These stages include:

1. Ensure clarity in the strategic vision. This means making sure that the mission statement, vision statement and overall strategy work together to create one strong culture statement. The vision in particular must describe the new culture forcefully and persuasively.

2. Ensure buy-in from the top down. This means communicating (and often determining) specific aspects of needed culture change at the upper managerial level.

3. Lead by example. Top management needs to exhibit the kinds of values and behaviors that they want to see in the rest of the company.

4. Identify areas in the organizational structure and control systems which require updates to conform with the new or adapted culture. This includes altering employee handbooks, compensation strategies, hierarchy, decision-making authority and other central components of structure.

5. Follow through on the mandate. Terminating employees who do not conform to the desired culture is difficult. But it allows you to bring in new talent that aligns better with your desired culture. Ensuring proper emphasis on the new culture in training materials is useful in this process.

6. Finally, ensure that the ethical and legal implications of the adapted culture are understood, planned for and in line with corporate ethics.

Joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions usually require large cultural changes. When different cultures come together it is wise to expect some degree of culture-clash and differences of opinion. Managers, particularly upper management, must be aware of the implications of cultural change, the facets of organizational culture and the steps involved in altering it. While this model describes a long process that is generally more applicable to large cultural overhauls, the general strategy is useful for managers leading meaningful cultural change at all levels.

Types of Organizational Culture

While there is no single “type” of organizational culture, some common models provide a useful framework for managers.

Learning Objective

Differentiate between varying organizational culture tendencies, specifically within the context of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory

9696

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• While there are many ways to divide and define culture into “types,” Geert Hofstede, Edgar Schein, and Charles Handy provide three basic theoretical frameworks.

• Hofstede postulates six dimensions of culture based on a study conducted at IBM offices in 50 different countries. These include power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism (vs. collectivism), masculinity (v.s femininity), long-term orientation, and restraint.

• Edgar Schein organizes culture into three types: artifacts (tangible cultural displays), values, and assumptions.

• Charles Handy identifies four types of organizational culture: power, role, task, and person. Each type of culture has strong implications on types of organizational structure.

Key Terms

normativenormative: Of, pertaining to, or using a norm or standard. culturalcultural: Of or pertaining to culture.

Several methods have been used to classify organizational culture. While there is no single “type” of organizational culture, and cultures can vary widely from one organization to the next, commonalities do exist, and some researchers have developed models to describe different indicators of organizational cultures. We will briefly discuss the details of three influential models on organizational cultures.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

While there are several types of cultural and organizational theory models, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory is one of the most cited and referenced. Hofstede looked for global differences in culture across 100,000 IBM employees in 50 countries in an effort to determine the defining characteristics of global cultures in the workplace. With the rise of globalization, this is particularly relevant to organizational culture.

Through this process, he underlined observations that relate to six different cultural dimensions (originally there were five, but they have been updated in response to further research):

• Power distance: Power distance is simply the degree to which an authority figure can exert power and how difficult it is for a subordinate to contradict them.

• Uncertainty avoidance: Uncertainty avoidance describes an organization’s comfort level with risk-taking. As risk and return are largely correlative in the business environment, it is particularly important for organizations to instill a consistent level of comfort with taking risks.

• Individualism vs. collectivism: This could best be described as the degree to which an organization integrates a group mentality and promotes a strong sense of community (as opposed to independence) within the organization.

• Masculinity vs. femininity: This refers to the ways that behavior is characterized as “masculine” or “feminine” within an organization. For example, an aggressive and hyper-competitive culture is likely to be defined as masculine.

• Long-Term Orientation: This is the degree to which an organization or culture plans pragmatically for the future or attempts to create short-term gains. How far out is strategy considered, and to what degree are longer-term goal incorporated into company strategy?

• Indulgence vs. Restraint: This pertains to the amount (and ease) of spending and fulfillment of needs. For example, a restrained culture may have strict rules and regulations for tapping company resources.

9797

Edgar Schein’s Cultural Model

Edgar Schein’s model underlines three types of culture within an organization, which, as a simpler model than Hofstede’s, is somewhat more generalized. Schein focuses on artifacts, values, and assumptions:

Schein’s model

• Artifacts: The simplest perspective on culture is provided by the tangible artifacts that reveal specific cultural predispositions. How desks are situated, how people dress, how offices are decorated, etc., are examples of organizational artifacts.

• Values: Values pertain largely to the ethics embedded in an organization. What does the organization stand for? This is usually openly communicated with the public and demonstrated internally by employees. An example might be a non-profit organization trying to mitigate poverty. The values of charity, understanding, empowerment, and empathy would be deeply ingrained within the organization.

• Assumptions: The final type of culture, according to Schein, is much more difficult to deduce through observation alone. These are tacit assumptions that infect the way in which communication occurs and individuals behave. They are often unconscious, yet hugely important. In many ways, this correlates with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. For example, a culture of avoiding risk wherever possible may be an assumption which employees act upon without realizing it, and without receiving any directives to do so. High power distance could be another, where employees intuit that they should show a high degree of deference to their superiors without being specifically told to do so.

Charles Handy’s Four Types of Culture

Charles Handy put forward a framework of four different types of culture that remains relevant today. His four types include:

• Power culture: In this type of culture, there is usually a head honcho who makes rapid decisions and controls the organizational direction. This is most appropriate in smaller organizations, and require a strong sense of deference to the leader.

• Role culture: Structure is defined and operations are predictable. Usually this creates a functional structure, where individuals know their job, report to their superiors (who have a similar skill set), and value efficiency and accuracy above all.

• Task culture: Teams are formed to solve particular problems. Power is derived from membership in teams that have the expertise to execute a task. Due to the importance of given tasks, and the number of small teams in play, a matrix structure is common.

• Person culture: In this type of culture, horizontal structures are most applicable. Each individual is seen as valuable and more important than the organization itself. This can be difficult to sustain, as the organization may suffer due to competing people and priorities.

9898

While there are many other ways to divide and define culture, these three offer a good window into the literature surrounding cultural types.

Core Culture

Core culture is the underlying value that defines organizational identity through observable culture.

Learning Objective

Identify the general definition and characteristics of a healthy core culture, alongside how this translates into observable culture.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Core and observable culture are two facets of the same organizational culture, with core culture being inward-facing and intrinsic and observable culture being more external and tangible (outward- facing).

• In essence, core culture defines the values and assumptions of an organization, as described by Edgar Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture.

• Core culture is made up of the intangible values and ethos that define an organization’s cultural framework. Observable culture is the external reflection of this cultural perspective.

• Management is tasked with both the creation and consistent application of core culture at the organizational level.

Key Term

Core CultureCore Culture: The underlying value that defines the organization’s identity through observable culture.

Core Culture and Observable Culture

Core and observable culture are two facets of the same organizational culture, with core culture being inward- facing and intrinsic and observable culture being more external and tangible (outward-facing). Core culture, as the name denotes, is the root of what observable culture will communicate to stakeholders. Core culture is more ideological and strategic, representing concepts such as vision (long-term agenda and values), while observable culture is more of a communications channel (i.e., stories, logos, symbols, branding, mission statement, and office environment).

Edgar Schein and Core Culture

One useful theoretical framework to consider when differentiating between core and observable culture is Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture Model. This mode simply and efficiently illustrates the cultural facets of a given organization as an upside-down triangle.

9999

Schein’s model

The broader base at the top of the inverted pyramid represents artifacts, the simplest and most physical (i.e., observable) elements of a given culture. This includes the way desks are situated in an office (collaborative or individualistic?), the colors and shapes used in the logo, the general dress code, etc.

The next level is values, which bridges the gap between observable and core culture. Values are explicitly and observably stated in organizational literature (i.e., the employee handbook and mission statement), but also implicitly executed in individual behaviors. While it is observable when the CEO makes a public statement for shareholders or when the promotional team writes a press release, it is also derived directly from discussions of what the core culture is. This is where observable culture begins to transform into core culture.

The final component identified by Schein is parallel with the concept of core culture: assumptions. The assumptions made by the individuals within an organization are so intimately tied to the core organizational culture that they are virtually unrecognizable. In many ways, one could equate core culture with an individual’s subconscious. While our subconscious so often drives our conscious behavior, we rarely realize it. Core culture has the same relationship with observable culture: core culture is created first, and ultimately drives the visible cultural aspects of the organization.

Creating Core Culture

Organizational culture, both observable and core, is created first at the managerial level. Leaders must define not only what it is they are working towards, but also how the organization will come to define itself during the process. The core culture created by leadership sets the tone for employee behavior and assumptions in the future.

Upper management must decide which values and ethos will constitute the core of the organizational culture, and then instill this internally, in their employees, and communicate it externally, to stakeholders (via observable culture). Management is tasked with both the creation and consistent application of core culture at the organizational level.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously

• Organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture.. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • culture. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • People Working At Wikimedia. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People_Working_At_Wikimedia.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • empirical. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/empirical. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inertia. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inertia. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Paradigm. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paradigm. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Joint Venture. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/joint_venture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • robust. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/robust. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Edgar Schein. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Schein. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • normative. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/normative. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • cultural. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cultural. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Schein. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Schein's_Model.JPG. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Leitkultur. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitkultur. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Core Culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core%20Culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

100100

SHAPING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Building Organizational Culture

Managers are tasked with both creating and communicating a consistent organizational culture.

Learning Objective

Describe strategies used by managers to create and maintain a consistent organizational culture.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The process of instilling culture into an organization involves communicating and integrating a broad cultural framework throughout the organizational process.

• A strong culture is integral to long-term organizational sustainability and success; a primary responsibility of management is to both define and communicate this sense of shared organizational culture.

• Organizational culture is often defined by the work environment that management creates (i.e., mission statement, organizational structure, rules, symbols, etc.).

• Managers must be careful to instill the culture that is most conducive to both the strategy and objectives of the organization over the long term.

Key Terms

• organizational culture: The collective behavior of the people who make up an organization, including values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits.

• culture: The beliefs, values, behavior, and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.

Organizational culture refers to the collective behavior of the people who make up an organization; this includes their values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs, and habits. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. A strong culture is integral to long-term organizational sustainability and success, and one of management’s primary responsibilities is to both define and communicate this sense of shared culture.

The process of ingraining culture into an organization is simply one of communicating and integrating a broad cultural framework throughout the organizational process. Central to this process is ensuring that each and every employee both understands and aligns with the values and direction of the broader organization. This creates a sense of community among employees and ensures that the broader objectives and mission of the organization are clear.

While there are a variety of cultural perspectives and many organizational elements within a culture, the initial process of instilling culture is relatively consistent from a managerial perspective. The creation of a given culture is often defined by management’s strategy for addressing the following issues:

101101

• The paradigm: Management determines both the mission and vision of the organization and sets a groundwork for the values that employees are expected to align with. Determining these factors and communicating them effectively are absolutely critical to successfully instilling organizational culture.

• Control systems: An example of this may be an employee handbook where behavioral expectations are laid out explicitly (where possible) for employees to read and understand.

• Organizational structures: The choice of an organizational structure has enormous cultural implications for openness of communication, organization of resources, and flow of information.

• Power structures: Power and culture are often intertwined: the degree to which specific individuals are free (or not) to make decisions is indicative of the openness and fluidity of the organization.

• Symbols: All strong brands associate with symbols (think logos). These are not randomly selected: symbols show which specific facets of an organizational culture management considers most important.

• Rituals and routines: Routines are strong behavior modifiers that significantly impact the culture of a given organization. A looser and more open work environment (limited routines, high individual freedom) may create more innovation while heavily structured routines may create more efficiency and predictability.

• Stories and myths: Finally, stories are powerful communicators of culture. Walmart uses Sam Walton’s founding as a powerful myth to promote efficiency and the desire to try new things and integrate various products and services. This is organizationally defining.

Cultural change in an organization

Overall, managers must be aware of their role as cultural ambassadors and their responsibility in creating a context for successfully instilling organizational culture. For example, promoting a strong authoritarian hierarchy and strong innovation would be an oversight in the field of organizational culture from a management professional. Managers must be careful to instill the culture that is most conducive to both the strategy and objectives of the organization over the long term.

Communicating Organizational Culture

Management is tasked with both creating culture and accurately communicating it across the organization.

Learning Objective

Recognize the role of management in communicating and teaching organizational culture to employees and subordinates.

102102

Organization triangle: This organization triangle illustrates the idea that structure, process, and the people involved all contribute to the culture of an organization.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Corporate culture is used to control, coordinate, and integrate company subsidiaries. • The role of the manager is essential to the successful communication of a given organizational

culture because managers are figureheads and role models for how individuals in the organization should behave.

• Organizations should strive for what is considered a “healthy” organizational culture to increase productivity, growth, efficiency, and to reduce counterproductive behavior and turnover of employees.

Key Term

organization: A group of people or other legal entities with an explicit purpose and written rules.

Corporate culture is used to control, coordinate, and integrate company subsidiaries. Culture runs deeper than this definition, however, because culture also represents the embedded values, traditions, beliefs, and behaviors of a given group. Culture is indicative not only of what individuals pursue and believe in, but also their behaviors, assumptions, and communications. As a result, culture is both complex to create and challenging to communicate and imbue within the organization.

Communicating Culture

The role of the manager is essential to the successful communication of a given organizational culture because managers are figureheads and role models for how individuals in the organization should behave. While it is too simplistic to say that culture is a top-down communicative process, there is relevance to the idea that culture generally begins with the founders of the organization and the values they emphasize in the organizational growth and hiring process.

Leaders have a number of tools and strategies at their disposal to communicate culture. Some of the most critical of these are structure, hierarchy, mission and vision statements, employee handbooks, hiring processes, and employee training and initiation. With many diverse tools for communicating culture comes the challenge of aligning each perspective for consistency of message: for instance, the employee training program must emphasize the same values as the mission statement and must match the executive mandate for organizational structure and design.

Communication is the core tool for managing this cultural integration, enabling executives to remind employees what the organization stands for and why it’s important. Holding company-wide quarterly meetings to emphasize objectives and strategy and sending out emails with key successes and developmental challenges are great ways to keep the conversation going.

103103

The Role of HR

It is also critical to make the hiring process match and promote the culture by hiring talent that is consistent with cultural expectations and implementing training programs that effectively emphasize what the organization stands for and why. Human resource professionals are tasked with identifying candidates with culturally consistent perspectives and with underlining the importance of cultural considerations in interviews and on-boarding processes.

Building a Culture of High Performance

A high-performing culture is a results-driven business culture focused on generating efficiency and completing objectives.

Learning Objective

Analyze the primary drivers and positive characteristics of a high-performing culture.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Every business has its own culture. High-performance cultures are specifically focused on setting and accomplishing objectives with a high degree of efficiency and efficacy.

• High-performing teams are an integral component of high-performance cultures. • A high-performing team is a group of people with complementary talents and skills. They are given

clear roles and are committed to a common purpose. This enables synergy. • Culture is a combination of individual perspectives and the environment in which they operate.

Business looking to create a high-performance culture must create an interdependent environment which empowers employee responsibility and decision-making.

Key Terms

• SMART:SMART: Goal-setting criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. • performing:performing: The stage of group development when the the team is able to function as a unit, finding

ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or supervision. • high-performing team:high-performing team: groups that are highly focused on their goals and that achieve superior

business results.

Organizations need to be productive in order to achieve their goals. Over time, productivity can become a part of organizational culture, eventually becoming integrated into the company’s operations and processes. The business becomes known for its productivity, and high performance becomes second-nature for its employees. A high-performing culture is defined by a focus on generating and accomplishing objectives. There is a strong sense of both results-orientation and employee interdependence.

A High-Performing Team

An effective way to achieve high-performing culture is to create high-performing teams. A high-performing team is best defined as a group of interdependent employees whose skills and personalities complement one another and

104104

New York Yankees: A Great Team

lead to above-average operational results. High-performance teams are a central building block of high- performance culture, and they thrive in innovative and empowering environments.

Leadership in any team environment is critical to success, but leadership within a high-performance culture is often complex. While leadership is normally static in a hierarchical environment, high- performance teams benefit from shared leadership by utilizing the different talents and perspectives of each team member in the decision-making process. This creates a strong culture of shared leadership which in turn can generate above-average results and highly motivated employees who trust one another.

Culture is defined by creating its own consciousness in an organization, indicating shared norms and values. These shared values are central elements of the organization, as they generate buy- in and dedication from employees. These shared values create an expectation of success, both professional and personal, that can create high levels of trust and shared accountability. In short, shared values are key to creating strong team dynamics.

There are ten elements in particular that are important to successfully integrating high- performance teams within an organizational culture:

1. Participative leadership—Involve the entire team when making decisions, and rely on specialists only when applicable.

2. Effective decision making—Ensure that decision-making is both strategic and efficient. Group decision- making is often slowed when team dynamics are weak, which requires team-building to fix.

3. Open and clear communication—As always with group dynamics, communication is key to success. Ensure everyone is speaking and listening.

4. Valued diversity—Team synergy is lost when groupthink dominates the discussion. Instill open- mindedness and dispel social fears of disagreeing.

5. Mutual trust—Reliance upon one another, and trust in each other’s skills and capabilities, allows for less duplication of work and more overall synergy.

6. Managing conflict—Conflict is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing. Deal with it calmly and without personal biases or emotions. Let the best ideas win.

7. Clear goals—SMART objectives are essential to high performance, just as understanding where one is going is essential to finding the best route.

8. Defined roles and responsibilities—Everyone should have a clear understanding of why they are on the team and what they are responsible for.

9. Coordinated relationships—Building strong team dynamics requires team members to understand each other and build strong relationships. Utilize ice-breaking activities and promote casual discussion to get this started.

10. Positive atmosphere—Wherever possible, make sure the general perspective is one of constructive commentary. Maintaining a positive outlook empowers communication and improves team spirit.

105105

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Shared previouslyCC licensed content, Shared previously

• organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/organizational%20culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Psychological capital. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_capital. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Change management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • culture. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • ingrain. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ingrain. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cultural capital. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Culture change. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_change. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Culture change model. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Culture_change_model.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • organization. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/organization. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • The Learning Organization. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Development_Cooperation_Handbook/The_development_aid_organization/Organizational_Culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Organization Triangle. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Organization_Triangle.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • SMART. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High-performance teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-performance_teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Tuckman's stages of group development. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman's_stages_of_group_development. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High Performance Team. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High%20Performance%20Team. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Key Three. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Key_Three.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

DIVERSITY IN ORGANIZATIONS

The Importance of Organizational Diversity

In the modern global market, diversity is essential to generating innovative ideas, understanding local markets, and acquiring talent.

Learning Objectives

Identify the advantages and challenges inherent in employing diversity within organizations

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The business case for diversity is driven by the view that diversity brings substantial potential benefits that outweigh the organizational drawbacks and costs incurred.

• Diversity leads to a deeper level of innovation and creativity, the ability to localize to new markets, and the ability to be adaptable through access to top-level talent pools and rapid decision -making.

• In a global marketplace, organizations must be careful to adhere to all diversity-related laws and regulations. They must also be wary of mismanaging localization, ensuring that they maintain an ethical and culturally-sensitive integration with new regions.

Key Terms

• discriminationdiscrimination:Distinct treatment of an individual or group to their disadvantage; treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality; prejudice; bigotry.

• groupthinkgroupthink:A process of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially one characterized by uncritical acceptance of or conformity to a perceived majority view.

There are many arguments for diversity in business, including the availability of talent, the enhancing of interpersonal innovation, risk avoidance, and appealing to a global customer base. The business case for diversity is driven by the view that diversity brings substantial potential benefits, such as better decision making,

106106

improved problem solving, and greater creativity and innovation, which lead to enhanced product development and more successful marketing to different types of customers.

Globalizing and non-globalizing countries’ GDP growth: As noted in the chart above, globalizing organizations capture significantly better revenues in modern markets. “Nonglobalizing” countries averaged around 1.5% GDP growth in the 1990s, while globalizing countries averaged around 5% GDP growth.

Arguments for Diversity

Innovation

It is widely noted that diverse teams lead to more innovative and effective ideas and implementation. The logic behind this is relatively simple. Innovative thinking inherently requires individuals to go outside of the normal paradigms of operation, utilizing diverse perspectives to craft new and unique conclusions. A group of similar individuals with similar skills are much less likely to stumble across a series of new ideas that may lead to innovative progress. Indeed, similarity breeds groupthink, which diminishes creativity.

Localization

Some theorize that, in a global marketplace, a company that employs a diverse workforce is better able to understand the demographics of the global consumer-marketplace it serves, and is therefore better equipped to thrive in that marketplace than a company that has a more limited range of employee demographics. With the emerging markets across the globe demonstrating substantial GDP and market growth, organizations need local talent to enter the marketplace and communicate effectively. Individuals from a certain region will have a deep awareness of the needs in that region, as well as a similar culture, enabling them to add considerable value to the organizational development of strategy.

107107

Adaptability

Finally, organizations must be technologically and culturally adaptable in the modern economy. This is crucial to reacting to competitive dynamics quickly and staying ahead of industry trends. Diversity enables unique thinking and improved decision making through a deeper and more comprehensive worldview. Diversity also enables hiring of various individuals with diverse skill sets, creating a larger talent pool. The value of this, particularly at the managerial level, is enormous. Staying quick on one’s feet (as an organization, that is) by leveraging the strength of diversity is critical to capturing opportunities and dodging external threats.

Mismanaging Diversity

While diversity has clear benefits from an organizational perspective, the threat in diversity comes from mismanagement. Due to the legal framework surrounding diversity in the workplace, the underlying threat to mismanaging diversity arises through neglect of relevant rules and regulations. Equity of pay for all employees, as well as ethical hiring practices that do not give preference one candidate over another for discriminatory reasons, are absolutely essential for managers and human resource professionals to understand. The legal ramifications of missteps in this particular arena can have high fiscal and branding costs.

The Inclusive Workplace

Corporate cultures that display characteristics of global awareness and inclusion capture critical benefits of workplace diversity.

Learning Objectives

Identify how corporate culture can enable inclusion internally

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Organizational culture is the collective behavior of an organization ‘s members and the meaning attached to that behavior. Inclusive cultures demonstrate organizational practices and goals in which those having different backgrounds are welcomed and treated equally in the organization.

• Inclusive cultures are focused on values that empower open-mindedness, promote healthy conflict, value new perspectives, and avoid judgmental attitudes.

• Creating an inclusive culture means not only stating cultural components the organization wishes to emphasize, but also working towards an ideal level of open and inclusive behavior.

• There are a number of paradigms underlined by experts in diversity management that demonstrate the linear movement from acceptance of diversity to active integration of inclusion with the corporate culture.

Key Terms

• multiculturalismmulticulturalism:The characteristics of a society, city, or organization that has many different ethnic or national cultures mingling freely; political or social policies that support or encourage such coexistence.

• inclusioninclusion:The act of including someone or something in a group, set, or total. • cultureculture:The beliefs, values, behavior, and material objects that constitute a people’s way of life.

108108

Corporate culture is the collective behavior of people who are part of an organization and the meanings that these people attach to their actions. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other internally, as well as with clients and other stakeholders. Enabling an inclusive culture is highly advantageous in capturing the value of diversity.

Characteristics of Inclusion

Inclusive cultures are focused on values that empower open-mindedness, promote healthy conflict, value new perspectives, and avoid judgmental attitudes. The primary threats to an inclusive culture are groupthink, discrimination, stereotyping, and defensiveness.

Inclusive cultures: Inclusive cultures accommodate a variety of perspectives.

An inclusive culture may include a variety of tangible elements, such as acceptance and appreciation of diversity, regard for and fair treatment of each employee, respect for each employee’s contribution to the company, and equal opportunity for each employee to realize his or her full potential within the company. An organization may also adhere to a policy of multiculturalism, integrating diversity into the mission and vision statements and various other internal policies.

Paradigms of Diversity Management

With this in mind, the question of how to integrate these concepts into the organization’s culture is the primary concern for management. Creating an inclusive culture means not only stating support for it via various corporate- wide outlets, but also working towards an ideal level of open and inclusive behavior. Culture is a matter of

109109

organizational behavior because it is inherently about how people act (mostly subconsciously), and thus requires a great deal of energy and effort to alter.

The following paradigms are a result of extensive academic research by experts in diversity. The list below can be seen as a linear progression in achieving inclusion, the first being the simplest and least effective and the last being the most complex and most effective:

• Resistance paradigm: In this phase, there is a natural cultural resistance to change and equity across diverse groups. This paradigm requires extensive managerial efforts to overhaul, and corporate policies must be put into place to create a structure for corporate inclusion.

• Discrimination-and-fairness paradigm: In this phase, the organization focuses simply on adherence to social and legal expectations. The diversity team and inclusion culture primarily come out of human resource and legal professionals fulfilling minimum requirements, so they are still fairly weak.

• Access-and-legitimacy paradigm: At this phase, management has successfully elevated the culture from acceptance to active inclusion. Now the organization is looking at the overall benefits derived through diversity and utilizing them to capture maximum competitiveness.

• Learning-and-effectiveness paradigm: In this final stage, management has successfully integrated inclusion in a way that is proactive and learning-based. Groups are designed to not only capture the innovative and creative aspects of diversity, but also to share diverse skill sets and grow in efficacy through the learning process.

Cultural Intelligence

Cultural intelligence is the ability to display intercultural competence within a given group through adaptability and knowledge.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the key components inherent in developing strong cultural competence as a manager in a diverse global economy

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The components of cultural intelligence, from a general perspective, can be described in terms of linguistics, culture (religion, holidays, social norms, etc.), and geography (or ethnicity).

• Intercultural competence highlights the importance of grasping the varying facets of cultural identity to effectively understand other cultures.

• It is useful to apply the components of cultural intelligence to varying theoretical frameworks, such as Hofstede’s theory. Hofstede notes six measurable variables that can be applied across all cultures to illustrate predispositions.

• By combining cultural-intelligence frameworks with organizational objectives and strategy, managers are given strong resources to approach the global economy.

Key Terms

• Intercultural CompetenceIntercultural Competence:The ability to communicate effectively with people of other cultures. • cultural quotientcultural quotient:A measurement (similar to IQ) of cultural intelligence. • crowdsourcingcrowdsourcing:Delegating a task to a large, diffuse group, usually without substantial monetary

compensation.

110110

Diversity in a rapidly globalizing economy is a central field within organizational behavior and managerial development, underlining the critical importance of deriving synergy through cultural intelligence.

Defining Cultural Intelligence

The concept of cultural intelligence is exactly what it sounds like—the ability to display intercultural competence within a given group through adaptability and knowledge. Studying the components of culture, the theories pertaining to cultural dimensions and competencies, and the current initiatives in promoting these concepts are all powerful resources for managers involved in foreign assignments.

Components of Cultural Intelligence

The components of cultural intelligence, from a general perspective, can be described in terms of linguistics, culture (religion, holidays, social norms, etc.), and geography (or ethnicity). As a result, individuals interested in developing their cultural quotient (CQ) are tasked with studying each of these facets of cultural intelligence in order to accurately recognize the beliefs, values, and behaviors of the culture in which they are immersed.

An interesting perspective on cultural intelligence is well represented in the intercultural-competence diagram, which highlights the way that each segment of cultural knowledge can create synergy when applied to the whole of cultural intelligence, where overlapping generates the highest potential CQ.

Intercultural competence: This diagram illustrates the three factors that constitute an effectively intercultural understanding for management: Regional Expertise, Language Proficiency, and Cross-Cultural Competence.

Cultural Intelligence and Cultural Framework

With these components in mind, it is useful to apply them to varying theoretical frameworks designed to illuminate the cultural dimensions and value differences across the globe.

Hofstede’s theory of cultural dimensions is particularly interesting, as it allows for a direct quantification of specific cultural values in order to measure and benchmark cultural norms in a relative and meaningful way. Hofstede’s theory was designed in the 1960s and 1970s, and has remained a relevant perspective in international business, international politics, and cross-cultural psychology. His theory notes six specific variables to measure:

111111

• Power distance index (PDI): Simply put, this measures the level of acceptance of authority naturally present in a culture. Less powerful members must accept leadership just as more powerful individuals must bear the responsibility of leading.

• Individualism (IDV) vs. collectivism:Just as it sounds, this measurement denotes the way in which cultures tend towards group work to accomplish tasks versus individual and more independent contributions.

• Uncertainty avoidance index (UAI): Tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity is a critical element of a society’s ability to react to certain management styles and situations, providing an important measurement for understanding how much micromanagement may be useful.

• Masculinity vs. femininity: Somewhat less clear than the other factors, this identifies specific gender roles and measures the ways in which cultures reflect these roles. This is a highly debatable measurement because it innately stereotypes.

• Long-term orientation:Perhaps most critical of all to businesses is the concept of a longer- or shorter- term focus, particularly as it pertains to objectives. Understanding cultural predispositions in this regard assists in goal setting and understanding projected timelines.

• Indulgence vs. restraint: The ability of individuals within a given culture to control their desires. This is relevant to consumption, self-control, and frugality.

These theoretical variables help in analyzing what is currently being done in pursuit of higher CQ, as well as what challenges lay ahead for international managers. Understanding linguistics, cultural norms, and varying values will allow for higher localization and efficiency within global businesses.

Trends in Organizational Diversity

To capitalize on ethical and economic benefits, businesses are promoting increased diversity in the workplace.

Learning Objectives

Analyze the social and legislative trends that define the trajectory towards higher levels of diversity and equality in the workplace

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Diversity in the workplace creates both ethical and economic value, resulting in trends towards a more equal-opportunity workplace.

• In the 1960s, the United States implemented affirmative-action policies to enforce equal opportunity in the workplace.

• Following the implementation of various affirmative-action policies, social justice developed as an ethical norm (as opposed to a legal stipulation). This development resulted in more inclusive measures for a larger variety of groups.

• Empirical evidence of the trend toward diversity is well illustrated by gender wage gaps between males and females, which have been consistently narrowing since the early 1970s.

• In addition to its ethical bases, diversity in an increasingly global marketplace is substantially more effective and productive, allowing for higher levels of synergy.

112112

Gender wage trend: This chart illustrates that while gender wage inequality is diminishing, further efforts are necessary to promote parity.

Key Terms

• affirmative actionaffirmative action:Advantages for traditionally discriminated against minority groups, with the aim of creating a more equal society through preferential access to education, employment, health care, social welfare.

• HomogeneousHomogeneous:Having a uniform make up, or the same composition throughout. • DiversityDiversity:The state of being different; achieving variability.

Diversity within the workplace is a broad topic, incorporating both the need for social justice and the high potential value of employing a workforce diverse enough to compete in an increasingly global economic environment.

As a result, the workplace has undergone a number of trends that promote diversity and minimize group biases, as the ethical and economic importance of diversity is well-established. Analyzing trends in equality and value in diversity is useful for managers seeking to incorporate both.

Equality of Opportunity

Affirmative Action

The early stages of pursuing equality in the workplace arose in the 1960s, most notably with the concept of affirmative action. Affirmative action essentially establishes legal quotas—set by the U.S. government—for the number or percentage of representation by minority populations in a company’s hiring practices.

Minority populations are generally defined according to race, ethnicity, or gender. One difficulty with affirmative action is that it can encourage employers to fill quotas rather than avoid bias, potentially motivating some employers to hire specifically by race, ethnicity, or gender; hiring based upon any of these characteristics is illegal.

Social Justice

As a result of this criticism, the equal-opportunity movement evolved towards a model based more on social justice. This perspective still promotes the active seeking out of diversity in the workplace, but does so primarily based on the intrinsic value of employees with different backgrounds and skill sets.

The social-justice trend also meant a shift from a more limited viewpoint of what constituted a “minority” towards a more comprehensive one that places age, physical ability, and sexual orientation alongside traditional categories of race and gender. The social justice model of diversity is distinct from the older affirmative action in that it focuses less on employing minorities and more on the value of a diverse workforce.

Gender differences offer a strong statistical example of this trend, as male and female wage equality has been consistently trending towards equilibrium. Wage equality shows distinct improvement as a result of equal- opportunity ethics, a trend that supporters of equality hope continues toward equilibrium.

113113

Value of Diversity

The ethics of diversity in the workplace are rightly emphasized. The natural value achieved through varying perspectives in the workplace complements social justice well. Organizations that lack a culture inclusive of any and all potential groups generally have lower productivity and higher turnover. Promoting an environment conducive to a global and internationalized economy through diverse hiring and management practices potentially results in increased productivity.

A homogeneous workforce has a much lower capacity to achieve synergy. Upper management, recognizing the strategic value of diversity, continues to pursue the knowledge and skills necessary for a truly inclusive workplace.

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Globalizer Growth Rates. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Newest_one_growth_rate.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Working in International Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Working_in_International_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Discrimination. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High Performance Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Human resource management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity training. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_training. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • discrimination. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/discrimination. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • groupthink. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/groupthink. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • India - Sights and Culture - 024 - Epitome of painted public space | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mckaysavage/1981186788/. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Workplace Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikiversty. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Workplace_diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Multicultural. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusive business. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_business. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity training. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_training. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Working in International Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Working_in_International_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusiveness. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusiveness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High Performance Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • inclusion. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inclusion. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • multiculturalism. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/multiculturalism. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • culture. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Intercultural competence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intercultural_competence.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede's_cultural_dimensions_theory. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • GLOBE Program. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLOBE_Program. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Cultural intelligence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_intelligence. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Boundless. Provided byProvided by: Boundless Learning. Located atLocated at: http://www.boundless.com//management/definition/cultural-quotient. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Intercultural Competence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural%20Competence. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • crowdsourcing. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crowdsourcing. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/US_womens_earnings_as_a_percentage_of_mens_1979-2005.gif. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Homogeneous. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Homogeneous. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • affirmative action. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/affirmative_action. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

CREATING A DIVERSE WORKFORCE

Considering Cultural and Interpersonal Differences

Managers capable of contemplating the varying cultural, gender, or ethnic backgrounds of their workforce can optimize collaboration.

Learning Objectives

Employ cross-cultural competence to ensure interactions between diverse individuals create optimal results

114114

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Intercultural competence is an individual’s ability to communicate with, and adapt to, the cultural norms and expectations of each employee or customer. Competence is understanding the differences between people of different backgrounds and cultures.

• Cross-cultural competence, language proficiency, and regional expertise are three critical building blocks to attaining a high level of intercultural competence.

• Cross-cultural competence is a set of cognitive, behavioral, and motivational components that enable individuals to adapt to intercultural environments.

• Manager who are able to recognize the differences among their employees must be aware of their own cultural identity and employ empathy when dealing with differences.

• Those who achieve a high level of intercultural competency while possessing a strong understanding of their own strengths, weaknesses, and cultural identity will more effectively immerse themselves into the cultures of co-workers.

Key Terms

• predispositionpredisposition:An intrinsic personal characteristic or susceptibility. • ImmersionImmersion:Being completely surrounded by another culture (including language, geography,

customs, etc.). • Intercultural CompetenceIntercultural Competence:The ability to communicate effectively with people of other cultures.

With an understanding of the high value of diversity, managers must next contemplate what differentiates employees. Managers who are capable of understanding the varying cultural, gender, or ethnic backgrounds of their workforce can optimize collaboration and minimize any friction that may arise as a result of these differences.

Intercultural competence is an individual’s ability to communicate with, and adapt to, the cultural norms and expectations of each employee or customer. This cultural competence is imperative for managers to succeed in a globalized world.

A Model of Intercultural Approach

Perspectives vary as to what constitutes intercultural understanding. The following figure highlights the three building blocks of one intercultural approach: cross-cultural competence, language proficiency, and regional expertise. This model suggests that the development of each building block allows for the largest potential crossover between the sections, and that employing them in concert provides the largest potential level of competence for an intercultural manager.

115115

Intercultural competence: This chart illustrates the three factors that constitute an effectively intercultural understanding for management: Regional Expertise, Language Proficiency, and Cross-Cultural Competence

The blue and yellow circles in the diagram highlight the importance of understanding the local language and visiting regions to achieve immersion in a particular cultural mentality.

Still, cross-cultural competence is a relatively vague concept. The wide spectrum of academic studies that have addressed it have only served to complicate ideas about what constitutes a well-rounded cultural perspective. The U.S. Army Research Institute may have come closest to summarizing what it means to be cross-culturally competent: “A set of cognitive, behavioral, and affective/motivational components that enable individuals to effectively adapt in intercultural environments.”

Development of Intercultural Competence

Managers who are interested in developing the capacity to think about and isolate differences between people must be open to immersing themselves into as many cultures as possible.

Immersion is best achieved through interacting and communicating with people from other cultures often enough to face and overcome the intrinsic obstacles that may present themselves. These experiences serve as motivators for each individual involved. Intercultural exchange drives both manager and employee to think further about what predispositions each holds and how best to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.

Individual Strengths in Accepting Differences

On a more individualistic note, the exercise of a few key introspective skills may also serve to lessen friction: • Knowledge—Acquiring a thorough understanding of history, cultural norms, basic language, and religion

is valuable. • Empathy—Trying to understand the views and feelings of others from their perspective is important in all

forms of management, but particularly relevant when differences in cultures are present. • Self-confidence—Understanding personal weaknesses and difficulties in adapting to situations is

important in controlling reactions. • Cultural identity—Coming to terms with another culture requires cultural self-awareness, which creates a

critical benchmark. Objectivity in this respect is highly valuable.

116116

To attain a high level of cultural awareness, along with intercultural communication skills, requires thinking about and understanding different people and their respective cultures. Managers who pursue intercultural competency while possessing a strong understanding of their own strengths, weaknesses, and cultural identity will more effectively immerse themselves into the cultures of co-workers.

Building a Diverse Workforce

A diverse workforce is achieved by identifying, attracting, training, and retaining individuals through effective management.

Learning Objectives

Diagram a step by step process enabling companies to effectively integrate diversity into their organizations to align with globalization and identify the processes and procedures used to on-board culturally diverse employees

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The importance of developing strong intercultural competence is a top priority for multinational corporations.

• Attracting a diverse workforce requires a corporate structure supportive of varying backgrounds, including the availability of employees who can effectively identify with a variety of cultures.

• Diversity training allows for understanding of an individual’s cultural norms and values, a capability that must be applied in constructing effective teams with adaptable mentalities.

• In a complex global workplace, capitalizing on training investment takes the form of employee retention and effective incentive programs to maintain employee satisfaction.

• Companies that attain and retain a diverse workforce stand to capture substantial value. • Employees with intercultural intelligence will be better prepared to establish working relationships

and business partnerships globally

Key Terms

• corporate scoutingcorporate scouting:Seeking new talent for a business; isolating new employee potential. • retentionretention:The act of maintaining an employee (or customer) through effectively filling that individual’s

needs.

As the global economy continues to evolve, the challenge of developing an efficient and synergistic cross-cultural workforce is of growing importance. Diversity in the workplace is optimally achieved through effectively identifying and attracting diverse talent, training that talent to maximize its contributions to the business, and retaining that workforce through effective management and compensation. Therefore, it is a top priority for multinational corporations to develop a strong intercultural competence in their management and apply this competence to the human resource framework.

117117

Managing diversity: This chart illustrates the three steps necessary to manage a diverse workforce: Attracting a Diverse Workforce, Training a Diverse Workforce, and Retaining a Diverse Workforce.

Attracting a Diverse Workforce

Attracting a diverse workforce requires a corporate structure supportive of varying backgrounds and predispositions, as well as the internal resources and knowledge necessary to effectively identify with a variety of cultures. When defining the roles and responsibilities of a given position in the company, a human resources department must actively consider what they mean for the individual filling that position. Understanding what motivates and attracts a diverse workforce in this regard is critical in order to entice the appropriate talent pool.

Once the role is effectively and accurately defined by the company, there are a large number of resources specifically designed to identify diverse talent. Using technological advances such as search engines, job posting

118118

boards, and social networks is an excellent way to find people worth approaching to fill that role. Headhunters and corporate scouting initiatives are also an important attribute of a well-designed diversity-recruitment initiative.

Training a Diverse Workforce

Following the process involved in identifying talent, the managers and human resource representatives are then tasked with training various new hires from a number of different backgrounds and cultural predispositions. Diversity training is heavily dependent on identifying an individual’s cultural norms and values. This understanding must be applied in constructing effective teams and adaptable mentalities that will remain highly compatible with a complex global workplace. Not only should new hires be trained to understand and adapt to diversity, but managers should also be made aware of these cultural trends and be trained to effectively manage them.

Retaining a Diverse Workforce

Finally, retaining diverse employees is critical to the success of an international human resource department. This is particularly relevant to a global workforce, as the costs associated with recruiting and training diverse talent are high. Training new employees is one of the largest sources of selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) costs that businesses encounter. Capitalizing on this investment comes in the form of employee retention and effective incentive programs to maintain employee satisfaction.

From a general standpoint, retaining diverse employees begins with constructing a workplace conducive to variance in ethnic backgrounds and values. A homogeneous workplace environment will only cater to the dominant group, and this type of workplace will likely result in lower retention rates for diverse talent. Incorporating and localizing the workplace to best cater to the needs of minorities is therefore of central importance to managers intent on effectively filling the needs of diverse talent.

Combining these three strategies—attracting diverse talent, training a diverse workforce, and achieving high levels of retention—stands to capture substantial value for multinational organizations. Keeping this human resources framework in mind for constructing a multicultural workplace is a critical element to the success of businesses in a rapidly globalizing market.

Managing Organizational Diversity

Managing diversity and inclusion in organizations is a critical management responsibility in the modern, global workplace.

Learning Objectives

Outline the way in which the HR framework approaches diversity in the workplace, capturing opportunity and avoiding threats.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Global business demands management that can work in a diverse environment, minimizing friction while capturing the value of different perspectives and skills.

119119

• First and foremost, diversity must be defined organizationally from the top down and confirmed from the bottom up. This includes the mission and vision statements, the employee handbook, values statements, human resource policies, human resource training, and press releases.

• Following the above expressions of strategy, leaders and managers must integrate diversity in a meaningful way.

• From the diversity-management perspective, a diversity scorecard, which both identifies how diversity interacts with other long-term objectives and how observation/feedback could be implemented to assess it, is of high value to managers looking to improve their diversity management skills.

• The human resources department specifically has a great deal of responsibility in managing the overall diversity of the organization, including hiring, compensation equity, training, policy and legalities, and contracts.

Key Terms

• diversediverse:Consisting of many different elements; various. • stereotypestereotype:A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image.

Management may encounter significant challenges in incorporating diverse perspectives in group settings, but managing this diversity in the workplace is essential to success. A team or organization’s diversity can include diversity across religion, sex, age, and race, but can also include diversity across work skills or personality types. All of these differences can affect team interactions and performance. Global business demands management that can work in a diverse environment, minimizing friction while capturing the value of different perspectives and skills.

Operating globally: Global business demands management that can work in a diverse environment.

120120

Diversity-Alignment Management Strategies

Due to the wide variety of benefits inherent in employing a global workforce (new perspectives, innovation, localization, unique skill sets, etc.), managers must carefully attune their management strategies in a way that is inclusive and effective. There are a number of management-strategy models to consider in this pursuit.

Define Diversity

First and foremost, diversity must be defined organizationally from the top down and confirmed from the bottom up. This includes, but is not limited to, incorporating diversity initiatives into the mission and vision statements, the employee handbook, values statements, human resource policies, human resource training, and press releases. Having a separate diversity statement (similar to a mission statement) is also a good way to underline how an organization is committed to diversity. Following this process, upper management must also align resource allocation with diversity—committing time, efforts, capital, and staff to promoting it.

Establish Leadership Accountability

Following the above expressions of strategy, leaders and managers must now be held accountable. This means that management will carefully control diversity, minimizing the negative elements (stereotyping, discrimination, inequity, groupthink, etc.) while empowering the positive elements (innovative thinking, health conflict, inclusive culture, etc.). Managers must also actively work to achieve diversity in work groups, arranging assignments strategically to capture the inherent value of diversity. When failures in diversity management occur, managers must be accountable in taking corrective action.

Utilize a Diversity Scorecard

Scorecards are used in various aspects of management strategy, and are particularly useful in working both financial and nonfinancial objectives into specific business processes. From the diversity-management perspective, a diversity scorecard, which identifies both how diversity interacts with other long-term objectives and how observation/feedback could be implemented to assess it, is of high value to managers looking to improve their diversity management skills. It can help to identify the outcomes expected from integrating more diverse skills and perspectives as well as to assess the effectiveness of diversity management.

The Role of Human Resource Management

Upper management and departmental managers are not the only individuals involved in diversity management, however. The human resource department specifically has a great deal of responsibility in managing the overall diversity of the organization. Human resources can consider diversity within the following areas:

• Hiring • Compensation equality • Training • Employee policies • Legal regulations • Ensuring accessibility of important documents (e.g., translating human resource materials into other

languages so all staff can read them) • Contracts

The role of human resources is to ensure that all employee concerns are being met and that employee problems are solved when they arise. Human resource professionals must also pursue corporate strategy and adhere to legal concerns when hiring, firing, paying, and regulating employees. This requires careful and meticulous understanding of both the legal and organizational contexts as they pertain to diversity management.

121121

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Intercultural competence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intercultural_competence.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Immersion. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Immersion. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Intercultural Competence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural%20Competence. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Intercultural competence. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural_competence. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • predisposition. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/predisposition. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Boundless. Provided byProvided by: Amazon Web Services. Located atLocated at: http://s3.amazonaws.com/figures.boundless.com/50b25198e4b0c605c0e91582/Managing+Diversity.jpg. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Diversity training. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_training. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Workplace diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikiversity. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Workplace_diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • corporate scouting. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/corporate+scouting. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • SG&A. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/SG&A. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • retention. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/retention. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Meiosis. Provided byProvided by: Comcast. Located atLocated at: http://home.comcast.net/~john.kimball1/BiologyPages/M/Meiosis.html. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution • Mohamed Alabbar, Klaus Schwab - World Economic Forum Summit on the Global Agenda 2008 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!. Provided byProvided by: Flickr. Located atLocated at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/3009332157/

in/set-72157608673804826. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Working in International Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Working_in_International_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Discrimination. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Affirmative action. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Human resource management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity training. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_training. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High Performance Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusiveness. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusiveness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • stereotype. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stereotype. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • diverse. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diverse. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Workplace Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikiversity. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Workplace_diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

CHALLENGES TO ACHIEVING DIVERSITY

Barriers to Organizational Diversity

Companies seeking a diverse workforce face issues of assimilation into the majority group and wage equality for minorities.

Learning Objectives

Identify key barriers to integrating diversity within the business environment

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Despite various trends towards a more diverse workplace, barriers continue to limit progress. These barriers can be addressed by knowledgeable diversity management.

• Communication within teams and work groups can be a substantial challenge when there is a high variance in employee background, as differing predispositions and cultures often result in different forms of expression.

• When diverse employees do most of the acclimating, the value of having varying perspectives is diminished.

• One example of a barrier to diversity is the glass ceiling. The gap between wages and education level in males and females offers concrete evidence that diversity barriers in the workplace still affect equal opportunities.

• Understanding the barriers to effective assimilation, with a particular focus on communication and avoiding group biases, is a critical step in creating a more conducive environment.

122122

Key Terms

• assimilationassimilation:The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure. • glass ceilingglass ceiling:An unwritten, uncodified barrier to further promotion or progression for a member of a

specific demographic group.

Despite various trends towards a more diverse workplace, some barriers still limit progress. Though the advantages of diversity are well established, difficulties from a managerial and organizational perspective can reduce optimal incorporation of different cultures. The implementation of a more diverse workforce faces obstacles in both the assimilation of new cultures into the majority and wage-equality and upper-level opportunities across the minority spectrum.

Communication Barriers

The challenges of assimilating a large workforce can be summarized as difficulties in communication and resistance to change from dominant groups. Avoiding miscommunication within teams and work groups can be a substantial challenge when there is a high variance in employee background, as differing predispositions and cultures often result in different forms of expression. These differences can lead to less effective teams and reduced synergy in work groups. Solving communication issues requires self-monitoring and empathy. Put simply, individuals need the presence of mind to think carefully about both themselves and their audience when working in groups.

Resistance to Change

Resistance to change is a slightly different barrier to assimilating more diversity in work groups, as it pertains more to the momentum of company culture. Diversity affects organizational norms by creating the need for flexibility and evolution towards a broader culture—a need that is sometimes met with resistance. Resistance forces minorities to bear the burden of changing to fit the existing culture, thereby limiting the initial value of having new perspectives in the first place.

In the organizational journal article ” Cultural Diversity in the Workplace: The State of the Field,” Marlene G. Fine comments that “those who assimilate are denied the ability to express their genuine selves in the workplace; they are forced to repress significant parts of their lives within a social context that frames a large part of their daily encounters with other people.”

Fine expands upon this concept by pointing to the energy involved in assimilating to these situational cultures, emphasizing how minorities have less energy to deal with their actual job responsibilities as a result. Arguably the largest downside of assimilation, however, is that when diverse employees do most of the acclimating, the value of having varying perspectives is diminished.

Wage Equity

The barriers discussed so far support the idea that opportunities, particularly at the higher level, are not equally distributed. This misallocation of human resources is called the glass ceiling. The glass ceiling represents an invisible barrier to employees of minority backgrounds, one that keeps them from achieving executive positions in corporations.

The consistency of the gap between wage and education levels in males and females offers concrete evidence that the barriers to diversity in the workplace still exist. Though this gap highlights gender inequality in particular, the strength of the empirical data suggests that a glass ceiling could apply to any minority group.

123123

Average Earnings by Educational Attainment in 2006: Wages grouped by gender and education reveal a “glass ceiling” for women in the workplace, and the wage gap between men and women only grows as educational attainment increases. Men with doctorate degrees earned an average of $125k and women with doctorate degrees only $92k in 2006.

Developing a heterogeneous company culture, through effective communication and well-informed organizational behavior concepts, is the most effective approach to achieving a more equitable and diverse workplace. Understanding the barriers to effectively assimilating, with a particular focus on communication and avoiding group biases, is a critical step in creating a more conducive environment.

Challenges to Achieving Organizational Diversity

There are various challenges to achieving diversity at individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels.

Learning Objectives

Recognize the difficulties involved in achieving higher levels of diversity in the workplace

124124

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Diversity can include elements across religion, gender, age, race, sexual orientation, disability status, and other related factors. It can also include work skills and personality types.

• Identifying which components of diversity are to be overtly emphasized and discussed, along with how to confine their definitions, is the first substantial challenge in diversity management.

• One challenge of creating diversity is the various cognitive biases individuals in the organization may have about others similar to or different from them.

• Managers encounter challenges in managing diversity as differences in cultural customs and norms emerge.

• Offsetting these challenges while growing more international is an important focal point for companies.

Key Terms

• DiversityDiversity:The quality of being different.

There are various challenges to achieving diversity, ranging from the difficulties of defining the term to the individual, interpersonal, and organizational challenges involved in implementing diversity practices. Due to the rapidly increasing amount of diversity in varying countries and companies, achieving diversity is of extremely high business value.

Difficulty in Defining Diversity

Diversity can include elements across religion, gender, age, race, sexual orientation, disability status, and other related factors. It can also include work skills and personality types. There are many ways, therefore, that people can be categorized into different ” groups ,” and so identifying what categorization is most useful can be challenging.

Identifying which components of diversity should be overtly emphasized and discussed, along with how to confine their definitions, is the first substantial challenge in diversity management.

Cognitive Biases and Stereotypes

Once the definition of diversity has been decided and its different elements have been prioritized, the organization faces challenges in incorporating different groups. One challenge of creating diversity is the various cognitive biases individuals in the organization may have about others similar to or different from them. This is essentially a tendency to stereotype, which significantly narrows the worldview of the individuals within the organization. This reduces all of the potential benefits of diversity and empowers groupthink.

Homophily

Another challenge is related to a social behavior called homophily—the tendency of individuals to associate with others who are similar to them. This tendency can manifest not only in the recruitment and hiring processes within organizations, but also in the informal socialization patterns of individuals within the firm. It is quite common for individuals of similar backgrounds or beliefs to form bonds, and use these bonds to create preferential group settings. Managers must tackle this challenge through awareness, promotion of grouping based on differences, and clever delegation.

125125

Interpersonal Miscommunication and Conflict

Another challenge faced by organizations striving to foster a more diverse workforce is the management of a diverse population. Managing diversity is more than simply acknowledging differences in people. Managers must understand the customs and cultural predispositions of their subordinates and carefully ensure they do not violate crucial cultural rules. It is the role of the managers to change the existing organizational culture to one of diversity and inclusion.

Communication, be it via language or cultural signals, is also a critical challenge in the interpersonal arena. Ensuring that all professionals (human resources, management, etc.) have access to resources which can assist in localizing or translating issues is a significant challenge in many situations. Communication issues can create complex misinterpretations, which can reduce efficiency in the workplace.

Diversity takes careful consideration to implement effectively. Offsetting the challenges involved in growing more international is an important focal point for companies.

Diversity Bias

Cognitive biases carried by individuals in organizations can create negative outcomes and reduce diversity of perspective.

Learning Objectives

Apply the four false consensus biases commonly identified to the value of avoiding diversity risks in business.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Individuals face various cognitive biases that can affect organizational life. A cognitive bias is the human tendency to make systematic decisions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence.

• The false-consensus bias is a cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate how much other people agree with them, and to assume that their own opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and that others think so as well.

• Status quo bias is a cognitive bias in which the current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

• In- group favoritism is the tendency of individuals to provide preferential treatment to those of a similar perspective or disposition.

• A stereotype is a thought that may be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things, the basis of which may not reflect reality. Stereotypes can lead to misunderstandings, stifled innovation, and potentially damaging group behaviors, including discrimination.

• These biases should be actively prevented and screened for within the work environment of any multinational corporation.

Key Terms

• homophilyhomophily:A tendency towards similarity in groups. • biasbias:An inclination towards something; predisposition, partiality, prejudice, preference, predilection. • diversediverse:Consisting of many different elements; various.

126126

U.S. male/female wage comparison 1979—2005: Women consistently make less than men in the workplace. It is likely a result, at least in part, of in-group favoritism.

Individuals face various cognitive biases that can affect organizational life. A cognitive bias is the human tendency to make systematic decisions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence.

Bias arises from various processes that are sometimes difficult to distinguish. These processes include information-processing shortcuts, motivational factors, and social influence. Several of these biases have especially impactful intersections with diverse groups. Examples include the false-consensus bias, status quo bias, in-group favoritism, and stereotyping.

Diversity Bias Types

False-Consensus Bias

A cognitive bias whereby people tend to overestimate how much other people agree with them, and to assume that their own opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and that others think so as well.

This bias is especially prevalent in group settings where people think the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population and, sometimes by extension, that those who do not agree with them are somehow defective. This can impair the integration of diverse perspectives and lead to misunderstandings.

Status Quo Bias

A cognitive bias in which the current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that an irrational preference for the status quo—a status quo bias—frequently has a negative affect on decision-making.

In-Group Favoritism

A social process that may have links to cognitive biases but also to other social dynamics. This bias relies on a tendency toward homophily (the tendency of similar types of individuals to form groups), as in-group favoritism is the tendency for individuals to provide preferential treatment to those of a similar perspective or disposition. As this can include the allocation of resources, promotions and other critical organizational attributes, it poses a serious threat to inclusion (and the benefits of inclusion).

Stereotyping

Stereotyping is categorizing—in ways that may or may not accurately reflect reality—specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. While stereotypes do not necessarily lead to prejudice and/or discrimination, expectations and beliefs about the characteristics of members of groups perceived as different from one’s own can lead to misunderstandings, inflexibility, stifled innovation, and potentially damaging group behaviors.

Taking these biases into account with regard to the business environment highlights some of the pitfalls that must be avoided in a diverse business environment. These biases should be actively prevented and screened for within the work environment of any multinational corporation.

127127

Licensing & AttributionsLicensing & Attributions

CC licensed content, Specific attributionCC licensed content, Specific attribution

• Average earnings of workers by education and sex - 2006. Provided byProvided by: Wikimedia. Located atLocated at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_earnings_of_workers_by_education_and_sex_-_2006.png. LicenseLicense: CC BY: Attribution

• glass ceiling. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glass_ceiling. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Glass ceiling. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_ceiling. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Hegemony. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hegemony. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • assimilation. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/assimilation. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Marginalized. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Marginalized. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Organizational culture. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Multicultural. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicultural. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Discrimination. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Diversity. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Diversity. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusiveness. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusiveness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusive business. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_business. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Human resource management. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resource_management. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Homophily. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • High Performance Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Performance_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity (business). Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_(business). LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Diversity training. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_training. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Managing Groups and Teams/Working in International Teams. Provided byProvided by: Wikibooks. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Managing_Groups_and_Teams/Working_in_International_Teams. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA:

Attribution-ShareAlike • U.S. Women Wage Equity. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/US_womens_earnings_as_a_percentage_of_mens_1979-2005.gif. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-

ShareAlike • Discrimination. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Affirmative action. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • False-consensus effect. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Social comparison bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_comparison_bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Stereotyping. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotyping. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Homophily. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophily. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Inclusiveness. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusiveness. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • Status quo bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • bias. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bias. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • homophily. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homophily. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • diverse. Provided byProvided by: Wiktionary. Located atLocated at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/diverse. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike • In-group Bias. Provided byProvided by: Wikipedia. Located atLocated at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism. LicenseLicense: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

128128