Group Dynamics Exam 1

Conflict Between Individual And Group Goals

- motivational - directional - the overall effect of hidden agendas is to damage trust within the team, which reduces communication and makes conflicts more difficult to resolve

Stages Of Group Development

Forming: Orientation: members getting to know one another Storming: Conflict: disagreement about roles and procedures Norming: Structure: establishment of rules and social relationships Performing: Work: focus on completing the task Adjourning: Dissolution: completion of task and end of the group

Forming

Orientation: members getting to know one another

inception

planning activities and collaborating

Replacing Team Members

selection is often based on needed task skills, rather than on teamwork skills

social representation

shared values, ideas, and beliefs that people have about the world

Intrarole conflict

single role (ex., in a task force with team members from different areas of the organization, members may experience a conflict between roles that are good for the team and/or roles that are good for their organizational areas)

conflict resolution

social relations are strained because the team is dealing with conflict

McGrath (1990)

¥ Inception: planning activities and collaborating ¥ Problem solving: coordinating ideas or actions of the team members ¥ Conflict resolution: social relations are strained because the team is dealing with conflict ¥ Execution: coordinating ideas or actions of the team members

"Flash" Teams

such as emergency surgery teams, airline crews, or disaster relief teams, that are quickly formed to address a need

social recognition

such as expressing acceptance and encouraging a sense of belonging to the group

production teams

such as factory teams, manufacture or assemble products on a repetitive basis

Conscientious Team Members

task and goal focused; they avoid social loafing and are more likely to engage in cooperative behavior

implicit norms

team members take turns while talking

parallel teams

temporary teams that operate outside normal work, such as employee involvement groups and advisory committees that provide suggestions or recommendations for changing an organization

Equifinality

that there are many ways for teams to operate successfully

maintenance

the individual is fully committed to the team

Punctuated Equilibrium Model

the main reason teams change is when they are faced with external challenges that cause them to reevaluate their current practices - Each team had its own pattern of development, but all the teams experienced periods of low activity, followed by bursts of energy and change. In addition, each team had a midpoint crisis when its members realized that half their time was gone, but the project was still in its early stages of completion. This led to a period of panic, followed by increased activity as the team focused on completing the task

Team Efficacy

the perception that the team is capable of performing well at a given task; an increase of this helps increase motivation

Social Facilitation Effect

the presence of other people facilitates (or increases) performance

Express central values

which help give members a sense of who they are as a team

New product teams (Ancona & Caldwell,1990)

¥ Creation: developing new ideas and creative solutions while organizing the team ¥ Development: the project's idea has been approved by the organization, and the team is focused on the technical details of the project ¥ Diffusion: the project is nearly complete, and coordinating its transfer to manufacturing and marketing is the focus of the team's activities

The Study Of Transnational Teams

combines research on international diversity with the impacts of technology

management teams

composed of managers, work together, plan, develop policy, or coordinate the activities of an organization

team

consultative, democratic, or consensus

Problem solving

coordinating ideas or actions of the team members

execution

coordinating ideas or actions of the team members

self-managing team

democratic or consenses

socialization

determines how the individual is integrated into the team

creation

developing new ideas and creative solutions while organizing the team

Safe Environment For Feedback

- a place where people are willing to raise questions and issues without fear of retaliation - more willing to provide feedback and reflect on their performance in order to learn how to improve the team's operation

Project Development Perspective

- Based on characteristics of projects - McGrath (1990) ¥ Inception: planning activities and collaborating ¥ Problem solving: coordinating ideas or actions of the team members ¥ Conflict resolution: social relations are strained because the team is dealing with conflict ¥ Execution: coordinating ideas or actions of the team members - New product teams (Ancona & Caldwell,1990) ¥ Creation: developing new ideas and creative solutions while organizing the team ¥ Development: the project's idea has been approved by the organization, and the team is focused on the technical details of the project ¥ Diffusion: the project is nearly complete, and coordinating its transfer to manufacturing and marketing is the focus of the team's activities

Necessary Condition For Team To Succeed

- Clear direction and goals. Teams need goals to focus efforts and evaluate performance. - Good leadership. Leaders are needed to help manage the internal and external relations of teams and orient teams toward their goals. - Tasks suited for teamwork. Tasks should be complex, important, and challenging, requiring the integrated efforts of team members, and the tasks should not be capable of being performed by individuals - Necessary resources to perform tasks. These include material, training, and personnel resources - Supportive organizational environment. Organizations must allocate sufficient power and authority to allow team members to make and implement decisions - Evaluation and rewards. Teams need fair and objective criteria for evaluation, team member performance evaluations should relate to their team contributions, and members should be rewarded when their teams are successful. - Social relations. Teams need training in social skills so they can resolve internal conflicts and function smoothly. - Organizational support. Management, the organizational system, and the organizational culture must support the use of teams. - Task characteristics. Teams need clear direction and goals, tasks that are appropriate for teamwork, and work that is challenging and important - Leadership. Leaders need to facilitate team interactions and provide assistance to teams when problems occur.

Research On Characteristics Of Successful Teams

- Clear goals: Hackman, Larson & LaFasto, and Katzenbach & Smith - Appropriate leadership: Hackman, Levi & Slem, Larson & LaFasto - Organizational support: Hackman, Levi & Slem, Larson & LaFasto - Suitable tasks: Hackman, Levi & Slem, Katzenbach & Smith - Accountability and rewards: Levi & Slem, Larson & LaFasto, Katzenbach & Smith

Functions of Team Norms

- Express central values - Help coordinate activities - Define appropriate behavior - Create distinctive identity

Self-Managing Teams

- Power: linked to organization's hierarchy, increased power and independence - Leadership: leader, the team facilitator, selected by the team - decision making: democratic or consensus - activities or tasks: interdependent, coordinated by team members

Team Contract

- a plan for how the team will manage its teamwork activities - help clarify role expectations and work norms that support collaborative work - they facilitate team members focusing more easily on the task - states the agreements the team has reached on how to operate - helps the team identify and resolve conflicts and misunderstandings - valuable technique for getting started in the right direction

Group Cohesion And Performance

- cohesion can help improve performance, and performance can help improve cohesion - cohesion based on commitment to the task has a larger impact on performance - more likely to accept the team's goals, decisions, and norms - social support - cohesive teams that lack good performance norms may be ineffective and highly resistant to change - low levels of group cohesiveness limit a team's ability to work together - cohesive teams are better able to communicate and coordinate their actions - high levels of cohesiveness can impair a team's decision making ability. Sometimes, team members "agree" to a decision not because they truly agree with it, but because they do not want to upset the team's relationships - cohesive groups manage conflicts constructively and solve problems more effectively

Development Of Group Norms

- develop unconsciously and gradually over time - created by mutual influence and develop through the interactions of team members - can develop norms based on those from past teams they previously joined - can be based on outside standards, such as those outlined by other social or organizational teams - strongly influenced by what happens early in the team's existence, and they are more likely to develop in situations where members are unsure of correct or acceptable behaviors - teams need to decide which technologies to use for task and social communication and how electronic documents are shared and managed

Multi-Tasking In Virtual Teams

- do other things while participating in the meeting - tend to be more common because there is less social presence encouraging people to engage in the discussion

Groups

- exists for a reason or purpose and has a goal shared by the group members - the people have some type of relationship or are connected to one another. They recognize this connection, and it binds them together so they collectively share what happens to fellow group members - interdependence is the most important characteristic of a group - communication is viewed as a central process of a group - people influence on another, and the desire to remain with these people increases the potential for mutual influence - satisfies members' physical and psychological needs such that individuals are motivated to continue their participation in the group - social identification - social representation - research done in laboratory settings - more inclusive - range in size from two to thousands

The Teamwork Movement

- focus on quality in manufacturing - the increase use of information technology, the downsizing of layers of management, business process reengineering, and globalization have all contributed to the use of teams - teamwork in US companies expanded rapidly during the 1990s and included more professional and managerial teams - 85% of companies with 100 or more employees use some type of work teams

Benefits From Creating A Team

- improve performance and job satisfaction - improve both the efficiency and the quality of organizational performance - provides the flexibility needed to operate in today's rapidly changing business world - when they are widespread in an organization, the organization tends to show improvement in other performance areas, such as employee relations - improvements in job satisfaction and quality of work life - provide social support to employees, encourage cooperation, and make jobs more interesting and challenging - requires training that improves employees' technical and interpersonal skills

Task Support

- includes both information sharing and behavioral assistance - increases the collective efficacy of the team and improves coordination among team members

Social Support Behaviors and Team Performance

- includes social recognition and encouragement - increases group cohesion and helps motivate team members

Steps of Group Socialization

- investigation: the team attempts to recruit the individual while the individual decides whether to join the team - socialization: determines how the individual is integrated into the team - maintenance: the individual is fully committed to the team

Characteristics Of Successful Team Members

- knowledge, skills, and abilities that match the task requirements - plus they must have social skills - leaders ability to recruit highly competent team members - team members have a diversity of knowledge and skills - interpersonal skills, problem solving skills, and teamwork skills - conscientious, extraversion, agreeable, emotional stability

Conflict And Ambiguity

- leads to: - stress - decreased satisfaction and morale - increased turnover - decreased participation - decrease commitment to the organization

Group Process Observations

- may be used to improved a team's interactions - observers are used to evaluate team interactions and advise the team on improving its performance - yet, it is better if the members of the team conduct these observations themselves - allows the team to work on its problems when they occur rather than waiting for an outside consultant - the team can obtain feedback about how it is functioning. This feedback can be used to analyze the team's operation and develop more effective ways of interacting within the team

Team Success And Organizational Context

- perform better when they have clear goals and well-defined tasks - teams are provided with adequate resources, including financial, staffing, and training support - reliable information from the organization is required for teams to make decisions, coordinate their efforts with other parts of the organization, and plan for future changes - technical and group process assistance should be available to the teams - a team needs feedback on its performance and an incentive to change

Traditional Work Groups

- power: part of organization's hierarchy, management controlled - leadership: manager or supervisor controlled - decision making: authoritarian or consultative - activities or tasks: independent

The Study Of Group Development

- process by which a person becomes a member of a group - evaluation and commitment from both sides Steps of Group Socialization - investigation: the team attempts to recruit the individual while the individual decides whether to join the team - socialization: determines how the individual is integrated into the team - maintenance: the individual is fully committed to the team

. The Use Of Teams By Organizations

- production teams - service teams - management teams - project teams - action or performing teams - parallel teams - to improve the way a product is made or a service is provided; when the job is complex; when customer service and quality are important; or when rapid change is necessary - the day-to-day operations of organizations can be shifted to teams - help manage coordination problems by linking different parts of organizations - to change organizations by planning for the future or managing transitions - provide advice, make things or provide services, create projects, and perform specialized activities

Organizations And Contemporary Demands

- shift to simpler organizational hierarchies to save costs and increase flexibility by reducing layers of management. Teams have replaced managers, and teams now often carry out traditional management functions - provide a way to integrate and coordinate the various parts of an organization and do this in a more timely and cost-effective manner - execute tasks better, learn faster, and change more easily

Hawthorne Studies Of Teamwork

- showed the benefits of and problems with team norms - when the team had high performance norms, norms were a benefit because they kept laggards in line and encouraged workers to help one another - when the team had low performance norms, the ability of management to change the team's behavior was limited because group norms were resistant to outside influence

Characteristics of Group Cohesion

- similar attitudes and personal goals - time together - smaller teams - strict requirements - group incentives

Team Warm-Ups

- social "icebreakers" conducted at the start of team meetings - used during the early stages of team formation to develop social relations within the team - social activities designed to help team members get to know one another and improve communication during the team project

The Influence Of Positive Psychology On The Study Of Teams

- supportive personal relations - reflexivity and learning - empowerment - appreciative inquiry - provides an alternative perspective on the meaning of team success and how to achieve it

Team Success

- task, social relations, and the individual - completes a task or reaches its goals - while completing the task, team members develop social relations that help them work together and maintain the teams - participation in teamwork is personally rewarding for the individual because of the social support, the learning of new skills, or the rewards given by the organization for participation

Positive Organizational Outcome Of Effective Work Teams

- team member well-being - social engagement and support - team performance - team learning and innovation

Teams Considered A Fad

- team use and the benefits of teamwork have become a business fad and organizations now suffer from the subsequent problems of overuse - many teams operate in organizational contexts that are inappropriate for teamwork - the effectiveness of teams also leads to implementation of teams without the organizational changes needed to support the team; Managers implement teams, looking for benefits without considering the costs of training teams and other ensuing organizational changes - there needs to be a better understanding of where and when teams should be deployed and what actions are required to deploy them effectively - teams are not the solution to every organizational problem, and they are not automatically successful

Research On Teamwork By The 1990s`

- teamwork moved from social psychology studies of small groups in laboratories to other disciplines - sociology, anthropology, political science, communication, business, and education now study aspects of group dynamics - many other disciplines emphasize applied research and study teams in real-world settings - rather than simple models that look at cause-effect relationships, new models focus on the conditions that help teams manage their own processes - instead of looking at group behavior as the sum of individual variables, there is a focus on the emergent properties of teams

Research On The Effects Of Team Norms

- the clearer and more specific a norm is delineated, the more members will conform to it - if most team members accept and conform to the norms, others are more likely to conform - the more cohesive a team becomes, the more conformity there will be to team norms - teams are more tolerant of deviance from peripheral norms than from norms that are central to their operations

Role Problems

- the performer may not understand their role causing hostility from other team members when their role is not performed correctly - roles are ill-defined - occupying several roles at a time may involve conflicting demands - interrole conflict - Intrarole conflict - solutions - make important roles explicit - prioritize tasks

Self-Managing Work Teams

- the shift to these types of teams often results in significant long-term performance improvements - this shift can also be difficult in organizations with traditional management control systems

Developing Group Cohesion

- training in social interaction skills (effective listening and conflict management) - training in task skills (goal setting and job skills) - team success and reward for success - team leader behavior

teams

- typically are engaged in sports or work activities. They have applied functions, and members have roles related to their functions - exist within larger organizations. Members have specialized knowledge, skills, and abilities related to their tasks - families are not this because roles are inherited - research done in field studies - have a narrow range of sizes (3-12 people who interact with one another directly) - members have a common purpose, for which everyone is held mutually accountable - small group of people with complementary skills who interact directly

Team Decision Making Methods

- work group: authoritarian or consultative - team: consultative, democratic, or consensus - self-managing team: democratic or consensus

Storming

Conflict: disagreement about roles and procedures

Adjourning

Dissolution: completion of task and end of the group

Team Norms

Ground rules that define appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a team - Implicit (eg., team members take turns while talking) - Explicit (eg., use consensus decision making)

Norming

Structure: establishment of rules and social relationships

Performing

Work: focus on completing the task

When Are Teams Better Than The Sum Of Individual Efforts

additive tasks combine team member contributions together such as when a team paints a house. The productivity of a team will exceed that of the individual team member, but production is often less than the sum of individuals working alone. Conjunctive tasks are not completed until all team members have completed their parts - although the worst-performing member limits team performance, the team can compensate by providing support to the poor performer - a team usually performs better than individuals in disjunctive tasks, but not necessarily better than the best individual in the team

define appropriate behavior

allowing members to avoid embarrassing or difficult situations, thereby encouraging active participation in the team

work group

authoritarian or consultative

Supportive Organizational Cultures

encourage open communication and collaborative effort; power and responsibility are given to teams so they can control their own actions - although the use of teams can help change an organization's culture, it can be difficult to initiate change when limits are imposed by the existing culture

Help coordinate activities

establishing common ground and making behavior more predictable

Task-Related Behavior

focus on the team's goals and tasks

information sharing

giving ideas and advice and explaining how to perform a task

behavioral assistance

helping another team member with work tasks and providing supportive backup behaviors

service teams

maintenance crews and food services, conduct repeated transactions with customers

social identification

refers to the recognition that a group exists separately from others

project teams

research and engineering teams, bring experts together to perform a specific task within a defined period

encouragement

rewarding others and listening to their personal issues

directional

some team members may not agree with the goals of the team, or they may have individual goals that are incompatible with the team goals

motivational

some team members may not perceive the team's activities as important. They might decide to slack off and spend more time and effort on other activities. Their goal is to help the team succeed with the least amount of effort

action or performing teams

sports teams, entertainment groups, and surgery teams, engage in brief performances that are repeated under new conditions and that require specialized skills and extensive training or preparation

diffusion

the project is nearly complete, and coordinating its transfer to manufacturing and marketing is the focus of the team's activities

development

the project's idea has been approved by the organization, and the team is focused on the technical details of the project

Social Loafing

the reduction of individual contributions when people work in groups rather than alone

investigation

the team attempts to recruit the individual while the individual decides whether to join the team

Create distinctive identity

this identity helps team members understand how they are different from others and provides criteria for evaluating deviant behavior within the team

explicit norms

use consensus decision making

interrole conflict

when a person has several incompatible roles (ex., when a person is promoted, he or she often experiences conflict between being a manager and being a friend to former coworkers)