Chapter 9 & 11: Team Types and Composition

Member Roles

-role is a pattern of behaviors a person is expected to display in a given context

Trait Adjectives for the Big 5 (CANOE)--Only remember 2 adjectives

-Conscientiousness (careful, dependable, disciplined) -Agreeableness (courteous, good natured, caring) -Neuroticism (moody, anxious, hostile) -Openness (curious, creative, sophisticated) -Extraversion (sociable, talkative, assertive)

Team Types

-Work team (high member involvement)-->produce goods or provide services, self-managed work team, production team, sales team, etc. -Management team (moderate MI)-->integrate activities of subunits across business functions (top management) -Parallel team (low MI)--> provide recommendations and resolve issues, quality circle, advisory council/committee -Project team (varying MI)-->one-time output *work and management teams have a long life span, while the other 3 have varying life spans

Additive Tasks

-adding the abilities and work of ALL members -create SYNERGIES so everyone can work independently for efficiency

Deep-Level Diversity

-attributes that are less easy to observe at first, but that can be inferred after interaction (personality, mental models, abilities) -positive effect on creativity -time appears to increase the negative effect BUT can be managed

Benefits of a Team

-because work is more complex than in the past, teams allow the pooling of complementary knowledge and skill -teams have more expertise, thus can be better than individuals at identifying problems, finding alternatives, and making decisions

Individualistic Roles

-behaviors that benefit the individual at the expense of the the team (try to avoid this) -dominator: manipulates teammates to acquire control -aggressor: deflates fellow teammate -recognition seeker: takes the credit for team successes

Team Task Roles

-behaviors that facilitate the task accomplishment -orienter: establish direction for the team -energizer: motivate team's members -devils advocate: constructive challenge to status quo

Team Building Roles

-behaviors that influence the quality of the team's social climate -harmonizer: try to resolve differences among teammates -encourager: praises the work of teammates -compromiser: helps to reach alternatives that accommodates all members

Stereotypes

-class activity (warm vs. cold) -human tendency -implicit prejudice (ex: if clouds are grey we think it will rain, but that's not always the case)

Team

-consists of two or more people who work interdependently over some time period to accomplish common goals related to some task-oriented purpose -teams have a deeper dependence on one another, unlike some groups of employees -work with specific task related purpose in mind

Cultural Values

-culture is defined as the shared values, beliefs, motives, identities, and interpretations that result from common experiences of members of a society and are transmitted across generations -employees working in different countries tend to prioritize different values -however, people within a single culture often differ widely in how much they endorse these values -within-culture variation is often greater than between-culture variation

Conscientiousness

-defined as the extent to which people are more ambitious, dependable/reliable, responsible, careful, self-disciplined, persevering, and hardworking -most important dimension for job performance (task and citizenship behavior) -higher scorers prioritize accomplishment striving and can help the team because they are self-disciplined and dependable -lower scorers may engage in more social loafing (free riding)

Importance of Team Diversity

-degree to which members are different from one another in terms of any attribute that might be used by someone as a basis of categorizing people -value in diversity problem-solving approach: diversity is beneficial because it provides more perspectives and knowledge -similarity-attraction approach: diversity is detrimental because people tend to avoid interacting with those who are perceived as dissimilar

Conjunctive Tasks

-depends on the ABILITIES of the "WEAKEST" link -HELP that person

Openness to Experience

-extent to which people are more curious, imaginative/creative, sophisticated and intellectual -higher levels can be valuable in jobs that require creative performance (more complex tasks) -moderately high levels tend to help teams because members often need to think out-of-the-box and be open to new ideas -very high levels can lead to too much off-the-topic discussion

Neuroticism (Emotionality)

-extent to which people are more moody, hostile, anxious, easily-annoyed, and emotional -few jobs benefit from neuroticism as a main trait (negatively related to job performance) -higher scorers are more likely to feel stressed and less capable of coping with it -higher scorers have greater negative affectivity and external locus of control -higher scorers can be a source of destructive conflict

Extraversion

-extent to which people are more outgoing, talkative, sociable, and dominant/assertive (vs. introverted) -display higher level of positive affectivity (higher level of job satisfaction) -prioritize status striving: desire to obtain power and influence -higher scorers enjoy teamwork and leadership more, but having too many extraverted team members can hurt teams (power struggles and destructive conflicts)

Agreeableness

-extent to which people are more tolerant, courteous, good natured, and caring -higher scorers prioritize communication striving (desire to obtain acceptance in personal relationships) and tend to be better team players -Higher scorers sometimes avoid challenging bad decisions

Disjunctive Tasks

-have a "best" solution, so the member with the BEST ABILITY has the greatest influence on performance -LEVERAGE that person

Leader-Staff Teams

-leader make decision and set the direction

5 Aspects of Team Composition

-member roles -member ability -member personality -team diversity -team size

Surface-Level Diversity

-observable atributes such as race, ethnicity, sex, and age -negative effect (similarity-attraction issues) at the beginning but disappear with time -Danger: if informal sub-groups develop based on similarity in surface-level attribute

Nurture and Early Life Experience (Personality)

-parents and relatives encouragement of certain personality traits (Conscientiousness, Openness) -cultural values: where you are raised can influence the development of personality traits -cultural values provide societies with their own distinctive personalities

Personality Traits

-personality traits are stable propensities inside a person that explain his or her characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior when responding to an environment -creates your SOCIAL REPUTATION or "what people are like"-->differs from ability or "what people can do"

Cultural Characteristics

-power distance (respect the power) -uncertainty avoidance (risk avoidance) -individualism and collectivism -masculinity/feminity (low=high feminity) -long-term orientation (high=want stability)

Importance/Harmfulness of Team Size

-prefer to work in teams of 4-5 members -when complex and knowledge intensive work (management and project teams), you can benefit from additional resource like expertise -when routine task and less complex (work/production teams), additional members complicates communication and coordination -adding just one member to a team makes coordination harder, potential conflicts, too much socializing, and social loafing

Pro vs. Con of More/Less Diverse Teams

More Diverse: more conflict, slower team development, perform better on complex problems, more creative Less Diverse: less conflict, faster team development, perform better on cooperative tasks, better coordination, higher member satisfaction

Nature Vs. Nurture (Personality)

Twin Studies: -scientists study identical twins reared apart in order to separate nature and nurture effects -this research suggests that between 35%-49% of the variation in personality is due to genetics (nature) -other part if about nurture: early life experience that shaped our personalities

Importance of Member Abilities and Skills

a.Disjunctive Tasks b.Conjunctive tasks c.Additive Tasks