# Study Guide: COM 220 - Organizational Behavior

Team Definition

A small group of people with complementary skills, committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach, and mutually accountable.

Key Characteristics of a Team

Groups of two or more people who exist to fulfill a purpose, have interdependence and need for collaboration, mutual accountability, and perceive themselves as a team.

Advantages of Teams

Adaptive and responsive to change, broad knowledge base, effective means for management to democratize organizations, emotional support, and sense of belonging.

Disadvantages/Challenges of Teams

Not always effective for all tasks, process losses, social loafing, groupthink, and diffusion of responsibility.

Task Interdependence

The extent to which team members must share materials, information, or expertise to perform their jobs.

Pooled Interdependence

Task interdependence where tasks are standardized.

Sequential Interdependence

Task interdependence where tasks are performed in a specific order, like an assembly line.

Reciprocal Interdependence

Task interdependence where there is an exchange of work output.

Self-Concept

People's beliefs and evaluations about themselves.

Four Processes Shaping Self-Concept

Self-Enhancement, Self-Verification, Self-Evaluation, and Social Self.

Advantages of Understanding Perception Processes

Perception influences attitudes and behavior, biases, preferences, and past experiences shape perceptions.

Organizational Conflict

The process that occurs when one person, group, or organizational subunit frustrates the goal attainment of another.

Group Identification and Intergroup Bias

Positive view of in-group, less positive view of out-group, attribution of positive behavior to in-group for self-esteem.

Differences, Ambiguity, Scarce Resources

Faultlines based on demographics, culture clashes, ambiguous goals, jurisdictions, or criteria, scarce resources contributing to conflict.

Relationship Conflict

Interpersonal tensions unrelated to the task, involves personal issues, dislikes, and tensions.

Task Conflict

Disagreements about the nature of work, differences in viewpoints and opinions.

Process Conflict

Disagreements about how work should be organized, controversies about responsibilities, authority, resource allocation.

Conflict Outcomes

Negative outcomes (wastes time, weakens cohesion), positive outcomes (debate, creativity, responsiveness).

Conflict Handling Styles

Avoiding, Accommodating, Competing, Compromising, Collaborating - situational analysis for choosing the right style.

Charismatic Leadership

Leadership characterized by vision and articulation, personal risk, sensitivity to follower needs, and unconventional behavior.

Advantages of Charismatic Leadership

Correlated with high organizational performance and employee satisfaction, effective in tasks with ideological components or high stress.

Schein’s Model

Artifacts, Espoused Values, Basic Assumptions - observable aspects of culture, values an organization talks about or believes it has, fundamental premises about the world held by employees.

Identifying in Other Organizations

Examples of artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions.

Role of Organizational Culture

Guides employee attitudes and behaviors, shapes shared social knowledge about rules, norms, and values.

Strong vs

Strong culture has clear and widely shared values, weak culture lacks consensus on values.

Advantages of Organizational Culture

Differentiation, employee identification, desired behaviors, stability.

Drawbacks of Organizational Culture

Difficulty in merging, limited diversity.