OB exam 2

team

a collection of individuals who are:

1. interdependent in their tasks

2. shared responsibility and accountability

3. social identity

4. organizational embedding

groups vs teams

all teams are groups, but not all groups are teams

• teams have deep interdependence, specific goal, specificity of roles

5 types of teams

1. work teams (permanent, responsible for overall functioning of org)

2. project teams (non-permanent, for specific issue, variety of expertise)

3. management teams (permanent, manage other teams)

4. parallel teams (soundboard for c-suite, no authority)

5. virtual teams

when to use teams

• complexity of task

• serious consequences for errors

• redundancy is needed

• context is ill-defined

• lot of info

2 norms of team effectiveness

1. members should take active role

2. behavioral boundaries

team composition

• member abilities

• personality mix

• diversity

• team size

• member roles

team processes

• communication

• coordination

• decision-making

• conflict management

• cooperation

team perfomance

• productivity

• quality outcomes

• team satisfaction

• team viability

member roles

pattern of behavior is expected to display in a given context

• task roles

• team-building roles

• individualistic roles

member ability and tasks

expertise and cognitive ability boosts group performance

1. task expertise

2. group expertise

tasks:

1. disjunctive tasks

2. conjunctive tasks

3. additive tasks

disjunctive tasks

performance depends on member with highest ability

• Ex: brainstorming

conjunctive tasks

performance depends on member with lowest ability

• ex: F1 pit crew

additive tasks

contributions of all members are added together

member personality

1. agreeableness (caveat: groupthink)

2. conscientiousness

3. extraversion (caveat: can be too dominant)

surface-level diversity

diversity of observable attributes such as race, gender, ethnicity, and age

deep-level diversity

diversity of attributes thay are difficult to observe initially but can be inferred thriugh direct experience, such as one’s values or personality

diversity and performance

diverse teams often lower team performance

• leads to relational and task conflict (task can be a good thing)

• difficult to integrate diverse knowledge

• must be managed well to get the benefits

• well managed diverse team perform better than homogenous teams (if managed poorly then the opposite is true)

process loss

anything that prevents group from reaching its full potential (difference between that group could achieve and what it actually accomplishes due to inefficiencies in how it works

• as groups get larger, they tend to experience more process loss

  • size increases knowledge, skills, etc but working against this leads to more process loss

group size of management and project teams

work is complex and knowledge intensive this larger size tends to be good

group size of production teams

tend to be routine, once tasks are learned thus limit size to minimum required to do the job

critial team processes

• communication: open, frequent, clear

• coordination: synchronized effort

• cooperation: mutual support

• perfomance: superior results

team process improvement strategies

• regular team meetings with clear agendas

• defined roles and respondsibilties

• conflict resolution procedures

• feedback mechanisms

social loafing

membes reduce effort in groups

• solution: individual accountability

groupthink

pressure for conformity reduces critical thinking

• solution: encourage dissent

role conflict

unclear or competing responsibilities

• solution: role clarity

team cohesion

excessive

• groupthink risk

• resistance to change

• insularity

optimal

• strong commitment

• good cooperation

• open to feedback

low

• little commitment

• poor cooperation

• high turnover

consensus

all members agree on decision

majority rule

more than half members support the decision

leader decides

team leader makes final decision

expert opinion

most knowledgable member decides

team leader respondsibilities

• set clear goals and expectations

• facilitate communication

• monitor team processes

• ensure resource availability

• recognize and reward

• develop team members’

leaders need to balance directive leadership (when needed) with empowerment and autonomy to maximize team potential