BU288 - Midterm 2: Important Topics

Topics that could show up on final: Midterm 2: Lecture 7 - Groups & Teamwork (Slides 1-19 ) Lecture 8 - Motivation 1 (Slides 20-29) Lecture 9 - Motivation 2 (Slides 30-35) Lecture 10 - Decision Making 1 (Slide 36) Lecture 11 - Decision Making 2 (Slides 37-55) Lecture 12 - Negotiation (Slides 56 - Lecture 13 - Negotiation 2 - Empty

What is a group/team?

Two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal

When should one use groups?

• Relatively certain or complex problem

• Problem that requires cooperation

• Acceptance of and commitment to a decision are critical for implementation

Does Group size and satisfaction have a negative or positive relationship? Why?

• Negative Relationship

• More conflict

• More social inhibition (less participation in larger groups)

• Individual contributions harder to recognize

  • Can reduce identification with group

What are the three types of tasks that correspond with Group size and group performance?

1. Additive Tasks

2. Disjunctive Tasks

3. Conjunctive Tasks

Define Additive Tasks:

• Group performance depends on the sum of the performance of individual group members

  • Ex: Building a house

Define Disjunctive Tasks:

• Group performance is dependent on the performance of the best group member

  • Ex: An escape room with a very intelligent group member

• The probability that the group includes a superior performer increases with group size

Define Conjunctive Tasks:

• Group performance is limited by the performance of the worst group member

  • Performance is hindered by the weakest link

  • Ex: An assembly line operation

• The probability that the group includes a weak link increases with group size

For additive and disjunctive tasks, do bigger teams mean better performance?

• Yes, but not quite

• Actual performance = Potential Performance - Process Loss

  • Process Loss: Group performance difficulties stemming from the problems of motivating and coordinating large groups

What is the difference between Surface and Group Diversity?

Surface Diversity: Visible characteristics

• Age, gender, race

Group Diversity: Differences in attitudes toward work or how to accomplish a goal

• Experiences, values, personalities, culture, religion

Compare Demographically Homogeneous Teams and Demographically Heterogeneous (Diverse) Teams

Demographically Homogeneous Teams:

• Less conflict

• faster team development

• Perform better on cooperative tasks

• Better coordination

Demographically Heterogeneous (Diverse) Teams:

• More conflict

• Longer team development

• Perform better on complex problems

• More creative

What is Team Cohesion/Cohesiveness?

The degree to which a group is attractive to its group members

• Cognitive & Behavioural (Task Cohesion)

  • Members believe the team will fulfill goals and needs

• Emotional (Social Cohesion)

  • Team is part of person’s social identity

What is Social Loafing?

Social Loafing: The tendency to withhold physical or intellectual effort when performing a group task.

• Motivation loss

• Comes in two different forms

  • The Free Rider Effect

    • People reduce effort to get a free ride at the expense of their fellow group members

  • The Sucker Effect

    • People reduce effort because of the feeling that others are free riding

How can one counteract Social Loafing?

• Make individual performance more visible

  • Smaller teams

  • Specialized tasks

  • Goal setting for each individual

  • Increase feelings of indispensability

• Performance feedback

• Make sure the work is interesting

  • If work is engaging, intrinsic motivation should counteract social loafing

• Reward group performance

What is the Group Development Process?

1. Forming

2. Storming

3. Norming

4. Performing

5. Adjourning

Explain Forming:

Members come together for collective goals; impression management

Explain Storming:

Members compete for roles and power; individual goals; poor cohesion

• Where conflict between group members arise

Explain Norming:

Members settle into roles; accepts group norms and set collective goals; cohesion improves

Explain Performing:

Members fulfill role responsibilities; perform to normative standards; strive for collective goals; cohesive group

Explain Adjourning:

Group disbands or reverts to earlier stage; evaluation of group success

Define Motivation, and what are the characteristics?

Motivation: The extent to which persistent effort is directed toward a goal

• Effort

• Persistence

• Direction (also quality)

• Goals

Define the four characteristics?

Effort: How much?

• Energy, enthusiasm, vigor, intensity, etc

Persistence: How long?

• Continued activation an direction despite hardships, obstacles, and failure

Direction: For what/quality

• Good directions are channeling energy toward goals that benefit the organization

Goals: What you want to achieve

Intrinsic Motivation Vs. Extrinsic Motivation:

Intrinsic Motivation:

• Wanting to do a task for its own sake (ex: find job interesting)

• Usually self-applied, from inside

• Strong and stable impacts

Extrinsic Motivation:

• Working to obtain external reward (ex: money, recognition)

• Usually applied by others (managers), from outside

• Only work in certain situations, usually short lived

Why do we care bout motivation?

• Key driving factor for task performance

Need Theories Vs Process Theories: (Theories of Motivation)

Need Theories:

• Why are we motivated? Focusing on the satisfying/fulfilling needs

  • Ex: Self-determination theory, Maslow’s Theory, Alderfer’s ERG theory, McClelland’s Theory

Process Theories:

• Focus on the underlying processes involved in motivating employees

  • How motivation occurs

  • Ex: Goal-setting theory, Expectancy theory, Equity Theory and Organizational Justice Theory

What is Maslows and Alderfer’s ERG Theory

Maslow’s Theory: Motivated by lowest unsatisfied need

ERG Theory: Need strength at one level depends on need satisfaction of other levels

• The more lower-level needs are gratified, the more higher-level need satisfaction is desired

• The less higher-level needs are gratified, the more lower-level need satisfaction is desired

What is Self-determination theory?

• Focus is on the degree to which behaviour is self-motivated (autonomous) or not (controlled).

  • Autonomous Motivation: Occurs when people are self-motivated by intrinsic factors

    • Autonomous when all 3 are met:

      • Autonomy

      • Competence

      • Relatedness

  • Controlled Motivation: occurs when people are motivated to obtain a desired consequence or extrinsic reward.

• On a continuum

Expectancy Theory:

• Expectancy (E)

  • (Perceived) probability that effort will result in the intended behaviour/performance.

• Instrumentality (I)

  • (perceived) probability that the performance will be followed by a particular outcome

• Valence (V)

  • The subjective value of outcome

What is Goal-Setting Theory?

• Explains and predicts how goals are translated into motivation

  • Goals are motivators of human action

• Challenging Vs. Specific

Why do goals work?

Effort:

• Effort varies in proportion to higher goals

Persistence:

• Challenging goals lead people to work longer

Direction:

• Goals direct attention to goal-relevant activities and materials

Strategies:

• Searching for and developing strategies

What are Reward Follies? Why do they happen?

• Occur when organizations “reward A while hoping for B”

  • Ex: want to encourage teamwork but reward the “best” individual team members

• Why do they happen?

  • Sticking to outdated patterns of rewards and recognition

  • Failing look at the big picture

  • Focus on short-term vs long term

  • Relying on false assumptions about rewards

What is Cognitive Evaluation Theory? (part of SDT)

Introducing extrinsic rewards for behaviour that was previously intrinsically rewarded tends to decrease the overall motivation

• “It was interesting” to “I did it for the money”

What is the Job Characteristic Model?

• The core job characteristics that affect motivation:

  • Skill Variety: doing a variety of job activities using a variety of skills and talents

  • Task Identity: involves whole complete pieces of work from beginning to end with visible outcome

  • Task Significance: impact that a job has on other people

  • Autonomy: freedom to schedule one’s work activities and decide work procedures

  • Feedback from Job: information about one’s performance effectiveness

Motivating Potential Score =…

((Skill Variety + Task Identity + Task Significance)/3)*Autonomy*Feedback

• The extent to which a job is designed to motivate

Equity Theory (again)

Individuals are motivated to maintain an equitable exchange relationship

• When perceiving inequity

  • Behavioural and cognitive reactions

Implications of Equity Theory (motivation-wise):

• Understanding the role of social comparison is crucial

• Perceived underpayment/overpayment will negatively affect motivation

• Who are the workers comparing themselves to? Knowing this might help develop strategies for reducing perceptions of inequity.

Define Decision-making:

The process of developing a commitment to some course of action

Perfect Rationality:

A decision strategy that is completely informed, perfectly logical, and oriented toward economic gain

Assumptions of Rational Model:

• Problem is unclear and unambiguous

• We know all options

• We have clear preferences (for weighting)

• Preferences are constant (weights are stable over time)

• No time or cost constraints

• Maximum payoff

Bounded Rationality:

Bounded Rationality: A decision strategy that relies on limited information and that reflects time constraints and political considerations

Managers try to act rationally, but they are limited by:…

• Capacity to acquire and process information

• Political Considerations

• Self-interest:

  • Criteria for solution evaluation involve political factors to please others and factors that protect self-image

• Time constraints

  • Reliance on flawed memory; Obtain too little or irrelevant information; potential ignorance of or miscalculation of values and probabilities; etc.

Define Confirmation Bias:

The tendency to seek out information that conforms to one’s definition of, or solution to, the problem.

• Gather or remember information selectively

• Interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position

Define Overconfidence Bias:

Based on past success, do not accurately perceive risks or overly willing to take risks

Define Escalation of Commitment:

Continuing to pursue a failing course of action because of sunk costs

• The tendency to invest additional resources in an apparently failing course of action

  • Throw good resources after bad, acting as if one can recoup sunk costs

Prescriptions to Escalation of Commitment:

• Seek disconfirming information about a chosen alternative

• Reframe potential losses as potential gains (i.e. potential savings)

• Structure incentives so that decision makers are not punished for inconsistency

• Hand off decisions about whether to commit more resources to an investment to new decision makers

• Avoid considering expended resources (sunk costs) when making decisions

• Frequently remind decision-makers of the goals of the investment

What is Groupthink?

The capacity for group pressure to damage the mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement of decision making groups

Why does Groupthink occur?

• Strong identification with the group

• Concern for group’s approval

• Isolation of the group from other sources of information

• Group leader promotes particular ideas/decisions

List Groupthink symptoms:

• Illusion of Invulnerability (members overconfident - ignore danger signals)

• Rationalization (problems are rationalized/explained away)

• Illusion of Morality (decisions are perceived as morally correct)

• Stereotypes of Outsiders (Unfavourable stereotypes of those outside the group)

• Pressure to Conform (members convince themselves to avoid voicing opinions contrary to group)

• Illusion of Unanimity (members perceive unanimous support)

• Mindguards (some members “protect” the group from information that goes against decisions)

How to prevent Groupthink:

• Encourage critical thinking, assign Devils’ Advocate

• Use objective leaders (Ex: that do not state their preference first)

• Ensure neither the leader nor any member dominates

• Set norms that encourage dissent and communication

• Consult outside experts who can challenge the view of core members

• Use subgroups to work on the same problems

• After reaching a preliminary consensus, hold a “second-guess” meeting

• Introduce effective team structures: constructive conflict, communication, sufficient team diversity, optimal team size

What is Group Polarization?

Group discussion polarizes or exaggerates the initial positions of group members

• Group members to shift toward more extreme positions

  • Discussion of already favoured ideas

  • Diffusion of responsibility

  • One-upmanship

• Minimize with more structured decision making

Risky Shift Vs. Conservative Shift:

Risky Shift: The tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the average risk initially advocated by individual team members

Conservative Shift: The tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the average risk initially advocated by their individual members

Define Framing:

Framing: When decisions are framed as a choice between potential losses, people make riskier decisions

• Gain Frame and Loss Frame

• People avoid risk when outcome is framed positively

• People seek risk when an outcome is negatively framed

What is Prospect Theory?

A loss ‘X’ hurts about twice as much as a gain of X pleases

People in a POSITIVE mood tend to…

• Overestimate the likelihood of desired outcomes and underestimate the likelihood of undesired outcomes

• Engage in more creative and intuitive decision making

• Adopt simplified, shortcut decision making strategies, more likely to violate the rational model

People in a NEGATIVE mood tend to…

• Overestimate the likelihood of undesired outcomes, underestimate likelihood of desired outcomes

• Approach decisions in a more deliberate, systematic, detailed way

When can structure be useful?

• No history of past interaction (structure compensates for lack of norms)

• History of conflict (structure controls interaction)

• Lots of people (structure makes it manageable)

• Participants of unequal status (structure helps low status views get heard)

• Scarce on time (structure forces more efficient use of time and more preparation)

• Heterogeneous group (structure helps with different norms)

• High need to get acceptance and commitment (structure helps with procedural justice)

Define Negotiation:

A decision making process among interdependent parties who have different preferences

Define and name the two Negotiation strategies:

Distributive Bargaining: Negotiation that seeks to divide up a fixed amount of resources;

• a win-lose situation

Integrative Bargaining: Negotiation that seeks one or more settlements that can create a win-win solution

• a win-win situation

What is the Bargaining Zone?

Between the Aspiration point and the reservation point

Aspiration Point:

• The point a negotiator wishes to achieve

Reservation Point:

• The point a negotiator wishes not to go below

What is in between (overlap) Party A and Party B’s reservation point?

Settlement range

What is BATNA?

• The best alternative to a negotiated agreement

• The best you can do if the other person refuses to negotiate with you

How can you strengthen your BATNA?

• Find other negotiation opportunities

• Find other ways to get the outcome

• Find other outcomes to achieve needs

How do you negotiate?

1. Assess personal goals, consider other’s goals, develop strategy

2. Identify target and resistance points

   1. Target: What one would like to achieve

   2. Resistance: Lowest outcome acceptable

3. Identify BATNA

Distributive Negotiation Strategies:

• Threats/promises

• Standing firm/making concessions

• Persuasion/debate

Integrative Negotiation Strategies:

• Exchange information, ask questions, listen carefully

• Emphasize common interests, minimize differences

• Increase resources

• Frame differences as opportunities

• Introduce superordinate goals (shared outcomes only achievable by collaboration)

What are the 3 most common mistakes in negotiation?

1. Irrational Escalation of Commitment

   1. Continuing a previously chosen course of action beyond what a rational analysis would recommend

2. Belief in the Mythical Fixed-Pie

   1. The assumption that your own interests directly conflict with the other party

   2. Leads to “Win-Lose” thinking

3. Poor Anchors

   1. An anchor is a standard against which future adjustments are measured

   2. Often, the choice of an anchor

What are Effective Negotiation Strategies?

Planning is Critical

• Define your negotiating zone

• Set resistance and target point

• Planning will tell you when to walk away from the table and when an agreement is acceptable

Improving your Bargaining Position

• Begin with a positive overture

• Address problems, not personalities

• Pay little attention to initial offers

• Emphasize win-win solutions

• Create an open and trusting climate