Comprehensive Study Notes: Groups and Teams in Organizational Behavior
Fundamental Concepts of Groups and Teams
Group Definition: A group consists of two or more people who interact with one another in such a way that each person influences and is influenced by each other person.
Team Definition: A team is an interdependent collection of at least two individuals who share a common goal and share accountability for the team’s outcomes as well as their own individual outcomes.
Relational Dynamics:
Two people physically near each other do not constitute a group unless they interact and exert mutual influence.
All teams are groups, but not all groups are teams.
Teams require interdependence regarding information, resources, and skills.
As tasks increase in complexity, the requirements for coordination, teamwork, reciprocal communication, and feedback among team members also increase.
Workgroups: These are formal groups created by an organization to perform its work.
Command Group: A relatively permanent, formal group characterized by functional reporting relationships. These are typically documented in the official organization chart.
Affinity Group: A collection of employees originating from the same level in the organization. They meet regularly to share information, identify and capture emerging opportunities, and solve problems.
Specific Types of Teams:
Functional Teams: Members are sourced from the same department or functional area.
Cross-functional Teams: Members are sourced from different departments or functional areas.
Problem-solving Teams: Focused specifically on solving problems and making organizational improvements.
Self-directed Teams: These teams set their own goals and determine the methods they will use to pursue them.
Venture Teams: Groups that operate semi-autonomously for the purpose of creating and developing new products, processes, or businesses.
Virtual Teams: Comprised of geographically or organizationally dispersed coworkers who utilize telecommunications and information technologies for communication.
Global Teams: Teams (can be face-to-face or virtual) with members originating from different countries.
Informal Groups: Groups established by members rather than the organization.
Friendship Group: Residents of social relationships, these are relatively permanent and informal, drawing benefits from member interactions.
Interest Group: Organized around a common activity or interest; these are typically relatively temporary and informal.
Group Performance Factors
Group Composition: The degree of similarity or difference among group members regarding factors vital to the group's work.
Homogeneity: The degree to which members are similar in critical ways.
Homogeneous groups are more productive when the task is simple, sequential, requires cooperation, or demands quick action.
Heterogeneity: The degree to which members differ in critical ways.
Heterogeneous groups are more productive when the task is complex, requires collective effort, demands creativity, and emphasizes thoroughness over speed.
Group Size: The number of members in a group.
Impacts: Affects available resources, degree of formalization in interactions, communication styles, and levels of participation.
Social Loafing: The tendency for some group members to put forth less effort than they would if working individually.
Determinants of Ideal Size: Includes member ability to interact/influence, group maturity, nature of the tasks, and the leader's ability to manage conflict and communication.
Group Norms: Standards against which the appropriateness of behavior is judged.
Origins: Result from member personality characteristics, the situation, and historical traditions.
Enforcement: Norms are usually only enforced for actions deemed important to members.
Purposes: Groups utilize norms to survive, increase the predictability of behaviors, avoid embarrassing situations, and express central values that identify the group to others.
Group Cohesiveness: The extent to which a group is committed to staying together, driven by attraction to the group, resistance to leaving, and motivation to remain a member.
Groupthink: A negative consequence of high cohesiveness where the overriding concern is reaching a unanimous decision rather than performing a critical analysis of alternatives.
Productivity Relationship: The best performance occurs when a group is highly cohesive and its goals are congruent with the organization's goals. The lowest performance occurs when a group is highly cohesive but its goals are inconsistent with organization goals.
Informal Leadership: An informal leader engages in leadership activities without formal organizational recognition.
Power Sources: Often stems from referent or expert power.
Impact: Can be a major asset if aligned with the firm's interests, but highly disruptive if not.
Stages of Group and Team Development
Mutual Acceptance Stage: Members share information about themselves and become acquainted.
Communication and Decision-making Stage: Members discuss feelings openly and agree on group goals and individual roles.
Motivation and Productivity Stage: Members cooperate and assist each other while working toward task completion.
Control and Organization Stage: The group reaches maturity; members are flexible, adaptive, self-correcting, and work together effectively.
Evolutionary Note: If new members are added or a new task is assigned, the group must repeat these development stages.
Team Implementation and Process Factors
Process Gain: Improvements in performance resulting from people working together rather than independently.
Process Loss: Decrements in performance occurring when a team performs worse than members would have individually.
Team Efficacy: A shared belief within the team that it can organize and execute behaviors needed to reach goals.
Trust: Confidence that others will honor commitments, particularly when monitoring behavior is difficult.
Social Facilitation: Motivation triggered by the desire to look good to others and maintain a positive self-image.
Roles: Defined behaviors and tasks expected of a member based on their position.
Phases of Team Implementation:
Phase 1: Start-Up: Performance is at a normal level.
Phase 2: Reality and Unrest: Performance declines due to confusion, frustration with training, and lack of top-management direction.
Phase 3: Leader-Centered Teams: Performance increases as familiarity with the team process grows and internal leadership is restored.
Phase 4: Tightly Formed Teams: Performance continues to increase steadily.
Phase 5: Self-Managing Teams: Performance peaks as teams mature and become highly flexible.
Benefits and Costs of Teams in Organizations
Benefits categories:
Enhanced Performance: Includes increased productivity and improved quality and customer service.
Employee Benefits: Enhanced quality of work life and lower stress.
Reduced Costs: Lower turnover, absenteeism, and fewer injuries.
Organizational Enhancements: Increased innovation and flexibility.
Organizational Examples of Benefits:
Ampex: Achieved on-time delivery levels of .
K Shoes: Reduced rejects per million from down to .
Eastman: Productivity rose by .
Milwaukee Mutual: Employee assistance program usage dropped to below the industry average.
Kodak: Turnover reduced by .
Texas Instruments: Costs reduced by more than .
Westinghouse: Costs reduced by .
IDS Mutual Fund Operations: Improved flexibility to handle market fluctuations.
Hewlett-Packard: Developed an innovative order processing system.
Costs of Teams: Difficulty of organizational change, slowness of the implementation process, and the risk of premature abandonment of the team model.
Teamwork Competencies and Management
Management Requirements: Top management must support teams for business-performance reasons rather than following fads. They must understand that implementation takes longer than anticipated.
Rewards Systems: Organizations must adjust rewards to include incentives for team contributions, such as skill-based pay, gain-sharing systems, and team bonus plans.
Critical Team Member Abilities:
Conflict resolution.
Collaborative problem-solving.
Communication.
Goal-setting and self-management.
Planning and task coordination.
Ethical Issues:
Fair distribution of work.
Assignment of blame and awarding of credit.
Ensuring participation and resolving conflict.
Avoiding deception and corruption.
Team Contract: A written agreement that establishes ground rules for processes, roles, and accountabilities.
Emerging Challenges: Virtual and Multicultural Teams
Virtual Team Challenges: Geographic/temporal separation, feelings of isolation, difficulty in mentoring/development, and the need for the team to function without a present leader.
Virtual Leadership Skills: Effective communication, building community, establishing shared vision/goals, leading by example with measurable results, and coordinating across boundaries.
Technology (Groupware):
Synchronous: Real-time technologies (meeting software, electronic whiteboards).
Asynchronous: Technologies for work posted at any time (collaborative editors).
Impact: Reduces travel time and expenses; allows immediate, paperless sharing of resources.
Diverse and Multicultural Team Benefits: Creativity, innovation, and improved decision-making and problem-solving.
Challenges for Diverse Teams:
Communication Styles: Western cultures use direct communication, while non-Western cultures often embed meaning in presentation (indirect). This leads to misunderstandings.
Attitudes Toward Authority: Status-oriented cultures may feel uncomfortable disagreeing with leaders or elders.
Decision-Making Norms: Cultures differ in the expected speed and decisiveness of the decision-making process.
Questions & Discussion
Discussion Activity 1: How are groups and teams different? Consider class projects and whether you felt part of a group or a team. When might one form be more effective than the other?
Discussion Activity 2: What are some positive and negative norms you have experienced in groups? Norms result from member personalities, the situation, tasks, and traditions. Positive norms provide predictability; negative norms are behaviors consistent within the group but unhelpful to goals.
Knowledge Check 7.1: A team’s shared belief that it can organize and carry out the tasks necessary to reach its goals is called team efficacy.
Group Activity Scenario: You lead a team of volunteers for a non-profit capital campaign seeking to raise . Two highly motivated members have conflicting ideas. What can you do as a leader to move toward the objective?
Polling Activity 1: Which is the most valuable aspect of synchronous technology for virtual teams: reduced travel time, reduced expense, ability to meet from dispersed locations, or immediate paperless document sharing?
Polling Activity 2: What is the greatest challenge for culturally diverse teams: direct vs. indirect communication, attitudes toward hierarchy, or conflicting decision-making norms?
Self-Assessment Reflection:
Which groups in your life have been most memorable and why?
What qualities did you use or need as a team leader, and which would you improve?
What aspects of your personality contribute most to the success of a diverse work team?