What is a Group?

• Group: Two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal
  • Group membership is important for two reasons: 1) groups exert a tremendous influence on us, 2) groups provide a contex in which we are able to exert influence on others.
• Formal work groups
  • Task Forces: temporary groups that meet to achieve particular goals or to solve particular problems, such as suggesting productivity
  • Committees: usually permanent groups that handle recurrent assignments
• Informal groups: groups that emerge naturally in response to the common interests of organizational members.

Group Development

• Typical Stages of Group Development
  • Forming: At this early stage, group members try to orient themselves by “testing the waters.”
  • Storming: second stage is accompanied by conflicts. Confrontation and criticism occur as members determine whether they will go along with the way the group is developing
  • Norming: Members resolve issues that provoked the storming, and they develop social consensus. Compromise is often necessary.
  • Performing: The group devotes its energies toward task accomplishment
  • Adjourning: Rites and rituals that affirm the group’s previous successful development are common. Members often exhibit emotional support for each other.
• Punctuated Equilibrium
  • Punctuated Equilibrium: a model of group development that describes how groups with deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transitions.
    • Phase 1: phase 1 begins with the first meeting and continues until the midpoint in the group’s existence. Crucial for setting agendas for what will happen.
    • Midpoint Transition: Occurs at almost exactly the halfway point in the time toward the group’s deadline. Marks a change in the group’s approach, and how the group manages is critical for the group to show progress.
    • Phase 2: Concludes with a final meeting that reveals a burst of activity and a concern for how outsiders will evaluate the product.

Group Structure and its Consequences

• Group Structure refers to the characteristics of the stable social organization of a group—the way the group is “put together”.
• Group Size
  • The more there are in a group, the better; however, members of a large group consistently report less satisfaction with group membership than those who find themselves in smaller groups.
  • Do large groups perform tasks better than smaller groups?
    • Additive tasks: tasks in which group performance is dependent on the sum of the performance of individual group members (the potential performance of the group increases w/ group size)
    • Disjunctive task: tasks in which group performance is dependent on the performance of the best group member (a lack performance of groups with large sizes increases because the probability that the group includes a superior performer is greater.)
    • Process loss: group performance difficulties stemming from the problems of motivating and coordinating larger groups (actual performance = potential process – process loss)
    • Conjunctive tasks: tasks in which group performance is limited by the performance of the poorest group member (probability of a weak link increases with the size of the group)

Diversity of Group Membership

• Group diversity has a strong impact on interaction patterns – more diverse groups have a more difficult time communicating effectively and becoming cohesive.

Group Norms

• Norms: collective expectations that members of social unites have regarding the behaviour of each other. Much normative influence is unconscious.
• Norm Development
  • The most important function that norms serve is to provide regularity and predictability to behaviour.
  • Norms develop to regulate behaviours that are considered at least marginally important to their supporters.
  • When members of a group share related beliefs and values, we can expect them to share consequent attitudes.
• Some Typical Norms
  • Dress Norms (Uniforms in the workplace)
  • Reward allocation norms (equity, equality, reciprocity, social responsibility; dictate how rewards such as pay, promotions, and informal favours can be allocated)
  • Performance norms (expected performance of individuals)

Roles

• Roles: positions in a group that have a set of expected behaviours attached to them. Roles represent “packages” of norms that apply to particular group members. There are two kinds of roles:
  • Designated/Assigned roles: formally prescribed by an organization as a means of dividing labour and responsibility to facilitate task achievement
  • Emergent roles: roles that develop naturally to meet the social-emotional needs of group members or to assist in formal job accomplishment.
• Role Ambiguity: Lack of clarity of job goals or methods. The consequences of role ambiguity include: job stress, dissatisfaction, reduced organizational commitment, lowered performance, and intentions to quit.
• Role Conflict: a condition of being faced with incompatible role expectations (roles that are mutually exclusive, cannot be fulfilled simultaneously, or do not suit the participant)
  • Intrasender role conflict: A single role sender provides incompatible role expectations to a role occupant.
  • Intersender role conflict: two or more role senders provide a role occupant with incompatible expectations
  • Interrole conflict: Several roles held by a role occupant involve incompatible expectations
  • Person-role conflict: role demands call for behaviour that is incompatible with the personality or skills of a role occupant.

Status

• Status: the rank, social position, or prestige according to group members.
• Formal status systems: represents management’s attempts to publicly identify those who have higher status than others. Such identifications can come from status symbols (pay packages, work schedules, promotion, badges, etc..)
• Informal status systems: Credentials given informally by work peers.
• Status differences have a paradoxical effect on communication patterns. Most people like to communicate with others at their own status or higher, rather than with people who are below them.

Group Cohesiveness

• Group Cohesiveness: The degree to which a group is especially attractive to its members. Because of this attractiveness, members are especially desirous of staying in the group and tend to describe the group in favourable terms.
• Factors influencing Cohesiveness
  • Threat & Competition: external threat to the survival of the group increases cohesiveness in a wide variety of situations. They probably feel a need to improve communication and coordination so that they can better cope with the situation at hand.
  • Success: an attractive agent that makes groups cohesive.
  • Member diversity: Diverse relations can be put aside for the one task of achieving their goals
  • Size: Big groups reduces group cohesiveness because there is more difficulty in agreeing on goals and more problems communicating and coordinating efforts to achieve their goals.
  • Toughness of Initiation: The harder it is to get into a group, the more attractive that group is.
• Consequences of Cohesiveness
  • More participation in group activities à Because members wish to remain in the group, voluntary turnover from cohesive groups should be low.
  • More conformity: Because they are so attractive and coordinated, cohesive groups are well equipped to supply information, rewards, and puishments to individual members. Thus, highly cohesive groups are in a superb position to induce conformity to group norms.
  • More success: It is true that cohesiveness contributes to group success—in general, cohesive groups are good at achieving their goals. Research has found that group cohesiveness is related to performance. Thus, there is a reciprocal relationship between success and cohesiveness.

Social Loafing

• Social Loafing: the tendency to withhold physical or intellectual effort when performing a group task. The implication is that they would work harder if they were alone rather than part of a group. Social loafing is a motivation problem. Social loafing has two effects that damage group performance:
  • Free rider effect: people lower their effort to get a free ride at the expense of their fellow members.
  • Sucker effect: people lower their effort because of the feeling that others are free riding, that is, they are trying to restore equity in the group

Designing Effective Work Teams

• Self-Managed work teams: Work groups that have the opportunity to do challenging work under reduced supervision.
• Task for Self-Managed Teams:Experts agree that tasks assigned to self-managed work teams should be complex and challenging, requiring high interdependence among team members for accomplishment.
• Composition of Self-Managed Teams
  • Stability: self-managed teams require considerable interaction and high cohesiveness among their members (requires understanding & trust)
  • Size: Should be small
  • Expertise: Should have a high level of expertise
  • Diversity: a team should have members who are similar enough to work well together & diverse enough to bring a variety of skills necessary to complete the task
• Supporting Self-Managed Teams
  • Training: Members of self-managed teams will require extensive training (technical, social skills, language skills, business training)
  • Rewards: Tie rewards to team accomplishment rather than to individual accomplishment which still provide team members with some individual performance feedback
  • Management: self-management will not receive the best support when managers feel threatened and see it as reducing their own power or promotion opportunities.

Cross-Functional Teams

• Cross-functional teams: Work groups that bring people with different functional specialties together to better invent, design, or deliver a product or service.
• Principles for Effectiveness
  • Composition: all relevant specialties are obviously necessary, and effective teams are sure not to overlook anyone
  • Superordinate goals: are attractive outcomes that can only be achieved by collaboration
  • Physical proximity: team members have to be located (sometimes relocated) close to each other to facilitate informal contact.
  • Autonomy: cross-functional teams need some autonomy from the larger organization, and functional specialists need some authority to commit their function to project decisions.
  • Rules and procedures: some basic decision procedures must be laid down to prevent anarchy
  • Leadership: cross-functional team leaders need especially strong people skills in addition to task expertise.

Virtual teams

• Virtual teams: Work in groups that use technology to communicate and collaborate across time, space, and organizational boundaries.
• Advantages:
  • Around the clock work: A 24-hour team that never sleeps. A team member can begin the process in London and pass it on to a team member in New York, etc…
  • Reduced travel time and cost: Reduces time and travel associated with face-to-face meetings. Expensive time-consuming travels can be easily eliminated.
  • Larger talent pool: Even if teams have no interest in relocating, organizations can be able to allocate them and assign tasks.
• Disadvantages
  • Miscommunication: The loss of face-to-face communication presents certain risks for virtual teams. Humans use many nonverbal cues to communicate meaning and feeling in a message.
  • Trust: People typically establish trust through physical contact and socialization, which are simply not available to virtual team members.
  • Isolation: People have needs for companionship. In self-contained offices, co-workers can meet for lunch, share stories, talk about stuff. Unfortunately, these more casual interactions are not possible for virtual teams, results in detachment and isolation.
  • High costs: Initial set-up costs can be substantial. Budget must also be devoted to maintenance since, in the virtual environment, the firm’s technology must run flawlessly.
  • Management issues: How can you assess individual performance, monitor diligence, and ensure fairness in treatment when your team is dispersed around the globe.
• Lessons concerning virtual teams
  • Recruitment: Choose team members carefully in terms of attitude and personality so that they are excited about these types of teams and can handle the independence and isolation that often define them.
  • Training: Invest in training for both technical and interpersonal skills.
  • Personalization: Encourage team members to get to know each other, either through informal communication using technology or by arranging face-to-face meetings whenever possible.
  • Goals and ground rules: virtual team leaders should define goals clearly, set rules for communication standards and responses, and provide feedback to keep team members informed of progress and the big picture.