Groups

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Groups
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Another slight shift

• Moving from managing individual to collectives.
  Up to now focus is on supervising one person at a
  time. Its important. But individual behavior is
  a also a function of teams.
• Commonly behave differently in different groups.
• We will explore why this occurs
• Effective team management

3
Trends towards Teams and Groups in Organizations.

• Primary advantagesMore informed decision
  making/better decisions (usually). Associated
  with delegation especially in Service sector
  where there is more variability of what to do
  than in production.
• Examples Weyerhauser Diaper, Pella and Kaizen
  (both production).

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Quality and Quantity of Performance

• Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Utilize
  talents more effectively.
• Teams ensure less lumpy quantity of performance.
  Share work loads.
• Examplesgood team projects. Project teams.

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Motivational

• Social Facilitationpeople perform harder simply
  being in the presence of others than by self.

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Dark Side

• Teams do not always work well together and
  communication needs slows down work (quantity of
  performance)
• Individuals coast (Motivation).
• Decision processes sometimes go very wrong (Lousy
  decision making).

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Effective Teams Improve organizational performance

• Ineffective teams decrease organizational
  performance.
• Following content is designed to make the
  advantages prevail over the disadvantages.
• Need to understand group dynamics. Not so easy
  see/address. Tend to be abstract.

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What Influences group behavior

• Roles
• Norms
• Status (not in book)
• Cohesiveness
• All of these almost an invisible hand unlike
  leadership

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Roles

• Behaviors associated in occupying a given
  position in a group.
• Individual expect you to do certain things
  (related to norms).
• Based on acting roles. One adopts a role.
• Identity or Role within a group

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Uses of Role--Identity

• Role of the newcomer?
• Role of certain positions on athletic team (point
  guard)
• Role of older employee say 55-60.

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Functional Roles

• Team members often have functional roles--task
  roles (initiator, agenda setter, critic, advocate
  role, control role) and maintenance roles
  (humorist, encourager, conflict manager, social
  organizer).

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Role Stress/problems

• Role overload Simply having too many demands put
  on you
• In teams can someone play both task and
  maintenance roles?
• Commonly supervisors put role overload on
  subordinates.

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Role conflict

• Conflict expectations between people
• Supervisors naturally have this.
• Caught between managers and employees.

14
Role ambiguity

• Do not know what is expected of them. Absence of
  defined role expectations. Not communicated and
  assumed.

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Roles and Team effectiveness

• Disruptive roles and supportive roles.
• Complainer, back stabber etc.
• Functional roles are critical to effectiveness.
• Role stress is prevalent in new groups or changes
  in groups.

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Norms

• Difficult to describeprescribed ways of
  behaving. But not clear who exactly prescribes
  them.
• Breaking a norm.

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How do norms develop

• Leadership shapes norms directly with statements
  or indirectly by role modeling behaviors and
  rewards. How do I make this class different from
  other classes?
• Critical events
• Primacynew group
• General expectations

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Contrast norms in two groups

• How do you behave differently in your family than
  you do at work. How do you behave different in
  class than at work? Why?
• Norms have their positive and negative
  consequences.

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Norms are good

• Help the group survive
• Clarify expectations
• Avoid embarrassments
• Give a group an identity

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Asch Study

a
b
c
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Groupthink

• Read the text.

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Status

• Heirarchical social order.
• Pecking order.
• Animals naturally have one.
• Societies have them.
• Groups have them.

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How is status created?
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Function of Status
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Do status differences tend to create the
positives or negatives of team performance as
discussed earlier?
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Cohesiveness

• Willingness to remain in a group
• Book refers to we-ness.
• Research suggests effective teams have higher
  cohesiveness. Linked to communication, trust,
  and retention. To much can be bad.

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How do you move to effective teams

• Functional roles
• Role stress low
• Functional norms (how you change them is never
  easy because they are shared habits).
• Lower status
• Higher Cohesiveness

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Casehot seat

• What are the identities
• Are functional roles being played?
• Status?
• What are some of the norms in this group?
• Cohesiveness?
• What can be done.