Commerce 2BA3 Organizational Behaviour

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Commerce 2BA3 Organizational Behaviour

• Class 5
• Groups and Teamwork
• Dr. Christa Wilkin

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Brain Teasers
LANG4UAGE searchand
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Last Class

• Content and process theories of motivation
• Money and job design as a motivator
• THIS CLASS
• Groups and teamwork

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Agenda

• Team development
• Team structure
• Team decision-making
• Types of teams
• Ultimate Student Chair task

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CH 7 groups and teamwork
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Question

• What is your best/worst team experience?
• Describe the behaviours of team members/ team as
  a whole and what made it so good/bad?

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Teams vs. Groups

• Teams are generally distinguished from groups by
• Team goals groups dont need to have goals
• Shared leadership
• Shared accountability
• Self-developed mission
• Continuous problem-solving
• Formal vs. Informal
• Established by organizations vs. emerging
  naturally
• E.g., work on project vs. play on softball team

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Typical Stages of Team Development

• Teams develop through a series of stages over
  time
• Each stage presents the members with a series of
  challenges they must master in order to achieve
  the next stage
• Not all teams go through these stages

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Individual Task Put the Stages in Order

• Storming Conflict often emerges sorting out
  roles and responsibilities is often at issue
• Adjourning Group disperses after achieving goals
• Forming What are we doing here?, what are others
  like?, what is our purpose?
• Performing The group devotes its energies toward
  task accomplishment
• Norming Norms are agreed on and the group
  becomes more cohesive

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Punctuated Equilibrium Model

• How teams with deadlines are affected by first
  meetings and crucial midpoint transitions
• Phase 1 first meeting to midpoint of existence,
  little progress is made
• Midpoint Transition need to move forward is
  apparent
• Phase 2 decisions and approaches are played out

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Comparing Both Models
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Team Structure

• What is the ultimate team size?
• Additive Task
• Team performance is dependent on the sum of the
  performance of individual members
• Disjunctive Task
• Team performance is dependent on the performance
  of the best member
• Conjunctive Task
• Team performance is limited by the performance of
  the poorest member

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Team Size

• As groups become larger, they suffer process
  losses
• Performance difficulties that result from the
  problems of motivating and coordinating larger
  groups

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Diversity in Teams

• Diverse teams might take longer to do their
  forming, storming and norming
• Diverse teams sometimes perform better when the
  task requires cognitive, creativity-demanding
  tasks and problem solving rather than routine
  work

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Question

• When will teams perform better than individuals?

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Teams vs. Individuals

• Group members differ in skills and abilities
• Some division of labour can occur

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Quiz Question

• One reason for members reporting less
  satisfaction in larger groups is
• A) individual members can identify less easily
  with the success of the group.
• B) opportunities for participation increase in
  larger groups.
• C) people are less inhibited about participating
  in larger groups.
• D) conflict and dissension are less likely in
  larger groups.
• E) they have more time to develop friendships
  with other group members.

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Team Norms

• Acceptable standards of behaviour within a team
• Agreed upon by members
• Relate to
• Performance
• e.g., how hard to work
• Appearance
• Social interaction
• Allocation of resources
• e.g., assignments

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Team Roles

• Positions in a group that have a set of expected
  behaviours attached to them
• Role ambiguity
• Lack of clarity of job goals or methods
• Role Conflict
• Exists when faced with incompatible role
  expectations
• Something unethical, demands in other roles at
  home
• Both can result in job disatisfaction, stress
  reactions, lower commitment, and turnover

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Team Cohesiveness

• The degree to which a group is especially
  attractive to its members.
• Increase cohesiveness
• Threat External threat to the survival of a
  group
• Success Groups become more cohesive when they
  successfully accomplish an important goal
• Size Larger groups have a more difficult time
  becoming and staying cohesive
• Toughness of initiation Groups that are tough to
  get into tend to be more attractive than those
  easy to join

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Team Cohesiveness

• Consequences of Cohesiveness
• More participation in group activities
• More conformity
• More success
• In more cohesive groups, individual performance
  is similar

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Question

• What is social loafing?

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Social Loafing

• Members exert less effort when working in teams
  than working alone
• Factors that affect
• Team size ()
• Team produces single output (e.g., report) ()
• Interestingness of the task (-)
• Importance of objective (-)
• Value team membership and objectives (-)

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How to Manage Social Loafing

• Discuss expectations
• Make individual performance more visible
• Specialize tasks
• Feeling that inputs are necessary for team
  success
• Increase performance feedback
• Might not be aware of poor performance
• Make tasks more interesting and important
• Divide tasks based on expertise and preference
• Punishment warnings in advance (deter)

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Question

• Why would you want to use groups to make
  decisions rather than individuals?

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Group Decision Making

• Groups or teams can make higher-quality decisions
  than individuals
• Generate more ideas and evaluate them better
• Increases decision acceptance and commitment

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Disadvantages

• Time
• Conflict
• Domination
• Groupthink

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Groupthink (Teamthink)

• The capacity for group pressure to damage the
  mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral
  judgment of decision making groups
• Develops because of too much cohesiveness,
  concern for approval and isolation of the group
• E.g., video of Asch experiment

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Video Clip

• Challenger Disaster

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Question

• Take a moment to think about three concepts from
  the lecture that you can apply to your groups

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Types of Teams

• Process-improvement teams
• e.g., Team to improve efficiency of
  manufacturing a product
• Self-managed teams
• e.g., Teams in class
• Cross-functional
• e.g., Team with people from HR, marketing,
  accounting
• Virtual Teams
• e.g., Team that spans the globe

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Ultimate Student Chair

• Team Simulation Exercise
• Simulating a virtual, cross-functional team with
  a very big challenge
• Form teams of 5 people
• Representing two separate offices of a
  full-service consulting company

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Ultimate Student Chair

• Client briefing details on handout
• 20 minutes to prepare
• Each team will have half of its members located
  on one side of the room and can only communicate
  with them via email.
• Five minutes (max) to present your ideas
• One or two people per team will present to class

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Ultimate Student Chair

• How was the coordination among team members?
• and across offices, specifically?
• How did you make decisions?
• What did you do well / not so well?

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Questions?
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Summary

• Team progress will depend on which stage team is
  in
• Teams are not necessarily more effective than
  individuals
• Require management Establish norms
  (expectations), divide up labour/assign roles,
  build cohesiveness, manage social loafing
• Hopefully Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM)

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For Next Class

• Read chapter 8 on influence, socialization, and
  culture, and chapter 9 on leadership