Chapter 9

Working in teams and groups

Relevance of team working in the 21st century

• 21st century has seen increasing emphasis on teamwork, because companies realized giving employees discretion not only serves to the intrinsic rewards, but also increase company success.

• Indeed, major companies like Siemens, Motorola, Fiat, Ford, Toyota and IBM are committed to teams and teamwork.

• Teams typically outperform individuals.

• Teams use employee talents better.

• Teams are more flexible and responsive to changes in the environment

• Can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus, and disband

• Facilitate employee involvement

• Increase employee participation in decision making

• Democratize an organization and increase motivation.

• Note: teams are not ALWAYS effective

• enhanced competitive advantage• improved productivity• improved quality and encouragement of innovation• taking advantage of the opportunities by technological

advances• improved employee motivation, commitment and job

satisfaction• more effective task performance through the range of abilities

and knowledge distributed across team members• improved trust and respect for individual members through

synergy and shared goals

Some of the benefits of utilizing teams

Groups are

• Two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives.

• TEAMS ARE GROUPS BUT NOT ALL GROUPS ARE TEAMS.

What are the characteristics of a team?

• This collection of people who interact with one another and see themselves as being part of that group interdependency of members

• Have some shared goals and synergy generated

• There exists a relatively stable structure- a hierarchy (perhaps a leader)- an established set of roles, or - a standardized pattern of interaction

Differences between Groups and Teams

• Work Group– A group that interacts primarily to share information and

to make decisions to help each group member perform within his or her area of responsibility

– No joint effort required

• Work Team– Generates positive synergy through coordinated effort.

The individual efforts result in a performance that is greater than the sum of the individual inputs

Comparing Work Groups and Work Teams

Figure 9.1 Types of groups and teams

Types of Teams

Problem-Solving Teams

Groups of 5 to 12 employees from the same department who meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency, and the work environment. Rarely are they given the authority to unilaterally implement their suggested actions.

e.g. Quality circles

Self-Managed Work Teams• In SMWTs, each member has the authority and

autonomy to achieve the agreed team goal; planning and scheduling of work, assigning tasks to members, control over the pace of work, even selecting own members and taking action on problems.

• Initially developed to increase the quality of the goods, increasing employee satisfaction and reducing costs in technology heavy industries.

• Some organizations have been disappointed with the results of SMWTs as the effectiveness of these teams has not been uniformly positive, due to interpersonal conflicts and low trust among members.

Types of Teams (cont.)

• Committees

• Task forces (temporary)

Employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.

A Recent Type: Virtual Teams

Use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.

1.The ability to overcome time and space constraints

2.The absence of nonverbal cues and a limited social context

3.Trust among members and close monitoring is critical.

Other Team Types

• Cross-cultural teams (mostly in international joint-ventures to provide managers broader perspectives in managing complex cultural systems; reports of conflict, misunderstandings and poor performance)

• Research and development teams (normally used in high technology organizations that need specialized expertise and knowledge to develop innovative products)

• Communities of practice (to capture and transfer expert knowledge and experience with the growth of virtual working; usually informal groups, not necessarily task oriented)

Social Identity Theory (SIT)

• When one belongs to group a powerful force affects the behavior of the individual members.

• Core tenet of SIT: For groups to perform effectively, people need to stop seeing themselves as individuals and identify themselves as group members.

• Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. (Henry Ford)

Forming

Storming

Norming

Performing

Adjourning

Socialization Theories: How the group norms get adopted?

Social facilitation• The more physical presence of others

causes arousal that motivates performance• The presence of theirs raises an individual’s

awareness of the gap between their desires and their performance; leads to better performance

• Individuals want to create best impression to avoid embarrassment

Group conformity (Asch, 1951)

Group pressure (Asch, 1951)

Individuals given a card with a vertical line printed on it- Participants asked to then look at another card with three lines on it: two did not match, one did- Task: select line that matched the length of the line on the original card; correct answer was clear- Individuals often chose a clearly wrong option if confederates first chose a wrong option

Minority Influence

• Unanimous majority influences us powerfully• Yet: one person’s dissent can break the hold

of the majority– Appears not to stem from creation of an ‘alliance’

– occurred even when dissenter also chose an incorrect response, as long as it differed from that chosen by the majority

Social Loafing• What if no one is the “audience,” and

therefore all must perform?– Ringelmann (1913): in a group of men, each

pulled less hard than if pulling solo– Latane (1981): “social loafing”

• People work less hard in groups• Consistent across cultures, across many variables

• Minimized Social Loafing (or free-riders)– Team holds itself accountable both individually and as

a team

Conformity -- M. Sherif (1937)Individuals asked to view a stationary light in a

darkened room- Task: estimate how far the light had moved when viewed (The light had not moved at all)- Sometimes performed the task alone, sometimes with others in the room.- Estimates varied according to number of people in the room, and whether confederates gave high/low estimates (autokinetic effect)

Sherif found that people’s perceptions change in different social situations.

Conformity• The results indicate that we often conform: why?

• Two influences: informational and normative– Informational: We seek others’ opinions on what is correct if

we suspect they might know better than we do. We want to fit in, be liked, avoid looking foolish.

– Normative: Norms offer predictability, and gives the feeling of order and meanings in life – our need to be in control.

• When we conform, we usually give in to the normative behaviors of the group/organization.

• Our understanding of the situation influences our decisions on acting or not acting

• Pluralistic ignorance: if others are not doing anything, probably nothing needs to be done

• Problem: others are using the same reasoning…

• Diffusion of responsibility: we feel less compelled because we feel less responsible if there are many bystanders

• We also weigh the costs of helping as well as the benefits: Physical danger; psychological cost?

The Bystander Effect

Social Exchange Theory

• SET is another way of explaining why individual members conform to group norms.

• SET assumes people exchange resources based on their expectation of high reward for little cost.

• Individuals appraise their group/team membership based on a cost-benefit analysis.

• But belonging to a group means emotional/social investment that motivates individuals toward group rather than personal goals.

Team training and development• Selecting employees who can fulfill the team roles.

– Make team skills one of the interpersonal skills in the hiring process.

• Training employees to become team players.

– Trainings should be relevant, adequate and specific either to the task or team skills needed, for maximum effect.

• Reward system should encourage cooperative efforts while recognizing individual contributions.

• Teams, although powerful, can go seriously wrong.

• Group polarization:– Groups decisions are more extreme than those we make

on our own

• “Risky shift”– Greater willingness for a group to take risks than when we

are acting as individuals

• In highly cohesive groups: “groupthink” group promotes its own cohesion at expense of flexible, open-minded solutions or goals

Thinking in Groups

Symptoms of GroupthinkSymptoms of Groupthink

• Particularly likely when a cohesive group under threat

• How to combat it?– Training programs that sensitize team members,

to possible drawbacks – Using conflict witin group as an asset/opportunity – Devil’s advocacy

Negotiation and Decision-Making

• Communication and knowledge sharing within team

• Closely related to trust and willingness to be vulnerable

• Team decision making is not an easy task and can easily lead to conflict among members

• If not carefully managed can lead to sub-grouping, loss of motivation, dysfunctional behavior, which reduce performance (e.g., sub-optimal decisions).

Table 9.2 Frameworks for considering how to respond to conflictSource: Adapted from Ackroyd and Thompson (1999)

Transitions in Conflict Thought• Unitarist View of Conflict

– The belief that all conflict is harmful and must be avoided; prevalent view in the 1930s-1940s

– Conflict resulted from poor communication, lack of openness, failure to respond to employee needs

• Pluralist View – The belief that conflict is a natural and inevitable outcome

in any group; from the late 1940s through mid-1970s– Is an early warning system and needs to be tackled.

Continued Transitions in Conflict Thought

• Interactionist View– The belief that conflict is not only a positive force in a group

but that it is absolutely necessary for a group to perform effectively if it is functional type and contained.

• Radical View– Based on the Marxist critique; capitalist economy forces to

lower costs and thus employees paid less and they resist management through strikes, walkouts or conflict.

Creating Effective Teams: Composition

• Abilities of Members• Need technical expertise, problem-solving, decision-making, and

good interpersonal skills

• Personality of Members• Conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness all

relate to team performance

• Allocating Roles and Diversity• Many necessary roles must be filled• Diversity can often lead to lower performance

• Size of Team• The smaller the better: 5 to 9 is optimal

• Member’s Preference for Teamwork• Do the members want to be on the team?