UGBA 105 Review sheet for exam 2 PDF

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Review sheet for Exam 2. 1. Groups and Teams (Chapters 10 and 11) What are groups and teams and different types o Group: a set of two or more people who interact with each other to achieve certain goals or meet certain needs Formal work groups: established management to help the organization achieve...

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Review sheet for Exam 2. 1. Groups and Teams (Chapters 10 and 11) 

What are groups and teams and different types o Group: a set of two or more people who interact with each other to achieve certain goals or meet certain needs  Formal work groups: established by management to help the organization achieve its goals  Command group: a collection of subordinates who report to the same supervisor (ex. Departments)  Task force: a collection of people who come together to accomplish a specific goal and once that goals has been accomplished the task force usually disbands  Team: a formal work group of members who interact at a high level and work together intensely to achieve a common goal  Self-managed work team: a team with no manager or member assigned to lead the team; members are jointly responsible for ensuring the team accomplished its goals  Informal work groups: emerge naturally in an organization because members believe that working together in a group will help them achieve their goals  Friendship groups: a collection of organizational members who enjoy each other’s company and socialize with each other (source of social support)  Interest groups: people who come together because they have a common goal or interest related to their organizational membership

b. Group development and five stage model of group development 1. Forming: group members try to get to know each other and establish a common understanding 2. Storming: group is in conflict; members resist being controlled by the group and disagreements arise concerning leadership in the group 3. Norming: members develop close ties and feelings of camaraderie, members agree on standards to guide behavior in the group 4. Performing: members work together to achieve their goals 5. Adjourning: the group disbands once its goal has been achieved  Not all groups go through all five stages c. Connie Gersick’s “punctuated equilibrium” model of group development 

Groups with deadlines go through periods of inertia where little work gets done (roughly half the time they have) and periods of frenzied activity (the half of the time before the deadline

d. Group characteristics

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Group size o Large groups  Members less likely to know each other  Sharing information is more difficult  Reduced motivation and commitment, lower satisfaction  Greater number of resources, allows for the division of labor  Greater potential for conflict, duplication of effort and low motivation o Small groups  Members know each other and interact regularly  Easy to share information, recognize individual contributions, and identify with group goals  Increased motivation and commitment, higher level of satisfaction Group composition o Determined by how similar or different group members are from each other in the following areas  Demographics (gender, age, race, socioeconomic background, tenure with the organization)  Personality traits, skills, abilities, beliefs, attitudes, values and work experience o Heterogenous groups: do not have many characteristics in common and are characterized by diversity  Benefits include making good decisions because diverse points of view are represented  Performs at a high level because it can use a diversity of resources o Homogenous groups: characterized by their member’s similarity to each other  Benefits include members are likely to get along well and members share information, have low levels of conflict and fewer coordination problems o Organizations form heterogenous groups of younger and older generations to pass on tacit knowledge and prevent brain drain  Explicit knowledge: easily passed down through written documents, manuals, websites, instructions  Tacit knowledge: includes facts, stories, biases, misconceptions, insights, networks of friends, as well as the ability to invent creative solutions; tends to accumulate through experience Group function o The work that a group contributes to the accomplishment of organizational goals o Affects the behavior of members by letting them know how their works contributes to the organization achieving its goals Group status o The implicitly agreed on perceived importance of what a group does in an organization

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The more important the task the group performs is, the higher the status of the group Groups with higher status are likely to be more motivated to perform at high levels

e. Group efficacy    

The shared belief group members have about the ability of the group to achieve its goals and objectives Develops over time as members come to understand each other, how the group functions, the tasks it needs to accomplish and the group’s capabilities Can influence the aspirations that members have for the group, their effort levels, how they approach tasks, and their persistence Important determinant of group accomplishments

f. Social facilitation and social loafing 

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The effect the physical presence of others has on an individual’s performance o Audience effect: the effect of passive spectators who are not engaged in the performed task itself o Co-action effect: the effect of the presence of other group members on the performance of an individual when the group members are performing the same task as the individual The presence of other groups members enhances the performance of well learned behaviors that have been performed repeatedly in the past The presence of other group member impairs the performance of difficult, complex, or novel behaviors that involve considerable expenditure of effort Social loafing: the tendency for people to exert less effort when they work in a group than when they work alone (caused by lack of connection between inputs and outputs) o When social loafing occurs group performance is lower than potential performance o Sucker effect: occurs when group members who were not originally inclined to engage in social loafing lower their efforts when they observe other group members loafing How to avoid social loafing o Make individual contributions to the group identifiable, make individuals believe that they provide an important contribution to the group, keep the groups as small as possible

g. Group roles, rules, and norms 

Roles: a set of behaviors or tasks a person is expected to performs by virtue of holding a position in a group or organization o All of the behaviors expected of a role occupant are the occupant’s responsibilities o Tell members what they should be doing, the standards by which to evaluate members, and determines how rewards will be distributed

Role relationships dictate the way members should interact with each other to perform specific roles o Role making: taking the initiative to create a role by assuming certain responsibilities that are not part of one’s assigned role (important in selfmanaged work teams) o Role taking: process of performing one’s responsibilities associated with an assigned role  Rules: specify behaviors that are required and those that are forbidden o Standard operating procedures specify in writing the best way to perform a particular task o Ensure members engage in behaviors that will benefit the org., facilitate the control of behaviors, facilitate the evaluation of individuals performance, help newcomers learn the right way to perform roles  Norms: informal rules of conduct o Groups enforce norms by rewarding members who conform to the norms and punishing the members who deviate from the norms o Allows members to predict how others will behave in certain situations and anticipate one another’s actions o Organizations need to make sure that organizational goals and group goals are aligned so that norms that are developed help the group achieve its goals and are also functional for the organization  Should make sure to reward members when the organization achieves its goals  Members should be rewarded when the group is effective and contributes to the attainment of the organization’s overall goals i. Conformity and deviance in groups  Conformity is good when norms help a group control and influence its members’ behaviors so that the group can accomplish its goals  However, groups of employees can actually develop norms that hurt the group’s performance  Deviance: occurs when a member of the group violates a norm o Groups respond to deviance by either trying to get the deviant to change, rejecting or expelling the deviant, or actually changing the norm  Groups need both conformity and deviance to accomplish their goals and perform at a high level o Conformity ensures that the group can control members’ behavior to get tasks accomplished o Deviance forces group members to reexamine the appropriateness of norms o

j. Cohesiveness x performance norms model of performance  

Group cohesiveness: the attractiveness of a group to its members Five main factors of cohesiveness o Groups size

The smaller the group the more cohesive it is and larger groups tend to be less cohesive o Similarity/diversity of group members  The more similar a group’s members are to eachother )homogenous) the more cohesive the group is o Competition with other groups  Increases cohesiveness when there is competition between groups in an organization because each group has to band together to achieve its goals o Success  When groups are successful they are attractive to their members and cohesiveness increases o Exclusiveness  How difficult it is to become a member of a group, the extent to which outsiders look up to group members and the groups status within an organization as well as the special rights and privileges accorded to the group’s members Major consequences of group cohesiveness when group goals are aligned with organizational goals: o level of participation and communication within the group improves o conformity to the group norms tends to increase o groups that are cohesive are more effective in achieving their goals 

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k. Socialization (tactics and consequences)  

Socialization: the process by which newcomers learn the roles, rules and norms of a group Role orientation: the characteristic way in which members of a group respond in various situations o Institutionalized role orientation: newcomers are taught to respond to situations in the same way that the existing group members respond to similar situations (stresses obedience and conformity, role taking)  Collective tactics: newcomers go through a common learning experience designed to produced standardized or highly similar responses to different situations  Formal tactics segregate newcomers from existing group members during the learning process  Sequential tactics provide newcomers with explicit information about the sequence in which they will perform new behaviors  Fixed tactics give new comers precise knowledge about the timetable for completing each stage in the learning process  Serial tactics use existing members to socialize newcomers  Divestiture tactics mean that newcomers receive negative interpersonal treatment from other members of the group

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Individualized role orientation: individuals are taught that it is acceptable and desirable to be creative and experiment with how the group does things (role making)  Individualized tactics teach newcomers how to behave individually (not taught in a group)  Informal tactics mean the newcomers learn on the job and are not separated from existing members during the learning process  Random tactics mean that the order in which socialization proceeds is based on the interests ad needs of of the individual newcomer  Variable tactics provide no information about when a newcomer will reach a certain stage in the learning process  Disjunctive tactics mean that newcomers must figure out and develop their own ways of behaving  Investiture tactics mean newcomers immediately receive positive social support from other group members

l. Compliance, identification, internalization (we covered under culture)   

Compliance: assenting to the norm in order to attain rewards or avoid punishment Identification: associating oneself with supporters of a norm and conforming to the norm because those individuals do Internalization: believing that the behaviors dictated by the norm are truly the right way to behave

m. Process losses and gains  

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Effective work groups perform at the highest level possible by minimizing process losses and achieving process gains Process losses: performance difficulties that a group experiences because of coordination and motivation problems o Can come from interpersonal difficulties among group members Process gains: increase in potential performance that results from new ways of motivating and coordinating group members o Can come from more creative groups who come up with innovative solutions or because new was are found to reduce costs

n. Types of interdependence 

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Pooled interdependence: each member of the group makes a separate and identifiable contribution to group performance o Group performance is determined by summing up the contributions of the individual members’ performances o Source of process losses is duplication of effort o Likely to result in high levels of motivation Sequential interdependence: group members must perform specific behaviors in a redetermined order o Identifying individual contributions and performance is difficult

Higher potential for process losses from coordination problems, low motivation and social loafing Reciprocal interdependence: when activities of all working group members are fully dependent on one another so that each member’s performance influences the performance of every other group member o Highest potential for process losses because of motivation an coordination problems o

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2. Conflict & Negotiation (only those portions of Chapt 13 that are related with these 2 topics; in 6th edition are pp 384-395 a. What is conflict  

Organizational conflict: the struggle that arises when the goal directed behavior of one person or group blocks the goal directed behavior of another person or group Sources of organizational conflict o Differentiation  When employees and tasks are split up in to different groups or subunits such as functions or divisions  Different functional orientations means that views on what needs to be done to increase organizational performance differ  Status inconsistencies means the perceived status of each group affects how they interact with other groups o Task relationships  Overlapping authority  Task interdependence  Incompatible evaluation system o Scarcity of resources

b. Pondy’s 5 stage model or organizational conflict 1. Latent conflict: no actual conflict yet, but the potential for conflict exists 2. Perceived conflict: begins when one party becomes aware that its goals are being thwarted by the actions of another party; each party perceives the conflict and its cause differently 3. Felt conflict: parties in conflict develop negative feelings about each other, cooperation between groups and organizational effectiveness declines; significance of the dispute is likely blown out of proportion 4. Manifest conflict: hostility between parties leads them to engage in open aggression as each party tries to hurt the other and thwart their goals 5. Conflict aftermath: the conflict seems to disappear for a while after some action is taken c. 5 approaches to handling conflict  

Negotiation: the process in which groups with conflicting interests meet together to make offers, counteroffers and concessions to eachother in order to resolve their differences Approaches to handling conflict

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Compromise: ivolves bargaining and negotiation motivated by a desire to reach a solution that is acceptable to both parties (usually means splitting the difference) Accommodation: one party recognizes that they lack resources and power to negotiate equitable with the other party so they allow the other party to dictate the solution and achieve its goals Avoidance: both parties refuse to acknowledge the real source of the problem and act as if no problem existed Competition: each party is focused only on its own interests and has little or no interest in listening to the other’s position or taking the other’s needs in to account Collaboration: parties are motivated to work together continuously to find a solution that leave them both better off

Sample questions include:

The sucker effect suggests that when group members see other members slacking off they will: a. reject or ostracize the loafing group members b. arrange a way for the loafing members to be caught c. reduce their own efforts so they don’t feel taken advantage of d. work harder to overcome the lost productivity of the loafing members

_______________ is the attractiveness of a group to its members (fill in the blank)

According to Gersick’s research and her punctuated equilibrium model of group development, the timing of stages of group development depends on A) the interaction of task and ability within the group. B) how long the group has been given to reach its goals. C) the personality of the group leader. D) the personality of the group members.

Large groups tend to be more cohesive than small ones True/False

People in the group who talk the most in the first meetings usually end up being the ________

Imagine that you are managing the four groups described below. Some have high cohesion while others have low cohesion. Some have high performance norms while others have low performance norms:

Low Cohesion High Cohesion

Low Perf

A

High Perf Norms

B Norms

C

D

Which group will probably be the lowest performing group?

Imagine that you are called in to manage the lowest performing group. What is the first thing you need to change about them? Please be as specific as possible.

According to Tuckman’s 5 stage model of group development, when is the best time to try to change the group norms?

According to Connie Gersick’s punctuated equilibrium model of group development, if you missed the early opportunity to change the group norms, when is your next best opportunity to change the group norms?

The ______ conflict management strategy has the goal of maximizing satisfaction for both parties. a. avoidance b. collaboration c. accommodation d. compromise

Whether conflict is good or bad depends on 3 things. What are 2 of them....