1. Chapter 9 Work Teams and Groups
Define group and work team.
Explain the benefits organizations and individuals derive from working in teams.
Identify the factors that influence group behavior.
Describe how groups form and develop.
Explain how task and maintenance functions influence group performance.
Discuss the factors that influence group effectiveness.
Describe how empowerment relates to self-managed teams.
Explain the importance of upper echelons and top management teams.
Learning Outcomes
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Learning Outcome 1
Define group and work team.
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Groups and Teams
GROUP – two or more people with common interests, objectives, and continuing interaction
WORK TEAM – a group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common mission, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable
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Learning Outcome 2
Explain the benefits organizations and individuals derive from working in teams.
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Why teams?
Good for work that is complicated, complex, interrelated and/or more voluminous than one person can handle
Overcomes individual limitations.
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Teamwork
joint action by a team of people in which individual interests are subordinated to team unity
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7. Beyond the Book: Two CEOs?
Apparel retailer Aeropostale is challenging convential wisdom by appointing co-CEOs.
The move is risky, given the recession.
Other companies have made this structure work –California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Motorola, Research in Motion, Twitter.
The most successful teams are those with complimentary talents, composed of the organization’s veterans who worked together for some time.
The role of CEO would appear to be fit for an individual. But as Aeropostale and a number of other firms have shown, a co-CEO leadership team can have many positive effects. Though it has the risk of slowing decision making, a critical factor in a time of recession, many companies have found success with co-CEOs. For example, Chipotle’s stock is up 56% since announcing the appointment of co-CEOs in January 2009.
What are the keys to success? The most successful CEO teams are made up of individuals who have complimentary talents. Research In Motion, the maker of the popular and ubiqutous BlackBerry, is led by Jim Balsille, a finance and strategy specialist, and Mike Lazaridis, an engineering expert. In addition to complementary skills, successful CEO teams are typically made up of organizational veterans who have spent much time working together. The new team Aeropostale, Mindy Meads and Thomas Johnson, collaborated on the launch of a new brand aimed at kids 7 to 12.
SOURCE:
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8. New vs. Old Team Environments
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Benefits of Teams
For Organizations:
Encourages collaboration
For Individuals
Psychological intimacy
Integrated involvement
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Learning Outcome 3
Identify the factors that influence group behavior.
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Group Behavior
Norms of Behavior – the standards that a work group uses to evaluate the behavior of its members
Group Cohesion – the “interpersonal glue” that makes members of a group stick together
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Group Behavior
Social Loafing – the failure of a group member to contribute personal time, effort, thoughts, or other resources to the group
Loss of Individuality – a social process in which group members lose self-awareness and its accompanying sense of accountability, inhibition, and responsibility for individual behavior
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Learning Outcome 4
Describe how groups form and develop.
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14. 3 Issues Addressed by Groups
Interpersonal issues (Matters of trust, personal comfort, and security)
Task issues (Mission or purpose, methods, expected outcomes)
Authority issues (Leadership, managing power and influence, communication flow)
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15. Group Formation
Formal Groups – official or assigned groups gathered to perform various tasks
Informal Groups – groups that evolve in the work setting to meet need not met by formal groups.
In both, ethnic, gender, cultural and
interpersonal diversity is critical
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16. The Five Stage Model
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17. Punctuated Equilibrium Model
Groups do not progress linearly from
one step to the next, but alternate
between periods of inertia and
bursts of energy.
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18. MATURE GROUP CHARACTERISTICS
Purpose and Mission
May be assigned or may emerge from the group
Group often questions, reexamines, and modifies mission and purpose
Mission converted into specific agenda, clear goals, and a set of critical success factors
Behavioral Norms
Well-understood standards of behavior within a group
Also evolve around performance and productivity.
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Group Cohesion
interpersonal attraction binding group members together; enables groups to exercise effective control over the members
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20. Groups with High Cohesiveness
demonstrate lower tension and anxiety
demonstrate less variation in productivity
demonstrate better member satisfaction, commitment, and communication
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21. Cohesiveness and Work-Related Tension
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22. Beyond the Book: What You Don’t Want in a Team
In his new book How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, Jim Collins identifies a number of characteristics of ineffective teams:
People shield those in power from unpleasant facts
People assert strong facts without data.
Team members don’t unify to make a decision.
Team members try to take as much credit as possible.
Team members blame others for failures.
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Status Structure
the set of authority and task relations among a group’s members; can be egalitarian or hierarchical
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Learning Outcome 5
Explain how task and maintenance functions influence group performance.
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Team Task Functions
those activities directly related to the effective completion of the team’s work
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Team Task Functions
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27. Maintenance Functions
those activities essential to the effective, satisfying interpersonal relationships within a team or group
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28. Team Maintenance Functions
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Learning Outcome 6
Discuss the factors that influence group effectiveness.
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30. Work Team Structure Issues
Goals and objectives
Guidelines
Performance measures
Role specification.
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31. Work Team Process Issues
Managing cooperative behaviors
Managing competitive behaviors
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Diversity in Teams
Plays a large role in groups’ effectiveness.
Members contribute to team in one of four styles:
Contributor
Collaborator
Communicator
Challenger
An effective group also needs an integrator.
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33. Dissimilarity in Teams
Demographic dissimilarity influences absenteeism, commitment, turnover intentions, beliefs, workgroup relationships, self-esteem, and organizational citizenship behavior.
Can have positive or negative effects on teams
Value dissimilarity negatively related to team involvement
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Structural Diversity
The number of structural holes in a work team
Teams with few holes may have problems with creativity.
Teams with lots of holes may have difficulty coordinating.
Teams with moderate structural diversity achieve the best performance.
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Learning Outcome 7
Describe how empowerment relates to self-managed teams.
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Empowerment Skills
Competence
Skills
Process
Skills
Self-
Management or
Team Skills
Cooperative
and Helping
Behaviors
Communication
Skills
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Self-Managed Teams
also called self-directed teams or
autonomous work groups; teams that make
decisions once reserved for managers
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38. Beyond the Book: Self-Directed Work Teams
Studies suggest: leaders within self-directed work teams get better results with soft influence tactics (e.g. rational persuasion, consultation, inspirational appeals) than hard influence tactics.
Self-Directed Work Teams
Heightened competitive pressures, elevated quality
expectations, and calls for employee empowerment
have led increasing numbers of companies to turn to
self-directed work teams (SDWTs). The purpose of a
recent study was to understand how influence and
leadership can serve to enhance SDWT effectiveness.
This study was conducted in one multilevel manufacturing
organization in which multiple departments
were adopting teams. The specific research site was
a large unionized plant with over 800 employees. The
investigators were interested in examining managers’
behaviors and influence tactics over an eighteen-month
implementation period for SDWTs. They were
particularly interested in hard influence tactics, such
as coalition, legitimating, and pressure versus soft tactics,
such as rational persuasion, consultation, and inspirational
appeals. In addition, they were interested
in the managers’ ability to self-monitor.
The results suggested that despite the transition
self-directed work teams, managers’ use of influence
tactics was focused at the individual level versus
group level. Managers did, however, increase
use of soft influence tactics and decrease their
hard influence tactics during the transition. In addition,
high self-monitoring managers were more
to increase their use of soft influence tactics
decrease their use of hard influence tactics over
course of the transition. Thus, influence and leadership
clearly changed over time in a self-directed
team environment.
SOURCE: C. Douglas and W. L. Gardner, “Transition Directed Work Teams: Implications of Transition Time Monitoring for Managers’ Use of Influence Tactics,” Journal Organizational Behavior 25 (2004): 47–65.
How should approaches to leadership differ when leading a group from within or from without?
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Learning Outcome 8
Explain the importance of upper echelons and top management teams.
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40. Upper Echelons: Teams at the Top
Self-managed teams at the top-level of an organization
Their background characteristics predict organizational characteristics
Set standards for values, competence, ethics, and unique characteristics in the organization
Key to the strategic success of the organization
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5 Seasons of CEO Tenure
Response to a mandate
Experimentation
Selection of an enduring theme
Convergence
Dysfunction
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42. Executive Tenure and Organizational Performance
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Diversity at the Top
Out of dissimilarity, strength is built.
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44. Multicultural Top Teams
Diversity may increase uncertainty, complexity, and inherent confusion in group processes.
Culturally diverse groups may generate more and better ideas, and limit groupthink.
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45. This chapter defined group as “two or more people who have common interests, objectives and continuing interaction.” Does this film sequence have examples of each part of that definition? Identify specific moments that fit the definition.
Review the section “Stages of Group Development.” Apply that discussion to both film sequences. You should see examples of each stage.
Does the samll group in these film sequnces appear cohesive? Cite some specific moments from the film sequences to support your conclusion.
Friends with Money
Friends with Money focuses on four female friends at various stages of
life development. Three are married; some with children. Some couples
are extremely wealthy, others are not. Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), a former
school teacher and now a maid, is single. The film focuses on interactions
among them and the dynamics of their lives. These sequences,
which focus on supporting characters Aaron and The Other Aaron,
come from two different places in the film. The first sequence begins
with The Other Aaron (Ty Burrell) saying to Aaron (Simon McBurney),
“I’ve—Excuse me, I’ve…I’ve seen you in here a lot.” This sequence
ends after they discuss Aaron’s socks. Sequence 2 is DVD Chapter
15, “Friendship Grows.” The two Aarons come out of a movie theater.
Aaron says, “On top of it, I don’t get the part where the guy tells the
other guy not to come to the house.” The sequence ends as The Other
Aaron says, “I love your shirt, by the way.”