MGTO120s Understanding Groups and Teams

1. MGTO120sUnderstanding Groups and Teams Jian Liang MGTO, HKUST

2. Where We Are Management Basic Concepts (Ch1) Basic Concepts (Ch1) Basic Concepts (Ch1) Organize (Ch10,11 & 13) Organize (Ch 10, 11,12,13) Retrospect (ch2) Retrospect (ch2) Retrospect (ch2) Context (ch3,4,& 5) Context (ch3,4,& 5) Context (ch3,4,& 5) Plan (ch6, 7,8,& 9) Plan (ch6, 7,8,& 9) Plan (ch6, 7,8,& 9) Organize (Ch 10 Lead Lead Lead Control Control Control Understanding Group and Team (Ch15)

3. Learning Objectives Understanding Groups • Define the different types of groups. • Describe the five stage of group development. Explaining Work Group Behavior • Explain the major components that determine group performance and satisfaction. • Discuss how roles, norms, conformity, status systems, group size, and group cohesiveness influence group behavior. • Explain how group norms can both help and hurt an organization. • Define group think and social loafing.

4. Learning Objectives (cont’d) Explaining Work Group Behavior (cont’d) • Describe the relationships between group cohesiveness and productivity. • Discuss how conflict management influences group behavior. • Describe the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making. Creating Effective Teams • Compare groups and teams. • Explain why teams have become so popular. • Describe the four most common types of teams. • List the characteristics of effective teams.

5. Understanding Groups • Two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together to achieve particular goals. • Formal groups • defined by the organization’s structure that have designated work assignments and tasks. • Task groups, command groups • Informal groups • formed to meet the social needs of their members. • Friendship group, interest groups

6. Why Do Humans Form Groups? • Security • Status • Self-esteem • Affiliation • Power • Goal achievement

7. Stages in Group Development • Forming • Members join and begin the process of defining the group’s purpose, structure, and leadership. • Storming • Intragroup conflict occurs as individuals resist control by the group and disagree over leadership. • Norming • Close relationships develop as the group becomes cohesive and establishes its norms for acceptable behavior. • Performing • A fully functional group structure allows the group to focus on performing the task at hand. • Adjourning • The group prepares to disband and is no longer concerned with high levels of performance.

8. Stages of Group Development

9. Group Behavior Model

10. External Overall strategy Authority structures Formal regulations Available organizational resources Employee selection criteria Performance management (appraisal) system Organizational culture General physical layout Internal Individual competencies and traits of members Group structure Size of the group Cohesiveness and the level of intragroup conflict Internal pressures on members to conform o the group’s norms Conditions Affecting Group Behavior

11. Group Structure • Role • The set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone who occupies a given position in a social unit that assist the group in task accomplishment or maintaining group member satisfaction. • Role conflict: experiencing differing role expectations • Role ambiguity: uncertainty about role expectations

12. Group Structure (cont’d) • Norms • Acceptable standards or expectations that are shared by the group’s members. • Common types of norms • Effort and performance • Hawthorne studies: Output levels, absenteeism, promptness, socializing • Dress: You wears Nikes in class. Does UST President? • Social norm

13. The Hawthorne Studies • A series of studies undertaken by Elton Mayo at Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago between 1924 and 1932. • Research Conclusions: • Worker behavior and sentiments were closely related. • Group influences (norms) were significant in affecting individual behavior. • Group standards (norms) were highly effective in establishing individual worker output. • Money was less a factor in determining worker output than were group standards, sentiments, and security.

14. Group Structure (cont’d) • Conformity • Individuals conform in order to be accepted by groups. • Group pressures can have an effect on an individual member’s judgment and attitudes. • The effect of conformity is not as strong as it once was, although still a powerful force.

15. Examples of Cards Used in the Asch Study

16. Stanford Prison Experiment • Philip Zimbardo, August 1971 • Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others created a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can distort individual personalities -- and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster. • “In a few days, the role dominated the person. They became guards and prisoners." • “It shows how easy it is for good people to become perpetrators of evil."

17. What about Iraq? US prison in Cuba? Prisoners “…The way we were made to degrade ourselves really brought us down and that’s why we all sat docile towards the end of the experiment.” “…I began to feel I was losing my identity, that the person I call……, the person who volunteered to get me into this prison was distant from me, was remote until finally I wasn’t that person, I was 416. I was really my number and 416 was really going to have to decide what to do.” “I learned that people can easily forget that others are human.” Guards • “They [the prisoners] didn’t see it as experiment. It was real and they were fighting to keep their identity. But we were always there to show them just who was boss.” • “Acting authoritatively can be fun. Power can be a great pleasure.” Please refer to detail information at http://www.prisonexp.org

18. So conformity to norms can cause many problems • Cause faulty perception: Asch study • Cause guards to mistreat prisoners • lead to other group problems such as escalation of commitment, risky-shift • lead to Groupthink. What is GROUPTHINK? We will see soon…

19. A Result of Conformity: Group Thinking • The extensive pressure of others in a strongly cohesive or threatened group that causes individual members to change their opinions to conform to that of the group. • Faulty decision making that occurs in cohesive groups whose members strive for agreement at the expense of accurately assessing relevant information

20. The Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster

21. Performance Expected Actual (due to loafing) Group Size Group Structure: Group Size • Social Loafing • The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when work individually.

22. Social Loafing • What causes the social loafing effect? • Question others’ contribution • The dispersion of responsibility. • ??? • Do Chinese have the propensity to engage in social loafing? • The implications of social loafing for managers

23. Group Structure (cont’d) • Group Cohesiveness • The degree to which members are attracted to a group and share the group’s goals. • Highly cohesive groups are more effective and productive than less cohesive groups when their goals aligned with organizational goals.

24. Group Decision Making • Large groups facilitate the pooling of information about complex tasks. • Smaller groups are better suited to coordinating and facilitating the implementation of complex tasks. • Simple, routine standardized tasks reduce the requirement that group processes be effective in order for the group to perform well.

25. Group Decision Making (Cont’d) Strengths, advantages • More Diversity of Views • Increased information • Higher-quality decisions (more accuracy) • Improved Commitment, increased acceptance of solutions

26. Group Decision Making (Cont’d) Limitations: • Domination by one or a few members • Ambiguous responsibility • Unclear Responsibility • Slower, and time = money • Conformity pressures • Potential for group polarization • Potential for group conflict S. Adams, Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies (Kansas City MO: Andrews & McMeal, 1991), p. 31. Dilbert

27. Group Processes: Conflict Management • The perceived incompatible differences in a group resulting in some form of interference with or opposition to its assigned tasks. • Traditional view: conflict must it avoided. • Human relations view: conflict is a natural and inevitable outcome in any group. • Interactionist view: conflict can be a positive force and is absolutely necessary for effective group performance.

28. Conflict Management (cont’d) • Types of Conflict • Task conflict: content and goals of the worklow-to-moderate levels functional • Relationship conflict: interpersonal relationships, almost always dysfunctional • Process conflict: how the work gets done, low levels are functional

29. Conflict and Group Performance

30. Conflict Management (cont’d) • Techniques to Reduce Conflict: • Avoidance • Accommodation • Forcing • Compromise • Collaboration

31. Conflict-Resolution Techniques Source:Adapted from K.W. Thomas, “Conflict and Negotiation Processes in Organizations,” in M.D. Dunnette and L.M. Hough (eds.) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, vol. 3, 2d ed. (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1992), p. 668. With permission

32. Turning Groups into Effective Team! • Work Team • A group whose members work intensely on a specific common goal using their positive synergy, individual and mutual accountability, and complementary skills • The difference between group and team

33. Comparing Groups and Teams

34. 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. Not exactly 120… Self-Managed Work Teams Groups of 10 to 15 people who take on the responsibilities of their former supervisors. MGTO120s??

35. Types of Teams (Cont’d) Cross-Functional Teams Employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task. Your 120 team is cross-functional • Task forces You might look at yourselves as a task force • Committees

36. Types of Team (Cont’d) Virtual Teams Teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. Team Characteristics, plus and minus: • The absence of paraverbal and nonverbal cues ( - ) • A limited social context ( - ) • The ability to overcome time and space constraints (+)

37. Creates esprit de corps Increases performance Takes advantage of workforce diversity Increases flexibility Why We Need Teams Allows managers to do more strategic Management Why Use Teams?

38. Characteristics of Effective Teams

39. Characteristics of Effective Teams • Have a clear understanding of their goals. • Have competent members with relevant technical and interpersonal skills. • Exhibit high mutual trust in the character and integrity of their members. • Are unified in their commitment to team goals. • Have good communication systems. • Possess effective negotiating skills • Have appropriate leadership • Have both internally and externally supportive environments

40. Case Study on Chrysler

41. How Chrysler Did • Size: small team to ease communication • Right people: professionals from different functional areas • Empowerment: take control of the production • Leadership: encourages and allows employees to make own decisions • Clear goals: responsible for one particular range of car (large car, mini-van…) • Achievements: (after the introduction of TEAMS) • Car sales increased • Meet cost target • Shorter production time (a year less to make a new car)

42. Can your MGTO120 group be a TEAM? • With groups or teams, you may get 2+2=5 or 2+2=3 • This is one reason we have teams in MGTO120 this semester. Pay attention to your group processes. You may learn things that can help you ALL YOUR LIFE

43. Towards More + Than - + – =

44. Process Gains • Increases in potential performance that result from new ways of motivating and coordinating members. • Social Loafing • Tendency of individuals to exert less effort when they work in a group than when they work alone. • How to make process gains larger than process losses? • Keep group as small as possible • Make individual contributions identifiable, make individuals feel they make valuable contribution

45. Why Your Team not So Well? • “These people are crazy. I don’t even want to come to meetings.” • Team meetings are like swimming with sharks. I just keep my head down.” • “Our meeting are a waste of time.” • “The same people talk in circles. I just keep quiet and hope the meeting will end soon.”

46. Effective Team Member Checklist Remember what we call “fundamental attribution error”? Note: The survey is adapted from Wheelan, S. A.: Creating effective teams. Sage 1999.

47. Golden Rules for Team Working Work for others’ interests as well as own Don’t blame others for group problems Encourage the process of goal, role, and task clarification Practice and encourage openness Speak your feelings Encourage the establishment of norms that support productivity, innovation, free of expressions Maintain confidence and demonstrate competence

48. Summary • Understand the five stages of group development • How roles and norms influence group behavior • Understand the advantage and disadvantage of group decision making • Learn how to manage group conflict • Explain increased popularity of teams