What is a group?
Two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal
What are formal work groups?
Groups that are established by organizations to facilitate the achievement of organizational goals
- The most common formal group consists of a manager and the employees who report to that manager
What is an informal group?
Groups that emerge naturally in response to the common interests of organizational members
What are the 5 stages of group development?
Forming:
Members get oriented, test boundaries, and define purpose amid uncertainty.
Storming:
Conflict arises as roles and responsibilities are challenged and clarified.
Norming:
Group resolves conflicts, builds consensus, sets norms, and becomes cohesive.
Performing:
Team focuses on achieving goals with cooperation and efficiency.
Adjourning:
Group disbands after completing objectives; closure and recognition occur.
What is a Punctuated Equilibrium Model?
A model of group development that describes how groups with deadlines are affected by their first meetings and crucial midpoint transitions
What are the three stages of the punctuated equilibrium model?
Phase 1: Starts at the first meeting and lasts until the group’s midpoint. Early norms and assumptions formed here dominate behaviour. The group collects information but makes little visible progress.
Midpoint Transition: Occurs exactly halfway to the deadline. Marks a major shift where urgency increases, and members often revise strategies or seek outside input. This stage determines the direction for the remainder of the project.
Phase 2: The group implements decisions made at the midpoint. Ends with a final burst of effort and focus on presentation or evaluation of results.
What are process losses?
Group performance difficulties stemming from the challenges of motivating and coordinating larger groups
What are some different factors that affect group performance?
- Group size
- Diversity
- Group Norms
- Roles
- Status
What are norms?
Collective expectations that members of social units have regarding the behaviour of each other
- Norms serve is to provide regularity and predictability to behaviour. This consistency provides important psychological security and permits us to carry out our daily business with minimal disruption.
What are roles?
Positions in a group that have a set of expected behaviours attached to them
- In organizations, we find two basic kinds of roles. Designated or assigned roles are formally prescribed by an organization as a means of dividing labour and responsibility to facilitate task achievement. Emergent roles. are roles that develop naturally to meet the social-emotional needs of group members or to assist in formal job accomplishment.
What is role ambiguity?
Lack of clarity of job goals or method
What is a role conflict?
A condition of being faced with incompatible role expectations
What is an intrasender role conflict?
A single role sender provides incompatible role expectations to a role occupant
What is an intersender role conflict?
Two or more role senders provide a role occupant with incompatible expectations
What is an interrole conflict?
Several roles held by a role occupant involve incompatible expectations
What is a person-role conflict?
Role demands call for behaviour that is incompatible with the personality or skills of a role occupant
What is status?
The rank or social position accorded to group members in terms of prominence, prestige, and respect
- All organizations have both formal and informal status systems
What is group cohesiveness? What factors affect it?
The degree to which a group is attractive to its members
Factors influencing cohesiveness
- Threat and competition
- Member diversity
- Group size
- Toughness of initiation
- More participation in group activities
- More conformity
- More success
What is social loafing? What are the two forms of social loafing?
The tendency to withhold physical or intellectual effort when performing a group task
Two different forms of social loafing:
- Freerider effect: people lower their effort to get a free ride at the expense of their fellow group members
- Sucker effect: people lower their effort because of the feeling that others are free riding
What are some ways to counteract social loafing?
- Make individual performance more visible
- Make sure that the work is interesting
- Increase feelings of indispensability
- Increase performance feedback
- Reward group performance
What is psychological safety?
A shared belief that it is safe to take social risks
What is team reflexivity?
The extent to which teams deliberately discuss team processes and goals to adopt their behaviour accordingly
What is shared mental models?
Team members share similar information about how they should interact and what their task is
What is collective efficacy?
Shared beliefs that a team can successfully perform a given task
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Chapter 7 - Groups & Teamwork31
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Chapter 5 - Theories of Work Motivation50
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Chapter 6 - Motivation in Practice48
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Chapter 11 - Decision Making23
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Chapter 13.4 - Negotiation11
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FINAL0
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Chapter 8 - Social Influence, Socialization, and Organizational Culture14
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Chapter 9 - Leadership68
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Chapter 10 - Communication32
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Chapter 12 - Power, Politics and Ethics41
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Chapter 13 - Conflict and Stress43
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Chapter 15 - Organizational Change, Development, & Innovation13
