Groups&Teams Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is a team?
Katzenbach&Smith: a small group of people with complementary skills that are committed to a common purpose, performance goal and are mutually accountable to one another
What is the difference between groups and teams?
Social group: any collection of people who interact and identify with each other
Group: a group can socialise for non-work reason such as friendship, religion etc
Team: a sub-type of a group that is formally assigned to achieve a collective outcome
What are the strengths of teams ?
Key requirement for most jobs
Central to organisational success
Core skills
Brings benefits: creativity, problem solving, sense of belonging
What are the weaknesses of teams ?
Hard to achieve genuine team work
Personality clashes
Dysfunctional teams
Free-riding: where someone gets the reward of team effort without contributing
Conflict
Counter-productive
Explain teamwork & synergetic outcomes?
Organisations creates team where they believe it will perform better than individuals working alone
They optimise on synergy where the teams when the output is greater than the combination of individuals
What does Katzenbach & smith say teamwork is an effective way to
Improve performance
Introduce new technologies
Increase employee participation
Identity and solve work related problems
Reduce production cost
Improve quality
Speed up innovations
What are the different type of teams?
Self-managed teams: a group of workers who manage their own duties with little to no supervision
Problem-solving teams: a group of workers that come together for a set amount of time to discuss& resolve specific issues
Cross-functional team: a group of workers from different units and with different expertise come together to work on a certain project
Virtual team: a group of individuals from different locations who work together via email, video-conferencing, messaging & other forms of media
What are the different teams across culture?
Japanese team working : similar to Fordist and Taylorism systems of work design. Encouraged to multi-task and operate more than one machine. Japanese teams can form quality control circles where selected workers meet away from the production line to discuss and solve quality issues
Western approaches: emphasise empowerment, autonomy and compromise cross-functional teams
According to Tuckman & Jenson what are the 5 stages of team development ?
- Forming: How do I fit in, who will lead, what are people’s attitudes
- Storming: these are my goals, how do they fit in with yours?, how do we organise ourselves
- Norming: let’s develop a way to work closely, a group identity is formed, roles are allocated
- Performing: let’s collab or compete in a friendly manner, there’s an effective structure
- Adjourning: the group disbands and members reflect on how the group performed
Assess the strengths of Tuckman & Jenson’s theory?
Understands the process of how teams are formed
Understands that it’s not a smooth process
Based on empirical research
Assess the weaknesses of Tuckman & Jenson theory
Assumes a linear process of team development
The boundaries between the stages are blurred
Does every team have to go through this process
Cultural assumptions
Explain Belbin’s team role theory?
- People have personalities that make them predisposed to adopt particular team roles when working in a group
- The role that people prefer is ascertained through personality profiles and team role questionnaires
- High functioning teams are balanced in the sense that all roles are filled and complement each other
- Even small teams are effective when individuals can perform more than one role
- Effective managers are those who know employee role types and can compose balanced teams
What are the 9 team roles, contributions and allowable weaknesses
- Plant
2.
What are criticism of Belbin’ team roles?
- Broucek&Randall: cricitise the measure used says it’s anecdotal rather than systematically tested verified with evidence
2.Furnham, Steele & Pendleton: doubts the validity of the personality questionnaire, he questions the reliability whether the answers were consistent at diff times, questions the validity whether it claims to measure what it really measures - Assumes that people have fixed personalities and can’t adapt to different situations
- Can’t explain why some teams are high-performing despite some roles not being filled
What are the interpersonal dynamics of a team that lacks trust?
Conceals weakness from one another
Hesitates to ask for help/ provide constructive feedback
Doesn’t readily offer help to others
Waste time& energy managing their behaviour
Hold grudges
What are the interpersonal dynamics of a team that operates in conflict
Person based conflict
- rooted in anger, personal friction, personality clashes & tension
Issue based conflict
- Depersonslised: focused on ideas, plans & projects
- stimulates creativity & enhances decisions through constructive criticism
What is social loafing ?
Reduction in motivation and effort when individuals work collectively rather than work individually
When does social loafing occur?
- Individuals assume that: no one will notice they are slacking, unable to measure individual contributions. Makes it easy to do in large groups
- Individuals believe that other are loafing without experiencing the consequences
- Individuals believe that there contributions are not important
- Individual care less about achieving the groups goals care less about group acceptance
- Think they are less competent than others at their allocated tasks, find their tasks unmotivating
- Individuals think think their abilities are superior but unable to interfere in group outcomes
What is free-riding?
When an individual gets benefits from the team effort whilst not contributing
What is Groupthink?
When people would rather conform to the group consensus rather than offering their opinion
When does groupthink occur?
- Norms for conforming in homogenous groups become very strong
- Members are highly concerned about maintaining unamity
- Groups fail to critically evaluate their options
- Make poorly reasoned decisions
How can you ensure group think is avoided?
Avoid isolating the group : bring in outside experts
Encourage critical evaluators / devil’s advocates
Open climate: leaders invite and accept divergent thinking
Strong leaders speak last or not at all
What is the critical perspective of teamwork?
- Teams are not neutral technology of work design but a practice that creates, reproduces & maintains unequal social relations
- The mainstream view creates this idealised picture of teamwork by ignoring & dismissing behaviours and practices that don’t fit
- Organisations are pluralist systems where social relations & self identities are negotiated
What is the critical perspective of teamwork: teamwork as surveillance & control?
- Teamwork maintains the basic logic of worker exploitation at the root of liberal capitalism
- Shareholders & managers are concerned with profit maximising
- By participating in teamwork, workers actively consent to a level of effort and cost (form of control)
- By participating in teamwork workers discipline themselves & one another ( surveillance)
- McCabe&Black: teamwork us a mechanism that enhances self control, self discipline and consent
