groups/teamwork lecture 1/2 Flashcards
Whats a group
A group comprises two or more people who interact with each other (face-to-face and/or virtually), who identify as a member of the group and share a sense of collective identity
Whats an aggregate
An aggregate is a collection of individuals who happen to be together in the same place (or have been placed together by someone for some purpose)
Can become a group if they share a collective need
Ideal group size (wheelan)
Concluded from study groups of 3-4 are optimal
- clearer goals and division of labour
- can hold members accountable if not pulling their weight
- can reach a consensus more easily
The Interviewing Programme
Over 20,000 structured interviews with workers to find out what affected morale and productivity at work
Interviews revealed the existence of many informal, ‘gang’ like groups in the factory
Each ‘gang’ had its own leaders and their sidekicks who controlled many aspects of behaviour at work, including production rates
Bank Wiring Room experiments
A group of 14 men were selected for observation
This group had been operating below capacity for some time
Individual earnings were also affected (piece rate system of pay)
- don’t do too much or too little, don’t tell on others or act better than others
- deviation from the norm leads to exclusion, as well as strikes to the arm
Mayo conclusions (wiring study and interviewing programme)
Work is a social activity that takes place in groups, not just an individual economic activity
People are psychologically and behaviourally influenced by the group they belong to
People will sacrifice economic self-interest for group acceptance and belonging
Group dynamics can work for or against the organization’s goals
Formal/informal groups
formal- created by management to complete a task
informal- formed through repeated interactions, may not be work related
stages of group development
Forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning
Belbin’s team role theory
Based on a nine‐year study of management teams taking part in an executive management exercise, Meredith Belbin (1993) proposed that:
People have personalities that make them predisposed to adopt particular team roles (patterns of behaving) when they work in groups
The roles that people prefer can be ascertained using personality profiles and team role questionnaires
A high-functioning team is ‘balanced’ in the sense that all roles are filled and all complement each other
Even small teams can function effectively if individuals can perform more than one role
Effective managers are those who know employee role types and can compose balanced teams
Team role circle
Managers and team leaders use the ‘team role circle’ to identify any gaps or overlaps in the distribution of team roles
Over-populated or missing roles require reflection on whether those are functional given the type of team and the tasks it fulfils
criticism of team role theory
Assumes that people have fixed personalities and cannot adapt to different situations or develop over time (e.g. a ‘plant’ in a sporting team could be a ‘shaper’ in a work team
some teams work with missing roles
