Unit 5 Effective Teams & Decision Making Flashcards
Command Group
A group that is permanent.
Decoupling
Involves separating two groups—physically or administratively—in such a way that the required tasks of the organization are fulfilled while the interaction between the two groups is minimized.
Formal Group
Work units that are prescribed by the organization.
Friendship Group
Friendship groups tend to be long lasting.
Group
An organized system of two or more individuals who are interrelated so that the system performs some function, has a standard set of role relationships among its members, and has a set of norms that regulate the function of the group and each of its members.
Group Cohesiveness
The extent to which individual members of a group are motivated to remain in the group. group.
Work group effectiveness is defined by three criteria:
- group productivity,
- personal need satisfaction of the members, and the group’s
- capacity for future cooperation.
Informal Group
Groups that evolve naturally out of individual and collective self-interest among the members of an organization and are not the result of deliberate organizational design.
Information Flow
To be successful, groups need the appropriate amount of information.
Interaction Process Analysis
A technique that records who says what to whom, and through using it illustrates that smaller groups typically exhibit greater tension, agreement, and opinion seeking, whereas larger groups show more tension release and giving of suggestions and information.
Interest Group
A network that forms due to mutual interests such as working women or minority managers.
Linking Role
A position or unit within the organization that is charged with overseeing and coordinating the activities of two or more groups.
Norms
These regulate the function of the group and each of its members.
Acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s members.
Pooled Interdependence
Occurs when various groups are largely independent of each other, even though each contributes to and is supported by the larger organization.
Reciprocal Interdependence
Occurs when two or more groups depend on one another for inputs.
Role Ambiguity
A condition that arises when messages sent to an individual may be unclear.
Role Conflict
A condition that can arise when individuals receive multiple and sometimes conflicting messages from various groups, all attempting to assign them a particular role.
Role Episode
An attempt to explain how a particular role is learned and acted upon.
Role Overload
A condition where individuals may simply receive too many role-related messages.
Role Set
The sum total of all the roles assigned to one individual.
Sequential Interdependence
Exists when the outputs of one unit or group become the inputs for another.
Social Loafing
A tendency for individual group members to reduce their effort on a group task.
Status Incongruence
A situation that exists when a person is high on certain valued dimensions but low on others, or when a person’s characteristics seem inappropriate for a particular job.
Status System
Serves to differentiate individuals on the basis of some criterion or set of criteria.
Task Force
Serves the same purpose as a linking role except that the role is temporary instead of permanent.
Task Group
Serves the same purpose as a command role except that the role is temporary instead of permanent.
Task Uncertainty
When groups are working on highly uncertain tasks, the need for communication increases. When task uncertainty is low, less information is typically needed.
Work Role
An expected behavior pattern assigned or attributed to a particular position in the organization.
Work Technology
Includes the equipment and materials used in manufacture, the prescribed work procedures, and the physical layout of the work site.
How do you manage group and
intergroup processes effectively?
A group is a collection of individuals who share a common set of norms, who generally have differentiated roles among themselves, and who interact with one another in the joint pursuit of common goals. Groups may be divided into permanent and temporary groups and formal and informal groups. Formal groups include command and task groups, whereas informal groups include friendship and interest groups.
How do group norms, roles, and status systems affect employee behavior and performance?
People join groups because they offer security, meet social needs, enhance self-esteem, fulfill economic interests, introduce them to people with mutual interests, and, sometimes, because they are in close physical proximity. Groups typically develop through several distinct stages, including forming, storming, norming, and performing.
How do managers develop group cohesiveness, which facilitates organizational goal attainment?
Asch’s experiment in group pressure and individual judgment demonstrated that individuals will discount their own perceptions of a situation and follow the will of a group.
- Social Loafing
- Norms
- Status Systems
- Status Incongruence
- Group Cohesiveness
- Work Group Effectiveness
What are barriers to intergroup cooperation, and how do you take action to minimize such impediments and understand how to get the most out of the collective actions of groups in organizations in order to enhance industrial competitiveness?
Intergroup performance is influenced by three interaction requirements. These include the requirements for
interdependence, information, and integration.
- Linking Role
- Task Force
- Decoupling
Performance Appraisals
One of the most important and often one of the most mishandled aspects of management.
Performance appraisals increasingly involve subordinates appraising bosses through a feedback process known as 360 feedback, customers appraising providers, and peers evaluating coworkers.
Validity
The extent to which an instrument actually measures what it intends to measure.
Reliability
The extent to which the instrument consistently yields the same results each time it is used
Central Tendency Error
It has often been found that supervisors rate most of their employees within a narrow range. Regardless of how people actually perform, the rater fails to distinguish significant differences among group members and lumps everyone together in an “average” category.
Strictness or Leniency Error
A related rating problem exists when a supervisor is overly strict or overly lenient in evaluations
Halo Effect
Is where a supervisor assigns the same rating to each factor being evaluated for an individual.
In other words, the supervisor cannot effectively differentiate between relatively discrete categories and instead gives a global rating.
Recency Error
Oftentimes evaluators focus on an employee’s most recent behavior in the evaluation process.
Personal Biases
It is not uncommon to find situations in which supervisors allow their own personal biases to influence their appraisals.
Reducing Errors in Performance Appraisals
- Ensuring that each dimension or factor on a performance appraisal form represents a single job activity
instead of a group of job activities. - Avoiding terms such as average, because different evaluators define the term differently.
- Ensuring that raters observe subordinates on a regular basis throughout the evaluation period. It is even
helpful if the rater takes notes for future reference. - Keeping the number of persons evaluated by one rater to a reasonable number. When one person must evaluate many subordinates, it becomes difficult to discriminate. Rating fatigue increases with the number of ratees.
- Ensuring that the dimensions used are clearly stated, meaningful, and relevant to good job performance.
- Training raters so they can recognize various sources of error and understand the rationale underlying the
evaluation process.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS).
The BARS technique begins by selecting a job that can be described in observable behaviors. Managers and personnel specialists then identify these behaviors as they relate to superior or inferior performance.
Management By Objectives (MBO).
Under MBO, individual employees work with their supervisor to establish goals and objectives for which they
will be responsible during the coming year. These goals are stated in clear language and relate to tasks that
are within the domain of the employee.
Functions of Reward Systems
Reward systems in organizations are used for a variety of reasons. It is generally agreed that reward systems
influence the following:
- Job effort and performance.
- Attendance and retention.
- Employee commitment to the organization.
- Job satisfaction.
- Occupational and organizational choice.
Extrinsic Rewards
Extrinsic rewards are external to the work itself. Examples of extrinsic rewards include wages and salary, fringe benefits, promotions, and recognition and praise from others.
Intrinsic Rewards
Intrinsic Rewards represent those rewards that are related directly to performing the job. In this sense, they are often described as “self-administered” rewards, because engaging in the task itself leads to their receipt. Examples of intrinsic rewards include feelings of task accomplishment, autonomy, and personal growth and development that come from the job.
Intrinsic Motivation
The desire to do a task because you enjoy it.
Anchoring Effect
The tendency to be influenced by values we encounter at the beginning of the decision-making process, even when they are arbitrary.
Availability Heuristic
The tendency to form judgments about the commonness of an event based on the ease with which we can remember instances of that event.
Biases
The systematic and predictable errors we make when we apply heuristics inappropriately when making decisions.
Bounded Awareness
Viewing a task or problem so narrowly that we overlook important, relevant information that would aid our decision making.
