Chapter 6 - Groups and Teamwork

Question 1

What are groups? What are teams?

Answer 1

Groups - two or more people with a common relationship

• do not necessarily engagne in collective work requiring interdependant effort

Teams - a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable

-a team consists of two or more people interacting interdependently to achieve a common goal

Question 2

List and describe 4 types of teams

Answer 2

1) Problem solving Teams - Groups of 5 to 12 employees from the same department
- meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency, and the work environment
2) Self Managed Teams - groups of 10 to 15 people
- take on responsibilities of their former managers: planning, scheduling work, assigning tasks, taking action on problems
3) Cross Functional Teams - employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task
4) Virtual Teams - use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal

Question 3

list and descibe 6 group dynamic roles

Answer 3

1) roles - a set of expected behaviour patterns associated with someone occupying a given position in a socail unit
2) Role Expectations - how others believe a person should act in a given situation
3) role conflict - a situation in which an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations
4) role ambiguity - a person is unclear about the expectations of his or her role
5) role overload - too much expected of someone - exceeding their capacity
6) role underload - too little is expected of someone - person feels that they are not contributing to the group

Question 4

Describe Norms and what they cover

Answer 4

Norms - acceptable standards of behaviour within a group that are shared by the groups members

• norms prescibe codes of conduct
• most norms in organizations are informal

Norms cover - performance (work ethic, work quality, levels of tardiness)

• appearance (personal dress, when to look busy, when to “goof off”)
• social arragement (how team members interact)
• allocation of resources (pay, assignments, tools and equipment)

Question 5

5 tages of group development

Answer 5

1) Forming - characterized by uncertainty and anxiety
2) Storming - characterized by intragroup conflict
3) Norming - characterized by close relationships and cohesiveness
4) Performing - the stage when the group is fully functional
5) Adjourning - final stage in group development
- characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than task performance for temporary groups

Question 6

What is group cohesiveness?

Answer 6

the degree to which a group is especially attractive to its members

Question 7

Describe decision making.name 3 critical elements

Answer 7

decision making is the process of developing a commitment to some course of action

3 critical elements

1) decision making is choosing one alternative from among several
2) decision making is the process that involves more than simply the finale choice among altenatives
3) Decisions involve commitment and this, in turn, involves some commitment of resources - time, money, or personnel

Question 8

State the 6 steps in a rational decision making process

Answer 8

1) define the problem
2) identify the criteria
3) allocate weights to the criteria
4) develop alternatives
5) evaluate the alternatives
6) select the best alternative

Question 9

6 biases in bounded rationality

Answer 9

1) overconfidence Bias - occurs most frequently when we consider issues outside our area of expertise
- people of lower intellectual and interpersonal ability are most likely to overestimate their performance and ability
2) Anchoring Bias - tendency to fixate on initial information and fail to adequately adjust for subsequent information
- we give a disproportionate amount of emphasis to the first information we receive
3) Conformation Bias - we dont gather info objectively or systematically - we gather it selectively
4) Availability - tendency to base our judgements on information that is readily available
5) Escalation of Commitment - stay with a decision even though there is a clear evidence it is wrong
6) hindsight bias - tendency to believe falsely, after the outcome of an event is known, that we could have accurately predicted that outcome

Question 10

What is groupthink?

Answer 10

• phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action
• the capacity for group pressure to reduce the reality testing and moral judgment of decision making groups

Question 11

6 symptoms of groupthink

Answer 11

1) illusion of invulnerability - overconfidence leads to unnecessary risks
2) assumption of morality - group feels strongly about the moral rightness of their decisions
3) rationalized resistance - ignore counter arguments and behave so as to reinforce their assumptions
4) peer pressure to conform to groups views
5) minimized doubts - members who hold different views avoid deviating from group consensus and minimize their own doubts
6) illusion of unanimity - those who do not voice contrary ideas are deemed to be in agreement

Question 12

4 causes of groupthink

Answer 12

1) group cohesiveness
2) concern for approval from the group
3) isolation of the group from other sources of information
4) promotion of a particular decision by the group leader

Question 13

Describe Risky Shift vs Conservative Shift

Answer 13

risky shift - the tendency for groups to make riskier decisions than the avg risk initially advocated by their individual members

conservative shift - the tendency for groups to make less risky decisions than the avg risk initially advocated by their individual members