Chapter 8: Team Dynamics

Question 1

teams

Answer 1

groups of 2 or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization

Question 2

social network

Answer 2

social structures of individuals/ social units that are connected to each other through one or more forms of interdependence

Question 3

process losses

Answer 3

resources (including time and energy) expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task

Question 4

Brooks’s law

Answer 4

principle that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later

Question 5

social loafing

Answer 5

problem that occurs when people exert less effort (and usually perform at a lower level) when working in teams than when working alone

Question 6

task interdependence

Answer 6

extend to which team members must share materials, information, or expertise in order to perform their jobs

Question 7

role

Answer 7

set of behaviors that people are expected to repeatedly perform because they hold formal/ informal positions in a team and organization

Question 8

team building

Answer 8

formal activities designed to improve the development and functioning of a work team

Question 9

norms

Answer 9

informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members

Question 10

team cohesion

Answer 10

degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members

Question 11

trust

Answer 11

positive expectations one person has toward another person in situations involving risk

Question 12

self-directed teams (STDs)

Answer 12

cross-cultural work groups that are organized around work processes, complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks, and have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks

Question 13

remote teams

Answer 13

teams whose members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks

Question 14

human capital

Answer 14

knowledge skills, abilities, creative thinking, and other valued resources that employees bring to the organization

Question 15

production blocking

Answer 15

time constraint in a team decision making due to the procedural requirement that only one person may speak at a time

Question 16

evaluation apprehension

Answer 16

occurs when individuals are reluctant to mention ideas that seem silly because they believe (often correctly) that others in the decision-making group are silently evaluating them

Question 17

team efficacy

Answer 17

collective belief among team members in the team’s capability to successfully complete a task

Question 18

psychological safety

Answer 18

shared belief that it is safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking; specifically, that presenting unusual ideas, constructively disagreeing with the majority, and experimenting with new work behaviors will not result in coworkers posing a threat to their self-concept, status, or career

Question 19

brainstorming

Answer 19

freewheeling, face-to-face meeting where team members aren’t allowed to criticize but are encouraged to speak freely. generate as many ideas as possible, and build on the ideas of others

Question 20

brainwriting

Answer 20

variation of brainstorming whereby participants write and share their ideas

Question 21

electronic brainstorming

Answer 21

form of brainstorming that relies on networked digital devices for submitting and sharing creative ideas

Question 22

nominal group technique

Answer 22

variation of brainwriting consisting of three stages in which participants

1) silently and independently document their ideas
2) collectively describe these ideas to the other team members without critique
3) silently and independently evaluate the ideas presented