Dysfunctional Groups and Team Problems Flashcards
What are the problems associated with group performance?
Individuals within team problems:
- Exclusion from group
- Social loafing
- Bad apples
Group/team performance:
- Dysfunctional teams and group think
- Satisficing
- Shared/unshared informaiton
What is ‘The Wronged Heroin’?
Rosalind Franklin invented DNA but credit was taken by two males
What is social loafing?
Members exert less effort when working in teams than working alone
What factors affect social loafing?
- Team size (+)
- Team produces single output (e.g report)
- Interestingness of task (-)
- Important of objective (-)
- Value team membership and objectives (-)
How can social loafing be managed?
- Keep group size at an appropriate level
- Discuss expectations
- Make individual performance more visible: specialise tasks
- Increase performance feedback - might not be aware of poor performance
- Make tasks more interesting and important
- Punishment warnings in advance
What is Felps et al (2006) idea about one ‘bad apple’?
One individual member can cause dysfunctional group behaviour by:
- Withholding of effort
- Being affectively negative e.g pessimism, anxiety, insecurity
- Violating important interpersonal norms
What is groupthink?
The capacity for group pressure to damage the mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgment of decision making groups
Develops because of too much cohesiveness, concern for approval and isolation of the group
What are the implications of the Asch experiment?
- To fit with and be one of the members of the group
- The perception that the group is better informed than the focal person
What are the symptoms of groupthink?
- Invulnerability
- Inherent morality
- Rationalisation
- Stereotyped views of opposition
- Self censorship
- Illusion of unanimity
- Peer pressure
- Mind guards
What signs show that groupthink may be a problem?
- Group members censor themselves, refusing to ask questions, withholding disagreement
- Assumption that silence is agreement
- Arguments are framed in terms of what’s right for the group’s mission
- Group members believe they can do anything regardless of risk and feel invulnerable
How can groupthink be prevented?
- Every group member must be a critical evaluator
- Avoid rubber stamp decisions
- Different groups explore the same problems
- Rely on subgroup debates and outside experts
- Assign role of devil’s advocate
- Rethink a consensus
What is the problem of satisficing?
Groups often adopt the first alternative that is acceptable to all members rather than continuing to search for an optimal alternative
What is the problem of shared/unshared information?
Even though individual group members have unique information, they tend to discuss information that is shared
What are the characteristics of formal groups?
- Consequence of organisational structure and design
- Specific objectives
- Concerned with work activities
- Goals are given
- Task is central feature
- Formally appointed leader
- Permanent or limited in time scope
What are the characteristics of informal groups?
- Personal relationships and agreement
- Often no specific objectives
- Satisfaction of psychological and social needs as central
- Compensation for perceived lack in work environment
- Cross level and cross function
- Informal leader
