Lecture 2 - Team development, diversity and deviance Flashcards
Why study teams?
Work is increasingly structured in teams
Teams are the most relevant organizational unit for employees
Culture often resides at the team level
How are teams different from groups?
Task orientation: high coordination to attain goals
Purpose: formed for a reason; collective; time-based
Interdependence: high
Formal structure: high, formal rules and duties
Familiarity: high; aware of/interact with people at work
Team design components
Goal clarity
Task structure
Diversity/composition
Team functioning
Performance norms
Goal clarity
How well does the team understand its goal?
Task structure
Task coordination: how do we make individuals task fit together?
Task regulation: the degree to which members can control their own task behaviors
Team functioning
Goal directed distanced: high task orientation, low relationship orientation
Goal directed involved: high task orientation, high relationship orientation
Unidirected distanced: low task orientation, low relationship orientation
Undirected involved: low task orientation, high relationship orientation
Performance norms
How well should we perform our tasks?
Bruce Tuckman’s group development model
- Forming: Group members meet, establish goals, and test relationships.
- Storming: Conflicts arise as members assert opinions and roles.
- Norming: Group establishes norms, cohesion, and collaboration.
- Performing: Members work efficiently toward shared objectives.
- Adjourning: Group disbands after achieving goals.
Susan Wheelan’s interactive model of group development
- Dependency and inclusion: teams look up to leader to allocate tasks
- Counterdependency and fight: clarifying goals
- Trust and structure: building trust and structure
- Work and productivity: high performance
- Adjouring: evaluaiton
In developing across stages, three dimensions change…
- Task orientation: how focused everyone is on getting things done
- Socio-economic orientation: the balance between making money and taking care of people
- Leadership style: how the boss leads
Why is team learning important in relation to OD?
Teams are the fundamental learning unit in organizations
Organizations rely on teams that can learn in order to be effective and competitive
When teams do not learn, it is likely an organization will not be able to adapt to environmental changes
The process of team learning behaviors by Edmondson and Kowlowski & Bell
- Team Learning Behaviors: Team members share what they know, and they learn from others outside their team too.
- Emergent States: Over time, the team starts learning together and becoming stronger as a group.
- Team Learning Outcomes: The team gets better at working together, performing well, and coming up with creative solutions.
Team learning behaviors
Sharing
Constructive conflict
Feedback reflection
Discussing norms
Boundary spanning
Team emergent states
Goal orientation
Psychological safety
Team efficacy
Cohesion
Team learning outcomes
Collective knowledge
Team performance
Shared mental models
Transactive memory systems
Shared mental model
Overlapping knowledge shared by the entire team - if somebody leaves, you still know the same
Penguings knowing what a fish is
Transactive memory systems
Team member awareness of what information is shared - if somebody leaves or comes in, there is a gap in the transactive memory system
Penguins know what a fish is but they each know different species
Dynamic model of team learning over time
- External knowledge: the team gets information from the outside world
- Team knowledge process (cognition, action, reflection)
- Collective knowledge over time
- Legend: how knowledge flows between team members and their interactions
- Sensitive: recognition of learning triggers, decompose existing knowledge
Variation/disruption in team learning
New information is complex
Learning trigger is in conflcit with existing collective knowledge
Content is susceptible to change
Members enter or exit the team
Team diversity
Diversity is a characteristic of a group that reflects the differences between individuals based on various attributes.
When does diversity improve team effectiveness
Positive outcomes: Team diversity can foster creative ideas, better decision-making, innovation, improved performance, flexibility, and openness.
Negative outcomes: It may also cause miscommunication, prejudice, exclusion, productivity loss, and worse performance.
Team effectiveness: Outcomes from team diversity ultimately impact the team’s performance, productivity, and functioning.
Demorgaphic diversity vs functional diversity
Demographic diversity: surface level
Functional diversity: deep level (different competenices, skills)
Does the type of team diversity determine effectiveness?
If you get to functional diversity, teams are most effective - it is directly linked to the task
All types of diversity can lead to positive/negative outcomes, so team diversity does not really matter
Categorization-elaboration model
Team diversity leads to better performance, when process of team elaboration (using diversity to your advantage) takes place
How does social categorization harm team functioning?
Differentiation of team members in ‘us’ and ‘them’ can lead to subgroup formation which in turn leads to negative stereotypes and discrimination
Information/elaboration perspective
Team elaboration: sharing knowledge, critical reflection, consecutive conflict, feedback and discussion and integration
For example, one team member might know a lot about math, another about storytelling, and another about design. Together, they can create something amazing that none of them could do alone.
Difference between categorization-elaboration model and information elaboration perspective
- Categorization-elaboration model
- Diversity only works when teams work together to share their ideas
- It’s about HOW diversity helps make teams better - Information elaboration perspective
- Diversity works because it gives the team better ideas, but only if they avoid teamwork problems.
- It’s about WHY diversity works
Bias in decision-making
Groupthink
Social loafing
Dominant leader
Diffusion of responsibility
Does it matter how we operationalize diversity?
- Dispersion: index to measure the extent to which team members differ from each other
- If everyone is very different (like in age, background, or skills), the dispersion score is high. If everyone is similar, the dispersion score is low. - Faultlines: combinations of different forms of diversity can correlate with each other, causing more or less subgroup formation
How to operationalize diversity?
Objective measures:
- determine composition of the group index ( Blau, faultline, or other index)
Subjective measures:
- the perception of group members in how different people are on a certain attribute (self-report)
Why do individuals conform to group norms?
- To reduce uncertaity
- To fit in
Deviance
Violation of group norms
Negative: failure to live up to important group norms
Positive: individuals can deviate by contributing more to the group
Dissent
The expression of disagreemet with group norms, group action, or a group decision
Motives for deviance and dissent
- Disengagement, disloyalty or disrespect
- Moral rebellion
- Desire to express difference, individuality, and uniqueness
- Tangible rewards and instrumental gain
Normative Conflict Model of Dissent
Group members can either conform or dissent based on their loyalty to the group’s success
- Loyal conformity: follows rules, aligns with group values
- Deviance out of group loyalty/uneasy conformity: breaks rules to help group improve
- Disengage/passive nonconformity: quietly ignores rules, not invested in the group
- Disloyal: opposes rules out of dislike or disrespect for the group
Moral rebellion
Individuals who give priority to following personal convictions over group norms when individual and group norms clash
Desire to express difference
Fundamental need for uniqueness
Pronounced when everyone is following the same rules and norms just to obey
Tangible rewards and instrumental gain
Fraud, stealing, selling obscure products
Impostorism: individuals beaking group norms by pretending to be genuine group members
Why groups reject deviance and dissent
Groups force individuals to conform to resolve threats to:
- Group positivity: groups want to maintain a positive image
- Group cohesion: groups need to stick together
- Group distinctiveness: groups like to feel special from other groups
- Group locomotion: groups have a shared goal they want to move towards
When are dissenters and deviants tolerated?
- First-time offender
- Severity of action
- Power position of dissenter
- Stage of group formation
What is the value of dissent and deviance?
- Dissent:
- Improves decision-making
- Enhances creativity and innovation - Deviance:
- Affirms group values, clarifies norms, how they are distinct from other groups
- Draws attention to alternative forms of behavior and thereby allows for cultural change
