Lecture 3 Flashcards
What is a team?
- 2 or more individuals
- social interaction
- common goals
- perform tasks relevant to the organization
- members are interdependent
- members have different roles and responsibilities
- members are linked to the organization
Workgroup vs work team
Workgroup
- members interact to share information with other members of the group
- not responsible for a collective work group
Work team
- members depend on one another and must interact to create something that no one person on the team could create
- Create synergy
Team charter
- Team purpose is clarified and expectations for behavior are set forth
- Misunderstandings should be fewer and team members can be reminded of the group’s norms
- Can improve satisfaction, communication, effort, cohesion, mutual support
5 steps of team forming
- Forming (getting to know each other)
- Storming (conflict and leadership dynamics)
- NOrming (cohesion, common goal)
- Performing (goal-directed performance)
- Adjourning (distancing)
Participative decision making
- Brainstorming
- separates idea generation from evaluation
- Produces many new ideas
- stimulates creativity
- group meets together
- much group interaction
- Consensus
- Multi-voting
- Nominal group technique
- Stepladder
3 processes that make brainstorming ineffective
- social loafing
- evaluation apprehension
- production blocking
3 reasons why brainstormingis still useful
- to increase decision acceptance
- to pool resources
- to benefit from labor specialization
Osborne’s rules for brainstorming
- No evaluation or criticism of ideas
- Freedom to suggest outrageous ideas
- Generate as many ideas as possible
- Build on, integrate, and develop earlier ideas
When is brainstorming effective?
Do the brainstorming phase individually and then later work together as a group to select the best ideas from all the ideas people came up with individually.
Challenges of virtual teams
- Take more time to get things done
- Technology problems
- Less social support
- Less information sharing
Team virtuality
Team members are geographically dispersed and meet through electronic methods
Ways in which team virtuality can undermine team effectiveness
- Fewer social cues and less social control increases the risk of social loafing
- Delayed responses and overlooked information increases risk of misunderstandings and conflict
- Role ambiguity
Ways in which team virtuality can increase team effectiveness
- Interactions are often documented (emails, recordings)
- reduces perceived risks that individual efforts are exploited
- Meetings are easier to organize and more members can attend
Surfave-level diversity vs deep-level diversity
Surface: differences visible to observers
Deep: Differences among members’ attitudes, beliefs and values (typically invisible)
Hofstedes cultural dimensions
- Power distance
- Individualism vs Collectivism
- Masculinity vs Femininity (+relationship orientation, focus on people vs focus on material things)
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Long vs short term orientation
- Indulgence (how much an individual is in control of their urges)
