Team Characteristics and Diversity Flashcards
Groups
Authoritarian in nature, one person is responsible for assigning activities and held responsible for results
Teams
Conducted in a collaborative fashion, authority equally dispersed among members
Team characteristics
Two or more people, work interdependently over some time period to accomplish goals related to a task-oriented purpose
T/F Teams are a type of group
True
T/F The interactions among members within teams revolve around a deeper dependence on one another than the interactions within groups
True
Different types of teams
Work team, management team, parallel team, project team, action team
Work team
Produce goods/services, high member involvement, long lifespans
Types of work teams
Problem solving teams, self-managed work teams, cross-functional teams, and virtual teams
Management team
Integrate activities of subunits across business functions, long lifespan, moderate member involvement
Parallel team
Provide recommendations and resolve issues, life span varies, low member involvement (advisory council or committee). Composed of members from various jobs who provide recommendations to managers about issues that run parallel to the org’s production process
Project team
Produce a one-time output (product, service, plan, etc.), life span and member involvement vary
Action team
Perform complex tasks that vary in duration and take place in highly visible or challenging circumstances (ex. musical group, surgical team). Ex. Thai cave rescue team
Stages of team development
Forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning
Task interdependence
Degree to which team members interact with and rely on other team members for information, materials, resources needed to accomplish work for the team
Types of interdependence
Comprehensive, reciprocal, sequential, pooled
Which type of interdependence requires the most coordination
Comprehensive
Pooled interdependence
- Lowest form of interdependence, results in least amount of conflict
- Members do not directly depend on one another, but draw resources from shared source
- Members contribute to overall goal, outputs of each member are then pooled at organizational level
- Although success and failure of each member does not directly affect each other, affects success of team
- Requires standardization in rules and operating procedures
Sequential interdependence
- Asymmetrical chain of one-way interactions, output of one unit becomes input for another unit
- Increase in communication increasing potential for conflict
- People in early part of chain would remain more independent, but later people in chain are highly dependent on first part
- Adaptive planning
- Concern abt performance variability in first part of chain bc. it directly affects productivity of later parts
Reciprocal interdependence
- High potential for conflict, requires communication dependency due to flow of output and input of activities operating between units
- high member dependency
- High level of productivity or conflict
- thorough and constant information sharing
Comprehensive interdependence
- Potential for conflicts is high due to complexity of interdependence
- with an increase in frequent and intense communication, difference in opinion or goals is likely
- loss or addition of team member can greatly affect performance of group
Goal interdependence
Exists when team members have a shared vision of the team’s goal and align their individual goals with that vision as a result
Outcome interdependence
Exists when team members share in the rewards that the team earns
Team composition components
Member roles, member ability, member personality, team diversity, team size
Member roles
Can be team task roles, team building roles, individualistic roles
Member ability
Cognitive and physical abilities needed in a team depend on the nature of the team’s task
Types of tasks
Additive tasks, disjunctive tasks, conjunctive tasks
Additive tasks
Contributions of each member are combined into the final group product. Group is more effective than individual
Disjunctive tasks
Single problem for the group to solve. Most competent person in the group usually finds the solution. Group of people working collectively will be more likely to hit the right answer than one working alone.
Conjunctive tasks
Requires all group members to work towards the goal and productivity is limited to the least competent member. Individual performance is better than group performance
Member personality
OCEAN (Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism)
Agreeable
Cooperative, trusting, positive attitudes that smooth interpersonal interactions
Conscientious
Dependable, work hard to achieve goals
Extraverted
Perform effectively in interpersonal contexts, more positive and optimistic in general
Team diversity
Degree to which team members are different from one another in terms of any attribute that might be used by someone as a basis of categorizing people
-value in diversity problem-solving approach, similarity-attraction approach, surface level diversity, deep-level diversity
Value in diversity problem-solving approach theory
Asserts that diversity provides a larger pool of knowledge and perspectives, fosters learning
Similarity-attraction approach
People like and are attracted to others who are similar, birds of a feather flock together
Surface-level diversity
Differences are easily notable, easily measured (race, gender, culture, language)
Deep-level diversity
Personality, beliefs, functional experiences (less easily seen)
Team size
Having a greater number of members is beneficial for management and product teams, but not for teams engaged in production tasks. Most team members are satisfied when number of members is between 4 and 5
