Unit 5 Effective Teams & Decision Making Flashcards
Command Group
A group that is permanent.
Decoupling
Involves separating two groups—physically or administratively—in such a way that the required tasks of the organization are fulfilled while the interaction between the two groups is minimized.
Formal Group
Work units that are prescribed by the organization.
Friendship Group
Friendship groups tend to be long lasting.
Group
An organized system of two or more individuals who are interrelated so that the system performs some function, has a standard set of role relationships among its members, and has a set of norms that regulate the function of the group and each of its members.
Group Cohesiveness
The extent to which individual members of a group are motivated to remain in the group. group.
Work group effectiveness is defined by three criteria:
- group productivity,
- personal need satisfaction of the members, and the group’s
- capacity for future cooperation.
Informal Group
Groups that evolve naturally out of individual and collective self-interest among the members of an organization and are not the result of deliberate organizational design.
Information Flow
To be successful, groups need the appropriate amount of information.
Interaction Process Analysis
A technique that records who says what to whom, and through using it illustrates that smaller groups typically exhibit greater tension, agreement, and opinion seeking, whereas larger groups show more tension release and giving of suggestions and information.
Interest Group
A network that forms due to mutual interests such as working women or minority managers.
Linking Role
A position or unit within the organization that is charged with overseeing and coordinating the activities of two or more groups.
Norms
These regulate the function of the group and each of its members.
Acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s members.
Pooled Interdependence
Occurs when various groups are largely independent of each other, even though each contributes to and is supported by the larger organization.
Reciprocal Interdependence
Occurs when two or more groups depend on one another for inputs.
Role Ambiguity
A condition that arises when messages sent to an individual may be unclear.
Role Conflict
A condition that can arise when individuals receive multiple and sometimes conflicting messages from various groups, all attempting to assign them a particular role.
Role Episode
An attempt to explain how a particular role is learned and acted upon.
Role Overload
A condition where individuals may simply receive too many role-related messages.
Role Set
The sum total of all the roles assigned to one individual.
Sequential Interdependence
Exists when the outputs of one unit or group become the inputs for another.
Social Loafing
A tendency for individual group members to reduce their effort on a group task.
Status Incongruence
A situation that exists when a person is high on certain valued dimensions but low on others, or when a person’s characteristics seem inappropriate for a particular job.
Status System
Serves to differentiate individuals on the basis of some criterion or set of criteria.
Task Force
Serves the same purpose as a linking role except that the role is temporary instead of permanent.
Task Group
Serves the same purpose as a command role except that the role is temporary instead of permanent.
Task Uncertainty
When groups are working on highly uncertain tasks, the need for communication increases. When task uncertainty is low, less information is typically needed.
Work Role
An expected behavior pattern assigned or attributed to a particular position in the organization.
Work Technology
Includes the equipment and materials used in manufacture, the prescribed work procedures, and the physical layout of the work site.
How do you manage group and
intergroup processes effectively?
A group is a collection of individuals who share a common set of norms, who generally have differentiated roles among themselves, and who interact with one another in the joint pursuit of common goals. Groups may be divided into permanent and temporary groups and formal and informal groups. Formal groups include command and task groups, whereas informal groups include friendship and interest groups.
How do group norms, roles, and status systems affect employee behavior and performance?
People join groups because they offer security, meet social needs, enhance self-esteem, fulfill economic interests, introduce them to people with mutual interests, and, sometimes, because they are in close physical proximity. Groups typically develop through several distinct stages, including forming, storming, norming, and performing.
How do managers develop group cohesiveness, which facilitates organizational goal attainment?
Asch’s experiment in group pressure and individual judgment demonstrated that individuals will discount their own perceptions of a situation and follow the will of a group.
- Social Loafing
- Norms
- Status Systems
- Status Incongruence
- Group Cohesiveness
- Work Group Effectiveness
What are barriers to intergroup cooperation, and how do you take action to minimize such impediments and understand how to get the most out of the collective actions of groups in organizations in order to enhance industrial competitiveness?
Intergroup performance is influenced by three interaction requirements. These include the requirements for
interdependence, information, and integration.
- Linking Role
- Task Force
- Decoupling
Performance Appraisals
One of the most important and often one of the most mishandled aspects of management.
Performance appraisals increasingly involve subordinates appraising bosses through a feedback process known as 360 feedback, customers appraising providers, and peers evaluating coworkers.
Validity
The extent to which an instrument actually measures what it intends to measure.
Reliability
The extent to which the instrument consistently yields the same results each time it is used
Central Tendency Error
It has often been found that supervisors rate most of their employees within a narrow range. Regardless of how people actually perform, the rater fails to distinguish significant differences among group members and lumps everyone together in an “average” category.
Strictness or Leniency Error
A related rating problem exists when a supervisor is overly strict or overly lenient in evaluations
Halo Effect
Is where a supervisor assigns the same rating to each factor being evaluated for an individual.
In other words, the supervisor cannot effectively differentiate between relatively discrete categories and instead gives a global rating.
Recency Error
Oftentimes evaluators focus on an employee’s most recent behavior in the evaluation process.
Personal Biases
It is not uncommon to find situations in which supervisors allow their own personal biases to influence their appraisals.
Reducing Errors in Performance Appraisals
- Ensuring that each dimension or factor on a performance appraisal form represents a single job activity
instead of a group of job activities. - Avoiding terms such as average, because different evaluators define the term differently.
- Ensuring that raters observe subordinates on a regular basis throughout the evaluation period. It is even
helpful if the rater takes notes for future reference. - Keeping the number of persons evaluated by one rater to a reasonable number. When one person must evaluate many subordinates, it becomes difficult to discriminate. Rating fatigue increases with the number of ratees.
- Ensuring that the dimensions used are clearly stated, meaningful, and relevant to good job performance.
- Training raters so they can recognize various sources of error and understand the rationale underlying the
evaluation process.
Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS).
The BARS technique begins by selecting a job that can be described in observable behaviors. Managers and personnel specialists then identify these behaviors as they relate to superior or inferior performance.
Management By Objectives (MBO).
Under MBO, individual employees work with their supervisor to establish goals and objectives for which they
will be responsible during the coming year. These goals are stated in clear language and relate to tasks that
are within the domain of the employee.
Functions of Reward Systems
Reward systems in organizations are used for a variety of reasons. It is generally agreed that reward systems
influence the following:
- Job effort and performance.
- Attendance and retention.
- Employee commitment to the organization.
- Job satisfaction.
- Occupational and organizational choice.
Extrinsic Rewards
Extrinsic rewards are external to the work itself. Examples of extrinsic rewards include wages and salary, fringe benefits, promotions, and recognition and praise from others.
Intrinsic Rewards
Intrinsic Rewards represent those rewards that are related directly to performing the job. In this sense, they are often described as “self-administered” rewards, because engaging in the task itself leads to their receipt. Examples of intrinsic rewards include feelings of task accomplishment, autonomy, and personal growth and development that come from the job.
Intrinsic Motivation
The desire to do a task because you enjoy it.
Anchoring Effect
The tendency to be influenced by values we encounter at the beginning of the decision-making process, even when they are arbitrary.
Availability Heuristic
The tendency to form judgments about the commonness of an event based on the ease with which we can remember instances of that event.
Biases
The systematic and predictable errors we make when we apply heuristics inappropriately when making decisions.
Bounded Awareness
Viewing a task or problem so narrowly that we overlook important, relevant information that would aid our decision making.
Bounded Rationality
A framework that refers to the fact that cognitive limitations prevent us from making fully rational and logical decisions despite our best efforts.
Choice Architecture
The structure of the environment where choices are made, which if designed effectively can be used to “nudge” people toward better decisions.
Confirmation Trap
The tendency to look for information that confirms our beliefs and hypotheses but not information that would disconfirm them.
Egocentrism
The tendency to make self-serving judgments regarding allocations of credit and blame due to our self-centered perspective.
Endowment Effect
The tendency for sellers to overvalue commodities relative to buyers simply because they own the commodities.
Escalation of Commitment
The tendency to pursue an endeavor with the goal of recouping sunk costs when more careful analysis would lead us to give up.
Ethical Fading
The tendency to unconsciously scrub the ethical dimensions of decisions from our minds.
Framing
A cognitive bias resulting from the fact that changes in the way choices are presented affect how we react to them.
Groupthink
The concept that in groups, social pressures to maintain harmony can overshadow the need to rigorously test alternatives.
Heuristics
The simplifying strategies—mental shortcuts and rules of thumb—we rely on when making decisions.
Information Silos
Storehouses of valuable information and expertise in divisions of organizations that can be difficult for others in the organization to access.
In-Group Favoritism
The tendency to give special treatment to members of one’s group at the expense of outsiders.
Loss Aversion
The tendency to experience losses much more strongly than comparable gains.
Motivated Blindness
Failure to notice others’ ethical lapses when we benefit from those lapses and when confronting them would harm us.
Multiple-Selves Theory
The idea that we may behave like two individuals due to the persistent internal conflict between choosing what we impulsively want to do and what we believe we should do.
Ordinary Prejudice
Common thought processes people use to categorize, perceive, and judge information that can lead to prejudiced and stereotypical feelings and beliefs.
Overconfidence
The tendency to be overly confident in our own judgments.
Overestimation
The phenomenon of believing we perform better in certain realms than we actually do.
Overplacement
The belief that we are better than others despite available evidence to the contrary.
Overprecision
The tendency to be too certain of the accuracy of our own judgments.
Planning Fallacy
Overestimating how quickly we will complete projects and tasks.
Representativeness Heuristic
The tendency to assume an individual, object, or event will conform to our previously formed stereotypes.
Satisficing
The tendency in decision making to settle on a satisfactory solution that simply suffices rather than examining all possible alternatives thoroughly.
Status Quo Bias
The fact that people tend to resist action, whether positive or negative, due to inertia, thus leaning toward acceptance of the status quo or default.
System 1 Thinking
The automatic, instinctive, and emotional thought that we rely on to make quick decisions. When applied to important decisions, System 1 thinking makes us susceptible to cognitive, emotional, and other biases.
System 2 Thinking
Slow, effortful, explicit, and logical thinking. System 2 thinking helps us make more rational decisions when analysis is required.
Temptation Bundling
Strategies aimed at merging the interests of the “want” and “should” selves to promote better decision making.
Vividness Bias
The tendency to pay more attention to vivid, flashy information than to more mundane information that may be at least as important to our decisions.
Want-Should Conflict
The tendency for the “want” self to sabotage the long-term goals of the “should” self, as described by multiple-selves theory.
6 Steps for a Ideal Decision-Making Process
- Define the problem.
- Generate alternatives.
- Identify the relevant criteria.
- Weigh the criteria.
- Evaluate each alternative on each criterion.
- Compute the optimal decision.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
Framing
To avoid being unduly influenced by the way choices are framed, look at them from different perspectives. For example, rephrase your choices in terms of what you would lose and what you would gain.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
The Confirmation Trap
Rather than looking only for information that confirms your beliefs and hypotheses, actively seek out data that might challenge or disconfirm your beliefs.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
The Availability Heuristic
So you won’t focus only on what is vivid and easy to recall, hunt for less flashy and memorable information that could be just as important.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
The Anchoring Effect
Amateurs and experts alike tend to be overly swayed by initial estimates and offers in decision making. To avoid being influenced by irrelevant or biased data, focus on your previously determined alternatives.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
Overconfidence
People tend to be overly optimistic about their abilities, degree of control, and judgments. Actively questioning beliefs about ourselves and the future, or seeking objective feedback from others, may lead us to smarter decisions.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
The Representativeness Heuristic
Replacing intuitive judgments with methodical analysis can help us see beyond information that conforms to our previously formed stereotypes.
Overcoming Key Decision-Making Biases
Escalation of Commitment
Look for signs that you may be becoming overly committed to a failing venture. Remember that sunk costs should play no role in your decision-making process down the line.
Leverage System 1 Thinking.
Find ways to make reliance on
intuition a plus, not a minus.
- Harness emotions to improve decisions. This might include triggering feelings such as pride or the feeling of being appreciated to improve motivation.
- Harness cognitive biases to improve decisions. Strategically triggering loss aversion and the vividness bias can improve decision making.
Implement System 2 Thinking.
Encourage yourself and others to engage in greater deliberation and analysis.
- Evaluate options simultaneously.
- Carve out time for reflection.
- Consult an outsider.
- Increase accountability.
- Look for disconfirming evidence.
- Simplify to encourage deliberation.
Bypass Both Systems, (1&2).
Adjust how information and choices are presented by reorganizing the decision-making environment.
- Change the default option. Switching to a more beneficial default can bypass the flaws of System 1 thinking.
- Automatically adjust for bias. Adding “buffer time” to projects is one way of anticipating human error and sidestepping its repercussions.
Affect-Based Trust
Feelings of mutual care and concern between coworkers that is based on positive emotional bonds.
Asynchronous Technology
Also know as delayed technology, distant communication via technology.
Code Switching
Going back and forth between two or more languages within one conversation.
Cognitive-Based Trust
The belief that coworkers are reliable and dependable.
Delayed Technology
Also known as asynchronous technology, distant communication via technology.
Direct Knowledge
Learning about group members’ personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms.
Fault Lines
Invisible divisions between subgroups.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Behaviors attributed to personal traits rather than environmental influences or constraints.
Geographic Isolates
Team members working alone in a separate location from other team members.
Identity
How we define ourselves in relation to others.
Instant Technology
Synchronous, real-time communication via technology.
Lingua Franca
Common language.
Passable Trust
An incomplete or imperfect trust that is sufficient within a specific domain for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and teamwork.
Process
Team behaviors and interactions over time.
Psychological Safety
A context in which team members feel comfortable freely expressing their thoughts and questions and do not fear blame for admitting mistakes.
Redundant Communication
Purposely using a combination of delayed and instant communication technologies.
Reflected Knowledge
Personal characteristics, relationships, and behavioral norms seen through the lens of others who are often distant collaborators.
Social Distance
The degree of emotional or cognitive connection that people have with others.
Status
The extent to which an individual or group is respected or admired by others.
Structure
The physical configuration of people on a team.
Swift Trust
Quickly established trust between coworkers for a limited amount of time.
Synchronous Technology
Also known as, instant technology, real-time communication via technology.
SPLIT Framework
- Structure,
- Process,
- Language,
- Identity,
- Technology.
Technology
The media by which communication occurs.
Cohesiveness
Degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group.
Increasing group cohesiveness:
- Make the group smaller.
- Encourage agreement with group goals.
- Increase time members spend together.
- Increase group status and admission difficultly.
- Stimulate competition with other groups.
- Give rewards to the group, not individuals
- Physically isolate the group
Group Decision Making
Strengths / Weaknesses
Strengths
- More complete information
- Increased diversity of views
- Higher quality of decisions (more accuracy)•Increased acceptance of solutions
Weaknesses
- More time consuming (slower)
- Increased pressure to conform
- Domination by one or a few members
- Ambiguous responsibility
Groupshift
A change in decision risk between the group’s decision and the individual decision that member within the group would make; can be either toward conservatism or greater risk.
Three tests to see if a team fits the situation:
- Is the work complex and is there a need for different perspectives?
- Does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the group that is larger than the aggregate of the goals for individuals?
- Are members of the group involved in interdependent tasks?
Team Effectiveness and Quality Management Requires That Teams:
- Are small enough to be efficient and effective.
- Are properly trained in required skills.
- Allocated enough time to work on problems.
- Are given authority to resolve problems and take corrective action.
- Have a designated “champion” to call on when needed.
The Five-Stage Model of Group Development
- Forming Stage
- Storming Stage
- Norming Stage
- Performing Stage
- Adjourning Stage
Forming Stage
The first stage in group development, characterized by much uncertainty.
Storming Stage
The second stage in group development, characterized by intragroup conflict.
Norming Stage
The third stage in group development, characterized by close relationships and cohesiveness.
Performing Stage
The fourth stage in group development, when the group is fully functional.
Adjourning Stage
The final stage in group development for temporary groups, characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than performance.
Why People Join Groups
- Security
- Status
- Self-esteem
- Affiliation
- Power
- Goal Achievement
What Is a Holacracy?
A holacracy is a system ofcorporate governance whereby members of a team or business form distinct, autonomous, yet symbiotic, teams to accomplish tasks and company goals. The concept of a corporate hierarchy is discarded in favor of a flat organizational structure where all workers have an equal voice while simultaneously answering to the direction of shared authority.
