Group Foundations
Two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together to achieve particular objectives.
What is a group?
Acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by its members.
What are norms?
What symptom of groupthink is present when a group believes that its plans and ideas cannot fail?
What is the illusion of invulnerability?
Unlike work groups, a work team generates positive this, where performance is greater than the sum of inputs.
What is synergy?
According to the Team Effectiveness Model equation, Actual Effectiveness equals Potential Effectiveness plus Process Gains minus this.
What are Process Losses?
A group defined by the organization's structure, with designated work assignments establishing tasks.
What is a formal group?
The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than alone.
What is social loafing?
A manager strongly announces her preferred decision before a meeting. Employees who disagree remain silent because they do not want to upset her. Identify TWO factors contributing to groupthink.
What are an influential or commanding leader and pressure on dissenters?
Employees from the same department meeting a few hours a week to improve quality and efficiency.
What are problem-solving teams?
This specific process gain involves a team reflecting on and adjusting their purpose when necessary, often improved by cross-training.
What is reflexivity?
Perspective that proposes that when our group succeeds, our self-esteem gets a boost because we tie our personal identity to its performance.
What is Social Identity Theory?
The degree to which members are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group.
What is cohesiveness?
A group of students initially supports a cautious plan to spend $5,000 on advertising. After discussion, they decide to spend their entire $50,000 budget. What phenomenon does this illustrate, and in what direction has the group shifted?
Groupshift, towards greater risk.
Employees who autonomously implement solutions and take over supervisory responsibilities.
What are self-managed work teams?
Transactive memory systems and shared mental models fall under this specific category of the Team Effectiveness Model.
What are Team Processes?
According to Tuckman's model, this stage involves intragroup conflict over control, roles and hierarchy.
What is Storming?
Hawthorne Studies — Famous study mentioned in this section that proved informal group norms heavily dictate worker output and this.
What is productivity/performance? (or worker behavior)
A team leader notices that members always agree with the first solution suggested. To prevent this, the leader avoids showing a preference for any particular solution and encourages members to share different opinions. What strategy is the leader using to minimize groupthink?
What is having an impartial leader?
Teams made up of employees from about the same hierarchical level but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
What are cross-functional teams?
This type of conflict is defined by interpersonal incompatibility, animosity, and personal tension and is almost universally dysfunctional.
What is relationship conflict?
Model of development where temporary deadline-driven groups experience a burst of change at the midpoint.
What is the Punctuated-Equilibrium Model?
The matrix where High Cohesion combined with Low Performance Norms results in this outcome.
What is low productivity?
Team A freely suggests ideas without criticism. Team B independently writes ideas, shares them one at a time, discusses them, and privately ranks them. Identify BOTH decision-making techniques and the main advantage of Team B's technique.
What are brainstorming and the nominal group technique, NGT encourages independent thinking and reduces pressure to conform.
Teams that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.
What are virtual teams?
When deciding when to use teams, Test #3 states that teams should only be used if there is this specific condition among tasks where the success of the whole depends on each part.
What is task interdependence?