QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
1. Compare and contrast command, task, interest, and friendship groups.
Answer – A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or informal. It is possible to sub-classify groups as command, task, interest, or friendship groups.
• A command group is determined by the organization chart. It is composed of direct reports to a given manager.
• Task groups—organizationally determined, represent those working together to complete a job task.
A task group’s boundaries are not limited to its immediate hierarchical superior. It can cross command relationships. For instance, if a college student is accused of a campus crime, it may require communication and coordination among the dean of academic affairs, the dean of students, the registrar, the director of security, and the student’s advisor. All command groups are also task groups, but the reverse need not be true.
• An interest group is people who affiliate to attain a specific objective with which each is concerned.
Employees who band together to have their vacation schedules altered.
• Friendship groups often develop because the individual members have one or more common characteristics. Social alliances, which frequently extend outside the work situation, can be based on similar age or ethnic heritage.
2. What might motivate you to join a group?
Answer – Informal groups satisfy their members’ social needs. There is no single reason why individuals join groups. Exhibit 8-1 summarizes the most popular reasons people have for joining groups.
3. Describe the five-stage group-development model.
Answer – Exhibit 8-2 shows the five-stage group-development model:
• The first stage is forming.
Characterized by a great deal of uncertainty about the group’s purpose, structure, and leadership.
Members are trying to determine what types of behavior are acceptable.
Stage is complete when members have begun to think of themselves as part of a group.
• The second stage is storming.
One of intragroup conflict
Members accept the existence of the group, but there is resistance to constraints on individuality.
There is conflict over who will control the group
When complete, there will be a relatively clear hierarchy of leadership within the group.
• The third stage is norming.
One in which close relationships develop and the group demonstrates cohesiveness.
There is now a strong sense of group identity and camaraderie.
The stage is complete when the group structure solidifies and the group has assimilated a common set of expectations of what defines correct member behavior.
• The fourth stage is performing.
The structure at this point is fully functional and accepted.
Group energy has moved from getting to know and understand each other to performing.
4. What is the relationship between a work group and the organization of which it is a part?
Answer – An organization’s overall strategy, typically put into place by top management, outlines the organization’s goals and the means for attaining these goals. The strategy will influence the power of various work groups, which will determine the resources that the organization’s top management is willing to allocate to it for performing its tasks. Organizations have authority structures that define who reports to whom, who makes decisions, and what decisions individuals or groups are empowered to make. Organizations create rules, procedures, policies, job descriptions, and other forms of formal regulations to standardize employee behavior. The presence or absence of resources such as money, time, raw materials, and equipment—which are allocated to the group by the organization—have a large bearing on the group’s behavior. The criteria that an organization uses in its selection process will determine the kinds of people that will be in its work groups. The performance evaluation and reward system. Group members’ behavior will be influenced by how the organization evaluates performance and what behaviors are rewarded. Every organization has an unwritten culture that defines standards of acceptable and unacceptable behavior for employees. Members of work groups have to accept the standards implied in the organization’s dominant culture if they are to remain in good standing. The physical work setting creates both barriers and opportunities for work group interaction.
5. What are the implications of Zimbardo’s prison experiment for OB?
Answer – The simulation actually proved too successful in demonstrating how quickly individuals learn new roles. The researchers had to stop the experiment after only six days because of the pathological reactions that the participants were demonstrating.
The participants had learned stereotyped conceptions of guard and prisoner roles from the mass media and their own personal experiences in power and powerless relationships at home. This allowed them easily and rapidly to assume roles that were very different from their inherent personalities.
6. Explain the implications from the Asch experiments.
Answer – The results obtained by Asch demonstrated that over many experiments and many trials, subjects conformed in about 35 percent of the trials; the subjects gave answers that they knew were wrong but that were consistent with the replies of other group members.
There have been changes in the level of conformity over time. Levels of conformity have steadily declined. Asch’s findings are culture-bound. Conformity to social norms is higher in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures.
7. How are status and norms related?
Answer – All groups have norms—acceptable standards of behavior that are shared by the group’s members. Norms tell members what they ought and ought not to do under certain circumstances. Norms are important because they:
• Facilitate the group’s survival.
• Increase the predictability of group members’ behaviors.
• Reduce embarrassing interpersonal problems for group members.
• Allow members to express the central values of the group and clarify what is distinctive about the group’s identity.
There is considerable evidence that groups can place strong pressures on individual members to change their attitudes and behaviors to conform to the group’s standard.
Status is a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others. We live in a class-structured society despite all attempts to make it more egalitarian. High-status members of groups often are given more freedom to deviate from norms than other group members. High-status people also are better able to resist conformity pressures. The previous findings explain why many star athletes, famous actors, top-performing salespeople, and outstanding academics seem oblivious to appearance or social norms.
8. When do groups make better decisions than individuals?
Answer – The answer is, “it depends.” Groups are more effective in terms of accuracy and often make better quality decisions than the individual. They also tend to have more creative decisions. However, in terms of speed and efficiency, individuals are more effective.
9. How can a group’s demography help you to predict turnover?
Answer – An offshoot of the composition issue is the degree to which members of a group share a common demographic attribute and the impact of this attribute on turnover. The individual’s attribute is in relationship to the attributes of others with whom he/she works. Groups and organizations are composed of cohorts, which we define as individuals who hold a common attribute. Group demography should help us to predict turnover. Turnover will be greater among those with dissimilar experiences because communication is more difficult. Conflict and power struggles are more likely, and more severe when they occur. This makes group membership less attractive, so employees are more likely to quit. The implication is that the composition of a group may be an important predictor of turnover.
10. What is groupthink? What is its effect on decision-making quality?
Answer – Groupthink describes situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group from critically appraising unusual, minority, or unpopular views. The phenomenon that occurs when group members become so enamored of seeking concurrence that the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action and the full expression of deviant, minority, or unpopular views. It is
a deterioration in an individual’s mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment as a result of group pressures. Group members rationalize any resistance to the assumptions they have made. Members apply direct pressures on those who momentarily express doubts. Those members who hold differing points of view seek to avoid deviating from group consensus by keeping silent. There appears to be an illusion of unanimity.
In studies of historic American foreign policy decisions, these symptoms were found to prevail when government policy-making groups failed. Groupthink appears to be closely aligned with the conclusions Asch drew from his experiments. Groupthink does not attack all groups. It occurs most often where there is a clear group identity, where members hold a positive image of their group which they want to protect, and where the group perceives a collective threat to this positive image.
QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING
1. How could you use the punctuated-equilibrium model to better understand group behavior?
Answer – Temporary groups with deadlines do not seem to follow the traditional model. Their pattern is called the punctuated-equilibrium model. Shown in Exhibit 8-3. Studies indicate their own unique sequencing. The punctuated-equilibrium model characterizes groups as exhibiting long periods of inertia interspersed with brief revolutionary changes triggered primarily by their members’ awareness of time and deadlines.
2. Identify five roles you play. What behaviors do they require? Are any of these roles in conflict? If so, in what way? How do you resolve these conflicts?
Answer – Students’ answers will vary. Some suggested roles: student, sibling, child, adult, group leader, member of a social group, etc. Behaviors and conflicts will vary with role.
3. “High cohesiveness in a group leads to higher group productivity.” Do you agree or disagree? Explain.
Answer – Groups differ in their cohesiveness—the degree to which members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group. Cohesiveness is important because it has been found to be related to the group’s productivity. The relationship of cohesiveness and productivity depends on the performance-related norms established by the group. If performance-related norms are high, a cohesive group will be more productive, but if cohesiveness is high and performance norms are low, productivity will be low. See Exhibit 8-7. Students’ responses will vary based on their perception and integration of the above facts.
4. What effect, if any, do you expect that workforce diversity has on performance and satisfaction?
Answer – Research studies generally substantiate that heterogeneous groups—those composed of dissimilar individuals—are more likely to have diverse abilities and information and should be more effective, especially on cognitive, creativity-demanding tasks. The group may be more conflict laden and less expedient.
Essentially, diversity promotes conflict, which stimulates creativity, which leads to improved decision making. Diversity created by racial or national differences interfere with group processes, at least in the short term. Cultural diversity seems to be an asset on tasks that call for a variety of viewpoints. Such groups have more difficulty in learning to work with each other and solving problems. These difficulties seem to dissipate with time as it takes time for diverse groups to learn how to work through disagreements and different approaches to solving problems.
5. If group decisions consistently achieve better quality outcomes than those achieved by individuals, how did the phrase “a camel is a horse designed by a committee” become so popular and ingrained in the culture?
Answer – Students’ responses will vary. Generally, two main factors may have contributed to this mythology. The first is that individuals may blame the group for poor decisions, when in fact the decision was the result of a dominant member of the group. Second, there have been some colossal public screw-ups attributable to group decisions and the groupthink phenomenon.
