Advanced Management Session 2 Quiz

Course Information

• Course: Advanced Management
• Session: 2, Groups and teamwork
• Term: Winter 2024/2025
• Instructor: Prof. Dr. Lars Schweizer

Today's Class Schedule

• Introduction to teams, team formation, and team roles
• Groupthink and Video case: "Challenger Disaster"
• Group properties, group cohesiveness, and social influence in groups
• End of class

Organizational Change Phenomena

• Organizational change phenomena result from a three-level interaction and can be triggered from an outside context
• This interaction involves interplay between industry, the organization, government, groups, individuals, and customers within society.

Definition of Groups and Teams

• Groups consist of two or more people
• Teams share information, goals, and help each other perform individually within their respective areas of responsibility
• Individual efforts in teams result in greater performance than the sum of individual inputs
• Examples of teams include problem-solving teams, cross-functional teams, self-managed teams, and virtual teams

Benefits of Groups/Teams (Organizational and Individual Standpoints)

• Organizational: Innovativeness, creativity, completion of complex tasks, integrative mechanism, controlling mechanism, problem solving, decision-making, and implementation, socializing
• Individual: Social needs for friendship, interaction, sense of belonging, security, development of social identity and self-esteem, access to knowledge and rewards beyond individual reach

Role Development within Teams

• The process involves four stages: expected role, sent role, perceived role, and enacted role

Stages of Team Formation

• Forming
• Storming
• Norming
• Performing
• Adjourning

Stages of Group Development

• Forming (Confusion, uncertainty, testing ground rules, defining goals)
• Storming (Disagreement, struggle for leadership, tension)
• Norming (Consensus, leadership accepted, standards set, cooperation )
• Performing (Successful performance, tasks roles established, openness, helpfulness)
• Adjourning (Disengagement, anxiety about separation)

Why Groups May Hinder Change or Increased Performance

• Group composition
• Role imbalance
• Groupthink

Composition of the Group

• Every group member should possess task-relevant knowledge
• Group size has an inverse U-shaped relationship with productivity
• Diversity of perspectives is beneficial, but de facto information exchange can be a barrier

Belbin's Team Roles

• Roles and their associated contributions and weaknesses (Plant, Resource Investigator, Coordinator, Shaper, Monitor-Evaluator, Team Worker, Implementer, Completer, Specialist)

Achieving Optimal Team Balance

• To achieve best balance: One coordinator or shaper as a leader, a plant to stimulate ideas, a monitor/evaluator to maintain honesty and clarity, one or more implementer, team worker, resource investigator or completer/finisher.

Belbin Roles (Summarized Functions)

• Leading (Coordinator, Shaper, Implementer, Completer/finisher)
• Doing (Implementer, Completer/finisher)
• Thinking (Monitor/Evaluator, Plant, Specialist)
• Socializing (Resource Investigator, Team Worker)

Cohesiveness and Groupthink

• Cohesiveness measures the attraction and motivation among group members to stay within the group
• Groupthink is a mode of thinking where cohesiveness among group members overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. (leading to group pressure for conformity)

Key Drivers for Group Cohesiveness

• Small size
• External threats
• Stable membership
• Past success
• Members sharing common goals
• Opportunity for interaction with others
• Attractiveness of the group to individuals
• Fairness of rewards

Causes of Groupthink

• Group cohesiveness
• Isolation of the group
• Lack of methodological know-how
• Intense stress and lack of hope to find a better alternative
• Autocratic leadership style

Symptoms of Groupthink

• Illusion of invulnerability
• Illusion of morality
• Collective rationalization
• Shared stereotypes
• Self-censorship Direct pressure
• Mindguards
• Illusion of unanimity

Consequences of Groupthink

• Deterioration of decision quality
• Neglecting relevant alternatives and goals
• Inappropriate exploration of risks
• Incomplete and biased information search
• No contingency plans

Group Pressure for Conformity

• The relationship between cohesiveness, social pressure, group norms, conformity, and productivity

Group Pressure to Secure Conformity

• Expulsion from the group
• Mental/physical punishment
• Isolation from group activities
• Verbal persuasion to conform
• Informing members of expected behavior

Group Norms, Cohesiveness, and Productivity

• The relationship between group's performance norms, cohesiveness and its effect on productivity

Social Influence in Groups

• Conformity (change in behavior due to majority)
• Compliance (change in behavior due to a direct request)
• Obedience to authority (change in behavior due to authority figures)
  • Examples: Asch's experiment and Milgram's experiment

Model for Understanding Individual Action

• Organization: Roles, resources, and constraints
• Individual: Experience, goals, and personality
• Triggering factors: Interpretation/sensemaking ,leading to Action

Summary of Individual and Group Performance in Decision Making

• Comparing factors like type of problem task, acceptance of decisions, and quality of solutions under individual versus group settings, along with decision-making climate, and available time.

Lessons Learned and Points for Revison

• Advantages of using teams
• How groups and teams form
• The phenomenon of groupthink
• What cohesiveness is, and how it affects team effectiveness
• How social influence drives human behavior in groups and teams