Week 5 - TIO.docx

Chapter 10 Groups in context Research shows that boundary spanning activities can have positive effects on team performance. It was found that functional diversity was associated with more external communication (boundaryspanning) and less internal communication. External communication was negativel...

Chapter 10 Groups in context Research shows that boundary spanning activities can have positive effects on team performance. It was found that functional diversity was associated with more external communication (boundaryspanning) and less internal communication. External communication was negatively related to team cohesion while internal communication had positive effects. Boundary-spanning involves moving resources (information) into the group or from the group to other parts of an organization. Membership change can affect the resources available to groups (potential performance) or group processes (actual performance). After member replacement, the transactive memory system is no longer accurate. When groups continue to rely on their transactive memory after member replacement, performance will suffer. Lack of superordinate identity leads to rejection of the newcomer’s suggestion, regardless of its quality. The presence of other groups creates certain intergroup processes which in turn have consequences for intragroup dynamics. Intergroup relations are usually studied from the theoretical perspective of social identity and self-categorization theory. According to these theories, people’s self-concept consists of both a personal identity and a social identity. Social identity is that part of the self-concept that derives from group membership combined with the value and significance of that membership. Social identity theory assumes that people strive for a positive self-view, and because social identity is part of the self-concept they also strive for a positive social identity. This can be achieved when one’s own group is perceived to be superior to other groups on some relevant dimension. People are assumed to identity with a group when group membership provides them with a positive social identity. That people strive for a positive social identity motivates group members to compare their group with other groups and to positively distinguish their groups from other groups. This may lead to intergroup bias, the tendency to treat and evaluate members of one’s own group more favorably than members of other groups. This striving for a positive social identity can lead to intergroup competition. The combination of group salience and intergroup competition can motivate group members to work harder to distinguish their group positively from other groups. This is especially true for people who identify strongly with their group. The salience of group membership and people’s identification with their group influence how hard members are prepared to work for their group. According to self-categorization theory, we have a tendency to categorize people into meaningful social categories. When social categorization processes occur, they tend to lead to depersonalization: a shift from seeing people as individuals to seeing them as group members. A consequence is that similarities within groups and differences between groups are accentuated. Social categorization processes can lead to polarization, because they lead members to see their group as more homogeneous and more extreme and conforming to the group produces polarization. Realistic conflict theory ascribes an important role to intergroup interdependence: the degree to which groups are dependent on each other to achieve valued outcomes. Under positive or cooperative interdependence, groups need each other to accomplish their goals. Under negative interdependence, groups can only reach their goals at the expense of other groups. Realistic conflict theory assumes that hostilities and negative attitudes between groups develop under conditions of negative interdependence, while positive intergroup relations develop under positive interdependence. However, interdependence between groups is often neither uniformly positive nor uniformly negative. Individuals often choose to cooperate with other individuals to get the best collective outcomes, but groups often choose to compete. The difference between individuals and groups in competitive behavior is so big that this finding has been called the discontinuity effect. Groups are more likely to focus on self-interest rather than joint interests. Also, group members often expect that other groups will be competitive. The contact hypothesis argues that direct positive contact between people from different groups will reduce prejudice and ingroup bias, especially under certain optimal contact conditions. These contact conditions reduce ingroup bias because they influence social categorization processes. Reducing ingroup bias: * Emphasize individuality rather than group membership * Focus group members on an overarching social category that encompasses both groups Social re-categorization processes are important during mergers. In many merger situations, the two groups are not equal in status. The members of the dominant group will experience continuity of their social identity. For the dominated group, there is a much weaker relation between their pre- and postmerger identification. Emphasizing dual identities and valuing both the high- and low-status premerger groups might be one way to reduce these problems. Chapter 11 Groups and technology In synchronous communication transmitted messages are immediately available to the receiver, and the receiver can respond immediately to the message. Media richness refers to the degree to which a medium contains cues regarding the meaning of messages and provides immediate feedback so that the interpretation of a message can be checked. Problem-solving tasks require more coordination, but when a problem solution is clearly demonstrable, people will recognize the solution irrespective of the medium. Little coordination is required during idea generation and computer mediated communication groups seem to generally outperform face-to-face groups. Computer mediated communication is less efficient in time. The social identity model of deindividuation effects argues that under certain conditions anonymity may even increase social influence and conformity to group norms. Anonymity in computer mediated communication may decrease social influence, but when group members’ social identity is salient may also increase conformity to social norms. There are no large differences between face-to-face, audio, and audio-video communication in terms of group performance. Effects of media richness are likely to depend on many factors such as the level of and distribution of expertise among group members, they type of task, task difficulty, and amount of interdependence among group members. The main advantage of virtual teams lies in the possibility to recruit experts irrespective of their location. Virtual teams cannot be used for tasks in which having different areas of expertise is likely to be helpful. Problems and miscommunication may arise when team members lack mutual knowledge: knowledge that the communicating parties share in common and know they share. For virtual teams it a harder to establish common knowledge and trust. It is also hard to monitor and control behavior. An initial face-to-face kick-off meeting could be helpful. Homan, Buengeler, Eckhoff, van Ginkel, & Voelpel: The interplay of diversity training and diversity beliefs on team creativity in nationality diverse teams. On the one hand, nationality diversity is related to different beliefs, thinking styles, knowledge and ideas. On the other hand, it can activate subgroup categorization on the basis of nationality differences. This means that nationality diversity can have both positive and negative effects for team creativity. Also, the findings on whether diversity training helps or not are mixed. This research examines the relationship between diversity training in nationality diverse teams and team creativity moderated by diversity beliefs and examines the mediating role of team efficacy. Nationality diversity and team creativity As said earlier, nationality diversity can go both ways when it comes to creativity. Because of the different ideas, backgrounds and approaches, it can inspire divergent and flexible thinking and prevent groupthink. At the same time, nationality is a highly salient characteristic and is likely to be used for categorization processes. This causes group members to favour their own nationality subgroup over others, which leads to conflicts and undermines trust and communication between subgroups. Diversity training and team creativity Whether diversity training is effective depends on an interaction between training design characteristics, trainee characteristics, and the work environment. First, training can only be effective when the trained KSA’s (knowledge, skills, attitudes) are applicable to the tasks. Second, training is most effective when there is a large difference between actual and needed KSA’s. Third, members who have negative diversity beliefs (thinking diversity is not so important) will probably benefit more from the training than members who have positive diversity beliefs (thinking diversity is very important). This is because members with negative beliefs have more to gain from such a training and will engage in more systematic information processing compared to positive belief members. Team efficacy as a mediator Team efficacy can be defined as the shared belief in the team’s capability to perform a task successfully. Previous research has already found that diversity training leads to increased diversity efficacy beliefs. Note: it is important to take this moderator and/or mediator approach instead of just looking at simple models because in many studies (and also in this one) no main effect was found of diversity and creativity. An interesting finding of this research is that having less positive diversity beliefs and low diversity in the group could actually lead to negative effects of diversity training on creativity. Salas, DiazGranados, Klein, Burke, Stagl, Goodwin, & Halpin: Does team training improve team performance. Nowadays, almost all organizations use teams but in order to benefit from the qualities of teams, they need to be trained as a team. The purpose of this research is to examine how one designs and delivers a team training, what kind of team training should be implemented and whether the training actually works. Why a team training integration? Team trainings are mostly designed to enhance taskwork, teamwork, and process improvement skills. Now this last one has already been examined before, but this study continues to focus on taskwork and teamwork. A second goal of this study is to look at moderators for team training effectiveness. Finally, there is a need for a more accurate understanding of the impact of team training (on performance), which this study also tries to pursue. Furthermore, two important moderators that influence team training effectiveness are membership stability (how long has the group been together) and team size (how many members are in the group). In this research, team size is divided into small teams (2 members), medium size teams (3 or 4 members), and large teams (5 or more members). Results A result worth elaborating was the partial support for Hypothesis 7. The results here indicated that especially performance outcomes differed between intact teams and ad hoc teams, however, for process outcomes the findings were highly similar. Discussion There are some practical implications to this study: * Maybe the most important point is that team training works and that it can explain 12% to 19% of the variance of a team’s performance. * Especially in health care where there is high demand for team training, this research can be used as a strong argument to implement such training into their organization. * Organizations need to be aware of the team outcome they want to improve, since this study yielded different findings for the various outcomes caused by the different types of training.