Speaker 1: In this lecture, we will be reviewing group processes and teamworks, and the differences between workgroup and workteam. Communicational skills become increasingly critical as more groups are used in organizational settings. Training and communication skills usually involves teaching, writing, oral presentation, listening and reading. Communication in organizations occur because someone needs information or social reinforcement or because someone has been directed to communicate or in order to achieve a goal. The study of communication in organizations is closely linked to the study of groups in organizations. As you communicate with others, you form bonds that result in groups being formed. Groups generally consist of at least two employees who interact socially to meet a specific organizational goal. Some of these groups are formally defined by the organization, and others are informal groups that develop along with or in place of formal groups. Now, let us break this down a little. We need to understand the differences between a workgroup versus workteam. Workgroups and workteams are similar in that both have a formal assignment from the organization. The work effect of a member of a workgroup does not depend on the other members. The workgroups is a formal organizational collection of employees who have a common task, but whose work does not depend on the other members of the group. For example, the psychology department in a college is a workgroup, but each faculty member teaches his or her own classes independently from one another. If one professor is out, the others are able to teach their classes without interruption. They may even step in for the missing faculty member. Now, workteams require each member's cooperation to reach the end result. One of the simplest examples of a workteam is an assembly line where the work of each person depends on the work of the previous person. So, workteam is a formal organizational collection of employees in which each person's work affects the other member's work in terms of completing the task. If any person is absent from the workteam and no one replaces that person, the group's work cannot be completed. Now, let's review the differences between formal groups versus informal groups. All organizations have both formal and informal groups. Formal groups tend to have more rigid patterns of status, authority, roles, and communication than do informal groups. Those patterns are defined by membership, group rewards, and common goals. Some common types of formal groups in organizations are matrix structures, project teams, workgroups, and workteams. Now, informal groups are groups that form naturally. For example, carpools, people who eat lunch together, and parents with preschool children. The purpose of these groups is to meet personal goals. Those goals may help meet organizational goals, hinder them, or have little to do with them at all. One of the key factors determining membership is frequent interaction of the members. A critical factor in using groups is to make decisions at work. Informal groups serve different functions and they include, first, they satisfy social needs such as friendship and companionship. Second, they satisfy security needs in that they make employees feel safe and connected. Third, they facilitate cooperation among employees. And fourth, they require social and task behaviors such that organizational norms and procedures are disseminated. Now moving on to social influence in groups. Psychologists study the ways in which groups affect individual behaviors. Some ways include norms, roles, conflicts, cohesion, and group development. Now let us review Tuchman's five stages of group development. Stage one, forming. Stage two, storming. Stage three, norming. Stage four, performing. And stage five, adjourning. Now for stage one, forming. In regards to group processes, we have members get acquainted. Interactions are polite, tentative, exploratory, and sometimes guarded. In stage two, storming, interactions are characterized by disagreement. Members question one another and some conflicts emerges. In stage three, norming, unity is established. Members become more cohesive, roles, standards, and relationships develop and also trust increases. Stage four, performing. Members become focused on productivity and goals are achieved. Also, task orientation is high. And number five, adjourning. Roles are terminated, relationships weaken, and members become much less dependent on one another. Some degree of stress or tension is likely during this stage. Moving on to social loafing and other group phenomena. Social loafing occurs when group members put out less effort as a group than they would as individuals. Social loafing has been studied for a number of years in IO psychology and often is discussed in association with two other concepts, the free rider theory and the sucker effect theory. Those concepts typically I use to explain why social loafing occurs. The free riding theory suggests that if the group is doing a good job on the task it has been assigned, individual members can feel that their effort is not necessary and will reduce that effort. The sucker effect theory suggests that when a group member perceives that he or she is working harder than the other members are and feels taken advantage of, that member will exert less effort to avoid being quote-unquote suckered into doing extra work. I'm sure we've all felt that way when working in teams or groups. Now group polarization is the shift of a group to a more extreme position than the individual member's position, originally was studied as the risky shift phenomenon. The risky shift phenomenon suggests that groups will make a commitment to decisions involving greater risk rather than to the average of the decision risks that would be made individually. Although research confirmed this phenomenon, it is also found evidence for a cautious shift phenomenon in which group decisions were more conservative in terms of risk than were the decisions made by individuals. Next we have group cohesion, which often is defined by the strength of the motivation of the group members to remain part of the group. Several different types of group cohesiveness can be found in work groups. In groups that are high in social cohesiveness, members want to extend discussions and engage in conversation. In highly task cohesive groups, the members want to complete the task quickly and efficiently. The general feeling in such highly cohesive groups is one of cooperation with most behaviors directed towards group unity. Now moving right along to the group decision making, there are five steps to effective group decision making and they are as follows. Step one, diagnose the problem. Step two, generate solutions. Step three, evaluate solutions. Step four, choose a solution and step five, develop an action plan and implementation. Let us review a huge topic in groups called groupthink and I'm sure you've heard of that terminology before. Groupthink is an unhealthy decision making pattern that develops from a high degree of unity among group members and a desire for consensus. Among the factors that most often lead to groupthink are a great deal of group cohesiveness and that is the us against them feelings, a lack of outside sources of information, a leader who expresses strong feelings about particular solutions, a lack of decision making procedures, group members who are similar to one another, the perception of threats from outside sources, a belief that no better solutions are available, problems in the current decision making process, and moral questions raised by the problem itself. When groupthink controls the group decision making process, there is a very low probability that a successful decision can be made. To avoid groupthink in the decision making process, Woodroffe and Janice made a number of suggestions for stopping groupthink before it starts and they include the following. First, the kind of thinking that critically evaluates ideas and suggestions should be rewarded. Second, the larger group should be divided into smaller groups to evaluate the solutions and group members should be encouraged to seek out more information individually from outside sources and experts to bring back to the group. Third, the leaders who should be in control of the group and guide the procedures of the group in decision making should at the same time remain impartial and not promote a particular decision. And four, if time permits, the group should hold a quote-unquote second chance meeting to reconsider the alternatives if rejected or try out the decision on a pilot basis such as testing a new marketing approach in only one demographic area rather than the entire country. Now let us once again review the difference between work group versus work team. Work group is a formal organizational collection of employees who have a common task but whose work does not depend on other members of the group. Now work team is a formal organizational collection of employees in which each person's work affects the other member's work in terms of completing the task. So there are different types of work teams to include. First, production teams which are frontline employees producing tangible output. For example, coal mining crews or even candy production crews. Second, management teams which include corporate executive teams and also management teams. Third, service teams. They attend to the needs of customers such as flight attendants or even retail sales representatives. Fourth, project teams. They are created for a duration of a particular project. Fifth, advisory teams. They solve problems and recommend solutions such as consultants for a particular matter. Some other teams include self-management work teams, virtual teams, and multi-team systems.