Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour: Key Concepts, Skills, and Best Practices

Kreitner/Kinicki/Cole

Fundamentals of Organizational Behaviour: Key Concepts, Skills, and Best Practices

Chapter 7

Groups and Teamwork

Chapter Learning Objectives

• Describe the five stages of Tuckman’s theory of group development
• Distinguish between role overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity.
• Contrast roles and norms, and specify four reasons norms are enforced in organizations.
• Explain how a work group becomes a team.
• List at least four things managers can do to build trust.
• Describe self-managed teams and virtual teams.
• Describe social loafing and explain how managers can prevent it.
• Describe high performance teams.

Opening Case

Teams Make it Happen in Ontario Governments

This case illustrates how effective teams can exhibit high levels of performance. It focuses on the impressive results obtained by two public sector organizations that faced serious problems by implementing teams to resolve them. The Ministry of Transportation created a cross-functional team that enabled them to meet a new Ontario Public Service quality guideline of responding to any correspondence within 15 days of receipt. Their accomplishment was an amazing reduction in turnaround time for correspondence from 36.24 days to 9.45 days.

The Regional Municipality of Peel established a team to address the contentious issue of what to do with a landfill site that was closing. The team was able to satisfy both the surrounding community and Peel Region when it proposed the idea of creating an executive golf course on the site.

Chapter Summary

Fundamentals of Group Behaviour

Drawing from the field of sociology, a group is defined as two or more freely interacting individuals who share collective norms and goals and have a common identity.

Formal and Informal Groups. If a group is formed by management to help the organization accomplish its goals, then it qualifies as a formal group. These are usually called work group, team, committee or task force. An informal group exists when the members’ overriding purpose for getting together is friendship. These groups often overlap. Managers are split on whether friendship helps or hinders productivity. What do you think? There are two basic functions of groups: organizational and individual. Table 7-1 lists these functions. Why are groups so important in organizations?

The Group Development Process. Groups and teams in the workplace go through a maturation process, such as one would find in any life-cycle situation (e.g. humans, organizations, products). Tuckman’s model is often cited—see Figure 7-1. The five steps are forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

Stage 1: Forming is the ‘ice-breaking’ stage where group members are uncertain and anxious about such things as their roles, who is in charge and the group’s goals. How can the ice be broken?

Stage 2: Storming is the stage of testing.

Stage 3: Norming is the stage that is next where questions about authority and power are resolved through unemotional group discussions. Group cohesiveness defined as the ‘we feeling’ that binds people is a product of this stage. Is this your experience in groups?

Stage 4: Performing is the activity stage where there is a climate of open communication, strong cooperation, and lots of helping behaviour. In reality do groups really work this cooperatively? What is your experience?

Stage 5: Adjourning is the time when the work is done and it is time to move on. Why not keep them together if they work well together?

Group Member Roles. Roles are the expected behaviours for a given position. You could discuss the roles of faculty, students, and staff. Role overload occurs when other people’s expectations of someone exceed that individual’s ability. Role conflict occurs when other people have conflicting or inconsistent expectations of someone. Role ambiguity occurs when an individual does not know what is expected of them.

Task versus maintenance roles. Task roles are task-oriented group behavior. These enable the work group to define, clarify and pursue a common purpose, that is keep the group on track. Maintenances roles are relationship building group behaviour. These foster supportive and constructive interpersonal relationships, that is keep the group together. Table 7-2 lists task and maintenance roles. The Focus on Diversity box provides some interesting research findings about the roles played by males and females in a group when the task is masculine- or feminine-oriented.

Norms. Norms are more encompassing than roles. Roles involve behavioural expectations for specific positions; norms help organizational members determine right from wrong and good from bad. A norm is shared attitudes, opinions, feelings or actions that guide social behaviour. So what happened at Enron before the scandal? If one does not conform to the norms, one can experience ostracism that is, rejection by other group members. The silent treatment by friends would be an example. You might ask if your students have seen the movie, The Insider, and what happens to whistleblowers. This could be a good place for a discussion of what happens to people who do not conform for whatever reasons. The film, A Beautiful Mind, tackles this subject from a different perspective, but an interesting one.

How norms are developed. Norms are developed in four ways:

(1) explicit statements by supervisors or co-workers,

(2) critical events in the group’s history,

(3) primacy or the first behaviour pattern that emerges in a group often sets group expectations, and

(4) carryover behaviours from past situations.

Why norms are enforced. Norms tend to be enforced by group members when they help the group or organization survive; when they clarify or simplify behavioural expectations; when they help individuals avoid embarrassing situations; and when they clarify the group’s or organization’s central values and/or unique identity. The Ethics at Work box describes a study which showed that anti-social behaviour at work is reinforced, demonstrating that managers need to eliminate these behaviours when they first appear so that they will not spread.

Teams, Trust, and Teamwork

The team approach to managing organizations is having diverse and substantial impacts on organizations and individuals. Teams promise to be the cornerstone of progressive management for the foreseeable future. Therefore, everyone will need to brush up on his or her team skills. Both women and younger employees seem to thrive in team-oriented organizations. What does this say about middle age or older men? What is at issue here? Is it societal norms and roles or something else? Why are women so much more team oriented?

A Team is More Than Just a Group. A team is defined as ‘a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. A group becomes a team when:

• Leadership becomes a shared activity.
• Accountability shifts from strictly individual to both individual and collective.
• The group develops its own purpose or mission.
• Problem solving becomes a way of life, not a part-time activity.

• The group’s collective outcomes and products measure effectiveness. How does this fit with the way we usually pay people and the individualistic nature of most North Americans?

Table 7-3 lists the characteristics of effective teams.

Trust: A Key Ingredient of Teamwork. These have not been good times for trust in the corporate world. Trust itself is defined as reciprocal faith in others’ intentions and behaviour. In short, we get what we give so trust begets trust and distrust begets distrust. Think of Bill Clinton and his scandals.

Three dimensions of trust are:

(1) overall trust - expecting fair play, the truth and empathy,

(2) emotional trust - faith that someone will not misrepresent you to others or betray a confidence, and

(3) reliableness - the belief that promises and appointments will be kept and commitments met.

How to build trust. Six guidelines for building trust are communication, support, respect, fairness, predictability, and competence.

Self-Managed Teams. Self-managed teams are defined as groups of workers who are given administrative oversight for their work. Administrative oversight involves delegated activities such as planning, scheduling, monitoring, and staffing. Self-managed teams are variously referred to as semi-autonomous work groups, autonomous work groups and super teams. When self-managed teams are used, organizations should be prepared to undergo revolutionary changes in management philosophy, structure, staffing, and training practices and reward systems. The traditional notions of managerial authority and control are turned on their heads. What do you think happens? Why do self-managed teams have such impact? Would people resist them at all and why or why not?

Cross-functional teams. Self-managed teams are often cross-functional. A cross-functional team is defined as a team made up of technical specialists from different areas. The most commonly delegated tasks are work scheduling and dealing directly with outside customers and the least common are team chores of hiring and firing people, as shown in Table 7-4. Most self-managed teams remain bunched at the shop-floor level in factory settings but there is a predicted growth for managerial ranks and in service operations. What are the managerial implications here?

Are self-managed teams effective? The research evidence. It appears to have a positive effect on productivity, and on specific attitudes such as responsibility and control, no significant effect on general attitudes of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and no significant effect on absenteeism or turnover.

Virtual Teams. A virtual team is a physically dispersed task group that conducts its business through modern information technology. These teams are very flexible and efficient because the people are driven by information and skills and not by time and location.

Research insights on virtual teams reveal that they follow similar patterns to face-to-face groups; Internet chat rooms create more work and yield poorer decisions than face-to-face meeting and telephone conferences; successful use of groupware requires training and hands-on experience; and inspirational leadership has a positive impact on creativity in electronic brainstorming groups. What are the implications here?

Practical considerations. Virtual teams are not a cure-all. Meaningful face-to-face contact, especially during early phases of the group development process, is absolutely essential. The International OB box provides some specific advice on using virtual teams to facilitate the management of international operations.

Why do Work Teams Fail? The tendency for reduced effort as group size increases was identified many years ago, and this continues to be a problem today. More recently, specific problems related to self-managed teams have been identified.

Social Loafing. Social loafing is defined as the decrease in individual effort as group size increases.

Social loafing theory and research. it is assumed that social loafing effects are explained by equity of effort; loss of personal accountability; motivational loss due to the sharing of rewards; and coordination loss as more people perform the task. Social loafing occurs when the task is perceived to be unimportant or simple, group members think that their individual output is not identifiable, or when groups members expect their co-workers to loaf.

Practical implications of the research findings are that social loafing is not an inevitable part of group effort, and that management can curb this threat to group effectiveness by making sure that tasks are challenging and perceived as important. What do you do with boring jobs that cannot be made more challenging unless you are willing to enrich the jobs or do something different such as redesign the jobs?

Problems With Self-Managed Teams. The main threats to team effectiveness arise from unrealistic expectations on the part of both management and team members, which lead to frustration and the abandonment of teams. Managers often do a poor job of creating a supportive environment for teams. Team members can drive failure when they take on too much too quickly and drive themselves too hard for fast results.

Team Building. Team building encompasses many activities intended to address work team failure and improve the internal functioning of work groups. The goal of team building is to create high-performance teams with the following eight attributes:

• Participative leadership. Creating an interdependency by empowering, freeing up, and serving others.
• Shared responsibility. Establishing an environment in which all team members feel as responsible as the manager for the performance of the work unit.
• Aligned on purpose. Having a sense of common purpose about why the team exists and the function it serves.
• Strong communication. Creating a climate of trust and open, honest communication.
• Future focused. Seeing change as an opportunity for growth.
• Focused on task. Keeping meetings focused on results.
• Creative talents. Applying individual talents and creativity.
• Rapid response. Identifying and acting on opportunities.

Internet Exercises

1. Relationships and Communications Skills Testing

This exercise focuses on the communication skills that are so crucial for effective team functioning. Students are instructed to go to the Queen-Dom Website ( and select the category ‘Tests & Profiles.’ Then they click on ‘Relationships’ and scroll down to the list of 19 relationship tests. They then select ‘Communication Skills Test,’ read the brief instructions, complete all 34 items, and click on the ‘score’ button for automatic scoring. As time allows, students may be encouraged to do some of the other tests as well. The questions asked are:

1. How did you score? Are you pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by your score? Personal opinion.

2. What is your strongest social/communication skill? High score(s).

3. Reviewing the questionnaire item by item, can you find obvious weak spots in your social/communication skills? For instance, are you a poor listener? Do you interrupt too often? Do you need to be more aware of others, both verbally and nonverbally? Do you have a hard time tuning into others’ feelings or expressing your own feelings? How do you handle disagreement? Low scores.

4. Based on the results of this questionnaire, what is your learning agenda for improving your social and communication skills? Focus on skills with low scores. Discuss where communication skills training is available eg. campus career center, courses in the communication department at your institution or others, private training centers.

2. Virtual Team Readiness Testing

This exercise asks students to investigate their readiness to work on a virtual team by going to the Website of The Applied Knowledge Group ( and completing the 25-item “Assessment Tool”. The test is scored automatically. The questions asked are:

1. How did you score? Personal opinion. Are you pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised by your scores in Column A and Column B? Explain any surprises.

1. In what way are you ready for work on a virtual team? Review Column A and discuss your readiness with regard to communication and collaboration. Review Column B and discuss your level of comfort or discomfort with isolation. Try to get students to give specific examples of problems with communication, collaboration, and isolation that may have led to weak scores.

Experiential Exercises

1. Is This a Mature Work Group or Team?

This exercise is designed to increase students’ knowledge of group processes and dynamics; to give them a tool to assess the maturity of a work group of task team; to provide a diagnostic tool for identifying group problems; and to help them become a more effective group leader or contributor. After completing the 20-item questionnaire, students sum their responses to arrive at a total score. The score can then be interpreted using the arbitrary norms provided. Students can be asked for a show of hands to determine those in groups with high (80-100), considerable (60-79), limited (40-59) and low (20-39) maturity. Discussion can then focus on examples from the high-maturity groups and ideas about how some of the problems in the low-maturity groups can be solved.

2. How Autonomous is Your Work Group?

This exercise relates to self-managed teams, and assesses how much autonomy is possessed by each student’s work team. A student group that is writing a paper together is also a good focal point for this exercise, as these groups are highly self-managed. After completing the 9-item questionnaire, students add up their total score and interpret it using the norms provided. Then discussion can focus on the specific decisions that the high autonomy groups are responsible for and compare this to where the same decisions are made for the other groups.