Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Week 4: Organisational behaviour – Groups and teams
Groups = number of people who interact with each other, are psychologically aware of each
other and perceive themselves to be in a group
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Team Work = Group of people who possess different skills and expertise, which are
combined to hold a common purpose as part of a group to make decisions
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= People working together to act together (Cohen et al
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More individualistic, and people withhold full participation
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Requires trusting, planning and structuring: trust each others motives
nd
2 stage: Storming: disagreements may arise here, as the team now know each other and
of everyone’s weaknesses/strengths
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Communication is more aggressive, and team process start to be worked on
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g
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Informal experts emerge, so the team relies on them, trust is developed but not
tested on
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4th stage: Performing: How the team performs whilst as a team, the team is pro-active and
sets most of its priorities
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5th stage: Adjourning: Stage where the team fulfil its goals
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Belbin (1981): team roles
A team role = ‘the tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular
way’ (Belbin, 1981)
1
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X Prone to provocation and can offend
people’s feelings
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X Inclined to worry and reluctant to
delegate
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People-oriebted team roles
-Co-ordinator:
+ mature, confident, clarifies goals and promotes decision making
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-Team-worker
+ Co-operative, diplomatic, listens, builds and averts friction
X Indecisive in crunch situations
-Resource Investigator
+ enthusiastic, communicative, extrovert, explores opportunities and develops contacts
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3
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X Dwells on technicalities and contributes only on a narrow front
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-The effectiveness of the team will be promoted by the extent to which members correctly
recognise and adjust themselves to the strengths of the team, both in expertise and ability
to engage in specific team roles
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Belbin’s solutions to team problems:
Underachievement = be sharper
Late projects = team needs a finisher
Conflict = team needs more team-workers or a strong co-ordinator
Satisficing = Resource investigator, plant or monitor evaluator needed
If the team is prone to mistakes = monitor evaluator needed
Critical analysis of Belbin: (Aritzeta, 2007)
- Discriminant validity – you can overlap between the roles – the theory doesn’t differ
enough between the roles
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Decision making in teams: a) group conformity and group think

Pros of decision making in teams:
More information from different sources: range of expertise and ideas
Mutually acceptable solution
Credibility/legitimacy of the solution
Commitment towards implementation
Cons of decision making in teams:
Pressures to conform
Takes more time to come to an agreed decision
Social loafing

Extreme decisions
Lines of responsibility can become unclear

Conformity experiments (Asch, 1951)
Visual perception test of which line looks like the
standard line
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The volunteer is monitored to see if they stick with
their own answer and gut feeling or go with the answer of
what the rest of the group say (the wrong answer), because
humans conform to a group
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Symptoms of groupthink:
illusion of invulnerability
collective rationalization
belief in inherent morality
Stereotyped views of out-groups
Direct pressure on dissenters: the pressure to agree, as the group doesn’t let one
disagree
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Self-appointed mind-guards
(e
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propaganda)
How to minimise groupthink:
-impartial leader
-critical evaluators
-group norm that disagreements don’t mean disrespect
-Subgroup for policy evaluation
Group making in teams: b) Group polarisation
Group polarisation = ‘Groups tend to make more extreme decisions than we might expect,
given the initial preferences of group members’
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GROUP THINK
= Whereby decisions made from a group are not credible, as everyone has agreed to a
decision to prevent conflict but have not considered all possible outcomes/alternatives

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