DEFINING AND CLASSIFYING GROUPS
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Groups can be either formal or informal.
Formal Group: Formal groups are defined by the organization's structure, with designated work assignments establishing tasks. In formal groups, the behavior that one should engage in are stipulated by & directed toward organizational goals. a) Command group: A command group is determined by the organization chart. It is composed of the subordinates who report directly to a given manager. b) Task group: Task groups represent those working together to complete a job task.
Informal Group: Informal groups are alliances that are neither formally structured nor organizationally determined. These groups are natural formations in the work environment that appear in response to the need for social contact. Example: (Lunch together)
a) Interest group: It is consist of those who are working together to attain a specific objective with which each is concerned. b) Friendship Group: Groups often develop because the individual members have one or more common characteristics. These formations are known as friendship group.
WHY DO PEOPLE JOIN IN GROUPS
The reasons why people join in a group are as follows:
Security: By joining a group, individuals can reduce the insecurity of standing alone. People feel stronger, have fewer self doubts and are more resistant to threats when they are part of a group.
Status: Inclusion in a group that is viewed as important by others provides recognition and status for its members.
Self esteem: Groups can provide people with feelings of self worth (importance, value). That is membership can give increased feelings of worth to the group members themselves.
Affiliation: Groups can fulfill social needs, people enjoy the regular interactions that come with group membership which are their primary source for fulfilling their needs for affiliation.
Power: What can not be achieved individually often become possible through group action. There is power in numbers.
Goal achievement: There are times when it takes more than one person to accomplish a particular task. In such instances, mgt will rely on the use of a formal group.
STAGES OF GROUP DEVELOPMENT
Groups passed through a standard sequence of five stages. These stages are:
Forming: Forming is characterized by a great deal of uncertainty about the group purpose, structure & leadership. This stage is complete when members have begun to think of themselves as part of a group.
Storming: The storming stage is one of intra-group conflict. There is conflict over who will control the group. When this stage is complete, there will be a relatively clear hierarchy of leadership within the group.
Norming: The third stage is one in which close relationships develop & the group demonstrates cohesiveness. There is now a strong sense of group identity & camaraderie (intimacy). Norming stage is complete when the group structure solidifies and the group has assimilated a common set of expectation of what define correct member behavior.
Performing: The fourth stage is performing. The structure at this point is fully functional and accepted. Group energy has moved from getting to know and understand each other to performing the task at hand.
Adjourning: In this stage, the group prepares for its disbandment. High task performance is no longer the group's top priority. Instead, attention is directed toward wrapping up activities. Responses of group members vary in this stage. Some are upbeat, basking in the group’s accomplishments. Others may be depressed over the loss of camaraderie and friendship gained during the work group’s life.
GROUP STRUCTURE
Groups have a structure that shapes the behavior of the members and makes it possible to explain and predict a proportion of individual behavior within the group as well as the performance of the group itself. They include roles, norms, status, group size and the degree of group cohesiveness.
A) Roles: Roles mean a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit.
Role identity: There are certain attitudes and actual behaviors consistence with a role, and they create the role identity. People have the ability to shift role rapidly when they recognize that the situation and its demands clearly require major changes.
Role perception: The view of how an individual supposed to act in a given situation is a role perception. Based on an interpretation of how we believe we are supposed to behave, we engage in certain types of behavior.
Role expectations: Role expectations are defined as how others believe ones should act in a given situation. How one behaves is determined to a large extent by the role defined in the context in which ones are acting.
Role conflict: When an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations, the result is role conflict. It exists when an individual finds that compliance with one role requirement may make it more difficult to comply with another.
B) Norms: Norms are acceptable standards of behavior that are shared by the group’s member. Norms tells member what they ought and ought not to do under certain circumstances.
The Hawthorne studies: The Hawthorne studies, later conducted by Harvard professor Elton Mayo, concluded that a worker’s behavior and sentiments were closely related, that group influences were significant in affecting individual behavior, that group standard were highly effective in establishing individual worker output, and that money was less a factor in determining worker output than were group standards, sentiments, and security.
Common classes of norms: A group norms are likely an individual’s fingerprints – each is unique. There are some common classes of norms that appear in most work group. These are – performance norms, appearance norms, social arrangement norms, and allocation of resource norms.
Conformity: As a member of a group, one desire acceptance by the group. Because of one’s desire for acceptance, one is susceptible to conforming to the group’s norms. There are considerable evidence that groups can place strong pressures on individual member to change their attitudes and behaviors to conform to the group standard. It is actually adjusting one’s behavior to align with the norms of the group.
Deviant workplace behavior: Antisocial actions by organizational members that intentionally violate established norms and that result in negative consequences for the organization, its members or both.
C) Status: Status is socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others – permeates every society.
Status and norms: Status has been shown to have some interesting effects on the power of norms and pressures to conform. For instance, high-status members of group often are given more freedom to deviate from norms that are other group members. High-status people are also better able to resist conformity pressures than their lower status peers.
Status and group interaction: Interaction among members of group is influenced by status. We find, for instance, that high status people tend to be more assertive. They speak out more often, criticize more, state more commands, and interrupt more often.
Status inequity: It is important to group members to believe that the status hierarchy is equitable. When inequity is perceived, it creates disequilibrium, which results a various types of corrective behavior.
Status and culture: The importance of status does vary between cultures. The French, for example, are highly status conscious. Also, countries differ on the criteria that create status.
D) Size: The size of the group affects the group’s overall group behavior. The evidence indicates that the smaller groups are faster at completing tasks than are large ones. However if the group is enlarged in problem solving, large group consistently get better marks than their smaller counterparts. Social loafing is one of the most important findings related to the size of the group. Social loafing is the tendency for individual to expand les effort when working collectively than when working individually. E) Cohesiveness: Groups differ in their cohesiveness, that is, the degree to which member are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group. Some work groups are cohesive because the member has spent a great deal of time together, or the group’s small size facilitates high interaction, or the group has experienced external threats that have brought members close together.
GROUP DECISION MAKING
Two heads are better than one. This belief has expanded to the point that, today, many decisions in organizations are made by groups, teams, or committees.
A) Group versus the individual: Decision making by groups or individual depends on a number of factors. These are:
Strengths of group decision making: Groups generate more complete information and knowledge. They offer increased diversity of views. So groups generate higher quality decisions. Finally, groups lead to increased acceptance of solution.
Weaknesses of group decision making: Group decisions have some drawbacks. They are time consuming. There are conformity pressures in groups. Group decision can be dominated by one or a few members. Finally group decisions suffer from ambiguous responsibility.
Effectiveness and Efficiency: Whether groups are more effective than individuals depends on the criteria being used for defining effectiveness. If decision is defined in terms of speed, individual are superior. If creativity is important, groups tend to be more effective than individuals. But effectiveness cannot be considered without also assessing efficiency. In terms of efficiency, groups almost always stack up a poor second to the individual decision maker. In deciding whether the groups, then, consideration should be given to assessing whether increases in effectiveness are more than enough to offset the losses in efficiency.
B) Groupthink and groupshift: Two byproducts of group decision making are groupthink and groupshift.
Groupthink: Groupthink is the phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. Groupthink is a disease that attack many groups and can dramatically hinder their performance.
Groupshift: It indicates that in discussing a given set of alternatives and arriving at a solution, group members tend to exaggerate the initial positions that they hold. It leads to a significant shift in the positions of members towards a more extreme position in the direction in which they are already leaning (partiality) before the discussion.
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