Summary
Summary Exam 2 Work & Organizational Psychology UvA Year 1
- Course
- Institution
Summary of Work & Organizational Psychology Exam 2 as part of the course Work and Organizational & Social Psychology
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
lottepeerdeman
Reviews received
Content preview
W1.1CHAPTER 8 (MCSHANE & VON GLINOW) – TEAM DYNAMICS
Teams: Groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are
mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organisational objectives,
and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organisation
- Meant to fulfil some purpose
- Held together by interdependence and need for collaboration to achieve common goals
- Influence one another
- Members perceive themselves to be a team
Characteristics of teams:
1. Team permanence: How long the type of team usually exists
2. Skill diversity: The degree of different skills and knowledge within a team
3. Authority dispersion: The degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed
throughout the team (= high dispersion) or is vested in one or a few members of the
team (= low dispersion)
Informal groups: Group of people that have little or no interdependence and no
organisationally mandated purpose – Why we need informal groups:
- Human beings are social animals – Drive to bond is hardwired through evolutionary
development, creating a need to belong to informal groups
- Social identity theory: Individuals define themselves by their group affiliations
- Groups accomplish personal objectives that cannot be achieved individually
- We are comforted by the mere presence of other people and are therefore motivated to
be near them in stressful situations
Potentially minimise employee stress + Backbone of social networks (= social structures of
individuals or social units that are connected to one another through one or more forms of
interdependence – Important sources of trust building, information sharing, power, influence,
and employee well-being in the workplace)
Advantages of teams:
- Better decisions
- Better product development
- More motivated workforce
- Team members can quickly share information and coordinate tasks
- Superior customer service because of a higher amount of knowledge and expertise
- More productive due to a drive to bond, a high accountability and a moving
performance
Disadvantages of teams:
- Process losses: Resources expended toward team development and maintenance rather
than the task – Amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team
→ Brook’s law: The principle that adding more people to a late project only makes it
later
, - Social loafing: The problem that occurs when people exert less effort when working in
teams than when working alone – More likely to occur when:
1. Individual performance is hidden or difficult to distinguish from the
performance of other team members
2. The work is boring or the team’s overall task has low task significance
3. Team members score low on conscientiousness and agreeableness personality
traits as well as low on collectivist values
4. Employees lack motivation to help the team achieve its goals (E.g. in the case
of low social identity with the team low cohesion within the team)
↓ Solutions
- Forming smaller teams
- Specialising tasks
- Measuring individual performance
- Increasing job enrichment (E.g.: more skill variety or having direct contact
with clients)
- Increasing mindfulness of social loafing
- Selecting motivated employees
EFFECTIVENESS OF TEAMS
A team is effective when it benefits the organisation and its members, and survives long
enough to accomplish its mandate
The falling apart of teams:
- Literally: People refuse to join or stay with the team
- Cognitively: Members become emotionally disengaged from the team
Team Effectiveness Model: Meta-model
1. The organisational and team environment: Represents all conditions beyond the
team’s boundaries that influence its effectiveness
- Environment is seen as a resource pool that either supports or inhibits the
team’s ability to function
- Environment generates drivers for change within teams that motivate them to
redesign themselves and refocus attention
2. Team design:
1. Task characteristics: Includes task identity, task significance, and task
interdependence (= the extent to which team members must share materials,
information or expertise in order to perform their jobs – Motivates people to be
part of the team) (what tasks)
- Pooled interdependence: When each member works alone but shares
From low to high – The raw materials or machinery to perform otherwise independent tasks
higher the task
- Sequential interdependence: When the output of one person becomes
interdependence, the
the direct input for another person or unit
more the need to
organise people into - Reciprocal interdependence: When work output is exchanged back and
teams forth among individuals
, 2. Team size: Teams should be large enough to provide the necessary abilities
and viewpoints to perform the work, yet small enough to maintain efficient
coordination and meaningful involvement of each member (how many people)
3. Team composition: Teams operate well when team member are highly
motivated, possess the required abilities and have clear role perceptions to
perform the assigned task activities (MARS-model) (which people)
- The Five C’s Model: Effective team member behaviours
1. Cooperating
2. Coordinating
3. Communicating
4. Comforting
5. Conflict handling
- Team diversity
- Advantages: Different angles to a problem; broader pool of
technical abilities; better representation of the team’s
constituents
- Disadvantages: It takes longer to become a high-performing
team; bonding is slower; ‘fault lines’ (= hypothetical dividing
lines based on personal attributes)
3. Team process: Represent characteristics of the team that continuously evolve
1. Team development:
- The Stages of Team Development: Forming → Storming → Norming
→ Performing → Adjourning
- Developing team identification – Team identification occurs when
employees make the team part of their social identity and take
ownership of the team’s success
- Developing mental models (= knowledge structures mutually held by
team members about expectations and ideals of the task and dynamics)
- Team roles (= a set of behaviours that people are expected to repeatedly
perform because they hold a position in a team and organisation)
- Team building: Formal activities designed to improve the development
and functioning of a work team – Interventions: Goal setting; problem-
solving; role clarification; interpersonal relations
2. Team norms: The informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish
to regulate the behaviour of their members
- Develop during team formation because people need to anticipate or
predict how others will act
- The best way to establish desirable norms is to clearly state them when
the team is created
- Changing dysfunctional norms → Speaking up or actively coaching the
team + Introducing team-based rewards
3. Team cohesion: The degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their
motivation to remain members – Teams with higher cohesion tend to perform
better than those with lower cohesion
- Influences on team cohesion: Member similarity; small team size;
member interaction; difficult entry/prestige; team success; external
competition
, - Consequences of team cohesion:
- Team cohesion has less effect on team performance when the
team has low task interdependence
- Teams with high cohesion perform better when their norms are
aligned with the organisation’s objectives
4. Team trust: Positive expectations one person has toward another person in
situations involving risk
- Calculus-based trust: Represents a logical calculation that other team
members will act appropriately because they face sanctions if their
actions violate reasonable expectations – Lowest potential trust
- Knowledge-based trust: Based on the predictability of another team
member’s behaviour – More stable as it increases over time
- Identification-based trust: Based on mutual understanding and an
emotional bond among team members – Most robust as the individual’s
self-concept is based partly on membership in the team
- Swift trust: Trust is high (especially knowledge-based trust and
identification-based trust) when people join a team and decreases later
– Trust is fragile as it is based on expectations instead of experience
4. Team effectiveness
Two types of teams:
1. Self-directed teams: Cross-functional work groups that are organised around work
processes, complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks,
and have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks
- Interaction with employees outside the team is minimal
- Success factors:
- Responsibility for an entire work process
- Sufficient autonomy to organise and coordinate work
- The work site and technology support coordination and communication
among team members and increase job enrichment
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through EFT, credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying this summary from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller lottepeerdeman. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy this summary for R147,97. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
75632 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy summaries for 14 years now