MGT-4110:
Organizational Behavior
Team Dynamics
Professor Dr. AAhad M. Osman-Gani
What are Teams?
Groups of two or more people
Exist to fulfill a purpose
Interdependent -- interact and influence
each other
Mutually accountable for achieving
common goals
Perceive themselves as a social entity
8-2
11-3
Groups vs. Teams
Types of Teams
• Departmental teams
• Production/service/ leadership teams
• Self-directed teams
• Advisory teams
• Task force (project) teams
• Skunkworks
• Virtual teams
• Communities of practice
8-4
Informal Groups
Groups that exist primarily for the benefit
of their members
Reasons why informal groups exist:
1. Innate drive to bond
2. Social identity -- we define ourselves by group
memberships
3. Goal accomplishment
4. Emotional support
8-5
Advantages and Disadvantages of Teams
Advantages: • Make better decisions, products/services
• Better information sharing
• Higher employee motivation/engagement
- Fulfills drive to bond
- Closer scrutiny by team members
- Team members are benchmarks of comparison
Disadvantages: • Individuals better/faster on some tasks
• Process losses - cost of developing and maintaining teams
• Social loafing
8-6
How to Minimize Social Loafing
Make individual performance more
visible
• Form smaller teams
• Specialize tasks
• Measure individual performance
Increase employee motivation
• Increase job enrichment
• Select motivated employees
8-7
Team Effectiveness Model
•Task characteristics
•Team size
•Team composition
Team Design
• Accomplish tasks
• Satisfy member
needs
• Maintain team
survival
Team
Effectiveness
• Team development
• Team norms
• Team cohesiveness
• Team trust
Team Processes
Organizational
and Team
Environment
8-8
Organization/Team Environment
Reward systems
Communication systems
Organizational structure
Organizational leadership
Physical space
8-9
Team’s Task Characteristics
Teams work better when tasks are clear,
easy to implement
• learn roles faster, easier to become cohesive
• ill-defined tasks require members with diverse
backgrounds and more time to coordinate
Teams preferred with higher task
interdependence
• Extent that employees need to share materials,
information, or expertise to perform their jobs.
8-10
Levels of Task Interdependence
Sequential
Pooled
Reciprocal
Resource
A B C
A B C
A
B C
High
Low
8-11
Team Size
Smaller teams are better because:
• need less time to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
• require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment
But team must be large enough to
accomplish task
8-12
Team Composition
Effective team members
must be willing and able
to work on the team
Effective team members
possess specific
competencies (5 C’s)
8-13
Five C’s of Team Member Competencies
8-14
Team Composition: Diversity
Team members have with diverse knowledge, skills, perspectives, values, etc.
Advantages: • better for creatively solving complex problems
• broader knowledge base
• better representation of team’s constituents
Disadvantages: • take longer to become a high-performing team
• more susceptible to “faultlines”
• increased risk of dysfunctional conflict
8-15
Existing teams
might regress
back to an
earlier stage of
development
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
Adjourning
Stages of Team Development
8-16
11-17
Five-Stage Model
Team Development as Membership and Competence
Two central processes in team development
1. Team membership formation
• Transition from “them” to “us”
• Team becomes part of person’s social identity
2. Team competence development
• Forming routines with others
• Forming shared mental models
8-18
Team Roles
A set of behaviors that people are
expected to perform
Some formally assigned; others informally
Informal role assignment occurs during
team development and is related to
personal characteristics
8-19
Team Building
Formal activities intended to improve the
team’s development and functioning
Types of Team Building
• Clarify team’s performance goals
• Improve team’s problem-solving skills
• Improve role definitions
• Improve relations
8-20
Team Norms
Informal rules and shared expectations
team establishes to regulate member
behaviors
Norms develop through:
• Initial team experiences
• Critical events in team’s history
• Experience/values members bring to the team
8-21
Preventing/Changing Dysfunctional Team Norms
State desired norms when forming teams
Select members with preferred values
Discuss counter-productive norms
Reward behaviors representing desired
norms
Disband teams with dysfunctional norms
8-22
Team Cohesion
The degree of attraction people feel
toward the team and their motivation to
remain members
Both cognitive and emotional process
Related to the team member’s social
identity
8-23
Team
size
Member
interaction
• Smaller teams tend to be more cohesive
• Regular interaction increases cohesion
• Calls for tasks with high interdependence
Member
similarity
• Similarity-attraction effect
• Some forms of diversity have less effect
Influences on Team Cohesion
8-24
Team
success
External
challenges
• Successful teams fulfillmember needs
• Success increases social identity with team
• Challenges increase cohesion when not
overwhelming
Somewhat
difficult entry
• Team eliteness increases cohesion
• But lower cohesion with severe initiation
Influences on Team Cohesion (contd.)
8-25
Team Cohesion Outcomes
1. Motivated to remain members
2. Willing to share information
3. Strong interpersonal bonds
4. Resolve conflict effectively
5. Better interpersonal relationships
8-26
Team Norms Support
Company Goals
Team Norms Oppose
Company Goals
High Team Cohesiveness
Low Team Cohesiveness
Team Cohesion and Performance
Low task
performance
Moderately
high task
performance
Moderately
low task
performance
High task
performance
8-27
Trust Defined
Positive expectations one person
has of another person in situations
involving risk
8-28
Three Levels of Trust
Identification-based Trust
Knowledge-based Trust
Calculus-based Trust
High
Low
8-29
Self-Directed Teams
Cross-functional work groups organized around
work processes, that complete an entire piece of
work requiring several interdependent tasks, and
that have substantial autonomy over the execution
of those tasks.
8-30
Self-Directed Team Success Factors
Responsible for entire work process
High interdependence within the team
Low interdependence with other teams
Autonomy to organize and coordinate
work
Technology supports team
communication/coordination
8-31
Virtual Teams
Teams whose members operate across space,
time, and organizational boundaries and are
linked through information technologies to
achieve organizational tasks
• Increasingly possible because of:
- Information technologies
- Knowledge-based work
• Increasingly necessary because of:
- Organizational learning
- Globalization
8-32
Virtual Team Success Factors
Member characteristics
• Technology savvy
• Self-leadership skills
• Emotional intelligence
Flexible use of communication
technologies
Opportunities to meet face-to-face
8-33
Team Decision Making Constraints
Time constraints • Time to organize/coordinate
• Production blocking
Evaluation apprehension • Belief that others are silently evaluating you
Peer pressure to conform • Suppressing opinions that oppose team norms
Groupthink
• Tendency in highly cohesive teams to value consensus at the price of decision quality
• Concept losing favor -- consider more specific features
8-34
General Guidelines for Team Decisions
Team norms should encourage critical
thinking
Sufficient team diversity
Ensure neither leader nor any member
dominates
Maintain optimal team size
Introduce effective team structures
8-35
Constructive Conflict
People focus their discussion on the issue while
maintaining respectfulness for others having
different points of view.
Problem: constructive conflict easily slides into
personal attacks
Courtesy of Johnson Space Center/NASA
8-36
Rules of Brainstorming
1. Speak freely
2. Don’t criticize
3. Provide as many ideas as possible
4. Build on others’ ideas
8-37
Evaluating Brainstorming
Strengths:
• Produces more creative ideas
• Less evaluation apprehension when team
supports a learning orientation
• Strengthens decision acceptance and team
cohesiveness
• Sharing positive emotions encourages
creativity
Weaknesses:
• Production blocking still exists
• Evaluation apprehension exists in many groups
8-38
Electronic Brainstorming
Relies on networked computers to submit
and share creative ideas
Strengths -- more creative ideas, minimal
production blocking, evaluation
apprehension, or conformity problems
Limitations -- too structured and
technology-bound
8-39
Describe
problem
Individual
Activity
Team
Activity
Individual
Activity
Write down
possible
solutions
Possible
solutions
described
to others
Vote on
solutions
presented
Nominal Group Technique
8-40
Thanks!