Organization Behaviour - Group Behaviour Notes

Organizational behaviour (OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact individuals,
groups, and structure have on behaviour within organizations, for the purpose of applying
such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness.

A group is two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together
to achieve particular objectives.

•defined by the organization’s structure

•designated work assignments establishing tasks
Formal •behavior team members should engage in are stipulated by and directed toward
organizational goals
•Eg. 6 members of an airline flight crew

•neither formally structured nor organizationally determined

•in the work environment meet the need for social contact.
Informal
•though informal, these groups deeply affect behavior andperformance of employees
•Eg. Three employees from different departments who regularly have lunch together

Reasons for formation of

Importance of group
groups
• Companionship • Filling in gaps in managers
• Sense of identification ability
• Source of information • Solving work problems
• Job satisfaction • Better coordination
• Protection of members • Channel of communication
• Outlet for frustration • Restraint on managers
• Perpetuation of cultural • Better relations
values • Norms of behaviour
• Generation of new ideas • Satisfied workforce
• Developing future executives
 Five-stage group-development model

Forming Storming Norming Performing Adjourning

•Uncertainty about •Intragroup conflict •Close relationships •Structure is now •Wrapping up

the group’s occurs develop fully functional. activities, preparing
purpose, •Members accept •Group •Group energy has to disband
structure, and the group but resist demonstrates advanced from •For committees,
leadership the constraints it cohesiveness understanding each teams that have
imposes on •Strong sense of other to performing limited scope of
• Members individuality the task at hand work
group identity and
determine •Conflict over who camaraderie •For permanent •Some are upbeat,
acceptable will control the •Complete when work groups, basking in the
behavior for group group structure performing is the group’s
themselves in the •When stage is solidifies and group last stage in accomplishments.
group by trial and complete, there will has assimilated a development •Others may be
error be a relatively clear common set of depressed over the
•Complete when hierarchy of expectations of loss of camaraderie
members have leadership what constitutes sustained during the
begun to think of correct member work group’s life.
behavior
themselves as
part of a group

Two by-products of group decision making –

Groupthink Groupshift or Polarization

• Describes situations in which group pressures • Group members tend to exaggerate the initial
for conformity deter the group from critical, positions they hold when discussing a given
minority, or unpopular views set of alternatives and arriving at a solution
• Norm of consensus overrides the realistic • Dfferences between group decisions and the
appraisal of alternative courses and the full individual decisions of group
expression of views. • Special case of groupthink
• The individual’s mental efficiency, reality • Conservatives become more cautious, and
testing, and moral judgment deteriorate as a more aggressive types take on more risk
result of group pressures • Why it occurs - Group decisions free any single
• Individuals who hold a position different from member from accountability for the group’s
that of the dominant majority are under final choice, so a more extreme position can be
pressure to suppress, withhold, or modify taken. It’s also likely that people take on
their true feelings and beliefs extreme positions because they want to
• Solutions - monitor group size (< 10 members), demonstrate how different they are from the
ensure impartiality of leaders, appoint group.
someone to challenge majority view
Work Groups vs Work Teams
• A work group is a group that interacts primarily to share information and make
decisions to help each member perform within that member’s area of responsibility.
• Merely the summation of each member’s individual contribution.
• No positive synergy to create an overall level of performance greater than the sum of
the inputs.
• Collection of individuals doing their work, albeit with interaction / interdependency.

• A work team, generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The

individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those
individual inputs.

• Work team as a subset of a work group.

Types of Teams
• Problem-Solving Teams - Teams typically comprising of 5 to 12 hourly employees
from the same department who meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of
improving quality, efficiency, and the work environment. These problem-solving
teams rarely have the authority to unilaterally implement any of their suggestions, but
if their recommendations are paired with implementation processes, some significant
improvements can be realized. Example - Merrill Lynch used a problem-solving
team to brainstorm ways to reduce the number of days needed to open a new cash
management account. By finding ways to cut the number of steps from 46 to 36, the
team—and eventually the firm—reduced the average number of days from 15 to 8.

• Self-managed work teams are groups of employees (typically 10 to 15 in number)

who perform highly related or interdependent jobs; these teams take on some
supervisory responsibilities. Typically, the responsibilities include planning and
scheduling work, assigning tasks to members, making operating decisions, taking
 action on problems, and working with suppliers and customers. Fully self-managed
work teams even select their own members and evaluate each other’s performance.
When self-managed work teams are established, former supervisory positions take on
decreased importance and are sometimes eliminated.
Critique – Not effective during conflict, higher absenteeism

• Cross-functional teams are made up of employees from about the same hierarchical
level but different work areas who come together to accomplish a task. Example -
Starbucks created a team of individuals from production, global PR, global
communications, and U.S. marketing to develop the Via brand of instant coffee. The
team’s suggestions resulted in a product that was cost-effective to produce and
distribute, and marketed with a tightly integrated, multifaceted strategy. Cross-
functional teams are an effective means of allowing people from diverse areas to
exchange information, develop new ideas, solve problems, and coordinate complex
projects.
Critique – Not easy to manage, long early stages of group formation, difficult to build
and maintain trust

• Virtual teams use computer technology to unite physically dispersed members to

achieve a common goal. They collaborate online—using communication links such as
wide area networks, corporate social media, videoconferencing, and e-mail—whether
members are nearby or continents apart. Nearly all teams today do at least some of
their work remotely.
Challenges – Correct dispersion of information, lack of social rapport and interaction,
striking proper balance of communication

Creating Team Players from Individuals –

• Hiring People with the right skills
• Training of Employees with Team Skills
• Incentivizing with Rewards

LEADERSHIP
Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of
goals.
Trait Theory - The trait theories of leadership focus on personal qualities and
characteristics, some of which have been shown to be particularly predictive of leadership
ability. The trait approach using the Big Five framework offers insight into the relationship
between personality traits and leadership. (Extraversion coupled with Openness and
Conscientiousness were found to be traits possessed by effective leaders)
Traits can predict leadership, and give an indication towards appearance of leadership and
not difference b/w effective and non-effective leaders.
Critique – Leadership is situational not static
Behavioural Theories – Trait theories don’t adequately explore the way leaders behave.
Behavioural theories of leadership imply that we can determine leadership effectiveness by
leader behaviour, and perhaps train people to be leaders.
Ohio Studies - Sought to identify independent dimensions of leader behaviour:

•The extent to which a leader is likely to define and construct

her role and those of employees for goal attainment.
•Includes behavior that attempts to organize work, work
Intiating Strructure relationships, and goals.
•Leader high in initiating structure = task-oriented
•Employees had higher productivity and more positive
performace evaluations

•Extent to which a person’s job relationships are characterized

by mutual trust, respect for employees’ ideas, and regard for
their feelings.
•A leader high in consideration helps employees with personal
Consideration problems, is friendly and approachable, treats all employees as
equals, and expresses appreciation and support (people-
oriented)
•Employees more satisfied, higher respect for leader, more
motivated

Michigan Studies – Aim - locate behavioural characteristics of leaders that related to

performance effectiveness.

• Emphasized interpersonal
relationships by taking a personal
Employee- interest in employees’ needs and
Oriented accepting individual differences
• Similar to Consideration

• Emphasized technical or task

Production- aspects of jobs, focusing on
Oriented accomplishing the group’s tasks.
• Similar to Initiating Structure
The Fiedler Contingency Model proposes that effective group performance depends on the
proper match between the leader’s style and the degree to which the situation gives the leader
control. The model’s least preferred co-worker (LPC) questionnaire identifies leadership style
by measuring whether a person is task-oriented or relationship-oriented. The LPC
questionnaire asks respondents to think of all the coworkers they have ever had and describe
the one they least enjoyed working with, on a scale of 1 to 8, for 16 sets of contrasting
adjectives (such as pleasant–unpleasant, efficient–inefficient, open–guarded, supportive–
hostile). If you describe the person you are least able to work with in favorable terms (a high
LPC score), you are relationship-oriented. If you rate your least-preferred coworker in
unfavorable terms (a low LPC score), you are primarily interested in productivity and are
task-oriented.
Situational Leadership Theory (Hersey Blanchard) (SLT) focuses on the followers. It says
successful leadership depends on selecting the right leadership style contingent on the
followers’ readiness, or the extent to which they are willing and able to accomplish a specific
task. A leader should choose one of four behaviors depending on follower readiness. If
followers are unable and unwilling to do a task, the leader needs to give clear and specific
directions; if they are unable and willing, the leader needs to display high task orientation to
compensate for followers’ lack of ability and high relationship orientation to get them to “buy
into” the leader’s desires. If followers are able and unwilling, the leader needs to use a
supportive and participative style; if they are both able and willing, the leader doesn’t need to
do much.
The Path-Goal Theory is a theory based on specifying a leader's style or behaviour that best
fits the employee and work environment in order to achieve a goal (House, Mitchell, 1974).
The goal is to increase your employees' motivation, empowerment, and satisfaction so they
become productive members of the organization.
Path-Goal is based on Vroom's (1964) expectancy theory in which an individual will act in a
certain way based on the expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on
the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. The path-goal theory was first introduced
by Martin Evans (1970) and then further developed by House (1971). The path-goal theory
can best be thought of as a process in which leaders select specific behaviors that are best
suited to the employees' needs and the working environment so that they may best guide the
employees through their path in the obtainment of their daily work activities (goals)
(Northouse, 2013).

- Avika Bhattacharya

Resources Used –
1. http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/lead_path_goal.html
2. Organizational Behaviour - Stephen P. Robbins (San Diego State University) and
Timothy A. Judge (University of Notre Dame)