Chapter 9:
Groups and teams in organisations

Group:

  • refers to 2+ indies who share common interest, characteristics and influences each other. can function independently from each other but do elect a leader

Team:

  • a group of complementary indies who have a common purpose defined by a set of performance goals.
  • each member is accountable for fulfilling their role

Difference between a group and a team

G;

  • Leadership: strong indie
  • Goals: indie
    • Relationship: Independent and shared
  • Responsibility: Low
  • Accountability: Individual
  • Purpose: Indie based on shared interest
  • Skills: complementary

Think of Oppenheimer, where each scientist had to do their own thing to achieve the nuclear bomb

T;

  • Leadership: Shared
  • Goals: Mutually agreed
  • Commitment: High team commitment and mutual org commitment
  • Relationship: Strong bond, sense of community and interdependent
  • Responsibility: Collective
  • Accountability: individual and shared
  • Purpose: Common, team specific
  • Skills: Varied

A group of friends making an outing or being stuck in the woods and require each others skill set

5 Types of teams:


  • Functional
  • Self-Management
  • Multidisciplinary
  • Problem solving
  • Virtual
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Functional;

  • members from a singular department solves problems common to their area of expertise.
  • Diagram on page 269 or slide 8

Problem-solving,

  • consists of 5-20 employees, in an org focused on improvement
  • formed in limited time frames that incorporate different staff members from different levels
    • Tasks forces, a temp team created to solve a specific problem
    • Quality circles(TQM teams) is a group of employees who meet regularly to id and analyse various types of workplace problems and propose solutions.
  • Must share experiences and disagreements are encouraged.

Multidisciplinary work teams;

  • can be permanent or temp, depending on the tasks and goals
  • consists of 5-30 members from various departments and levels of the org.
  • think of oceans 11 or the A-team
    • Development teams, used to bring a product into the market.

Self-Management;

  • consists of 5-15 people who work together to deliver an entire services or product
    • high-performance team, teams that are composed of highly skilled members who are fully empowered to accomplish major tasks.

pros:

  • improved quality, productivity and service,
  • better decision-making
  • Reduced operating costs
  • Faster response to technological change
  • Fewer, simpler job classification's
  • Increased employee engagement and commitment to the rog

Virtual,

  • teams that meets members without being physically present.
  • Can be all of the above teams, and comprised of members overseas and nationally.
  • communications tech allows for collab exchanges like microsoft team and zoom.

Types of virtual teams:
Networked teams

  • cross functional experts, from outside the country
    • durations members switch out when to achieve individual task.
    • i.e. tech or consultancy experts within org
      Parallel teams,
      members of the same org
    • Duration until goal is achieved
    • i.e. IT process or system implementation
      Management teams
  • Global management members from the same org
    • Duration, ongoing yearly
    • i.e. Development of a corporate-level strat team
      Action teams
  • members join or exit team on a when needed basis to solve immediate problems
    • Duration, unit problem solved
    • Engineering team assisting an org

Guidlines;

  • Select the right team members
  • Connect to the Job at hand
  • Encourage frequent communication
  • Ensures employees' well being by continuously monitoring them
  • Use effective tech to facilitate communication and collabs

Advantages of global virtual teams:

  • org benefits for the diversity of knowledge from people around the world
  • The org isnt limited to one 24hr workday
  • orgs save money using online meetings via remote computer access
  • team members have access to one another via email at any time
  • members dont need to travel to take meetings saving costs

2 Types of groups;

  • informal groups; consists of a small number of indies who often participate in activities together to meet their mutual needs
  • members of informal groups may be for, against, of higher authority or indifferent to the orgs goals
    • i.e. friendship groups or reference groups
  • A formal group is created within an org, with the intention of completing a specific role or task, also called work teams
    • consist of a small number of id'able, interdependent employees who are held accountable for performing tasks that contribute to achieving an orgs goals.

The importance of a group and teams:

  • Improve on-time delivery
  • improve customer relations
  • lead to a better problem solving
  • improve quality
  • increase employee's ownership, commitment and motivations
  • improve employee's understanding of the business
  • facilitate innovation in products and services.

Model of work team functioning; 4 key components

  1. External support system
  2. Team design
  3. Internal team process
  4. Criteria for assessing the teams effectiveness
  1. External system, comprises of the conditions and influences in the org context that exists, prior and after the work team is formed
  • influences are cultural, organisational design and the HRM system
  • org values that encourage participation from low-level employees increase the likelihood that work team members support org goals.

Everything that cause the work environment to act as it does, before the teams is formed and after

Culture, 2 levels of culture,

  • Societal culture, in which the work team operates is a major aspect of the external system
  • indvidualistic societies teams can work well together if supported by the org culture.
  1. Team design, the design choice involved in creating a work team are plenty.

  • Team size;


    • can influence how well team members work with one another towards achieving their goals
    • a general principle is that understaffed teams tend to outperform overstaffed ones

  • Team proximity


    • Refers to the location of a team's members. 2 Aspects of proximity are relevant when designing a work team:
      • team's proximity to other work teams and members of the org, and the proximity of a team members to one another.

Org design,

  • Directly influences the formation and functioning of work teams.
  • Traditional orgs rely heavily on stable, functional work teams with a designated leader
  • In innovative orgs, working on several different teams simultaneously, or in rapid succession is typical
  • impact of 4IR and the increase in AI, automation, digitalisation and robots will result in work being organised by the project less the role
  • A virtual org is borderless and totally dependent on electronic information and communication tech

HRM systems,
they practice, such as training and performance appraisals, must be reconsidered for virtual teams.

  • A further important consideration is selecting the correct tech tools to enable virtual employee collab and sharing knowledge

3. Internal processes,

  • internal processes include the development of work team norms over time, personal feelings, and behaviours, these are components interrelated, A change in one causes change in others
  • Team objectives should be SMART
  • The establishment of clear norms and positive feelings precedes effective completion of the task, paying attention to norms and feelings is as important as understanding the task.
  • Effective leaders of work teams help shape the development of effective internal processes

Developments of work teams;

  1. Forming;
  • work team focuses on orientating towards its goals and procedures
  • team leaders role in the forming stage is to put members to ease and help them to get to know one another as well as outline the expectations of team members
  1. Storming;
  • Potential conflicts or disagreements and competitive behaviour will develop.
  • Team leaders role in conflict resolution is to acknowledge all concerns and guide the team members towards shared goals.
  1. Norming;
  • Task-related and role behaviours of team members are progressively resolved through cooperation, teamwork, support and open communication
  • Team leader must guide members towards buy-in of team's rules and norms and ensure that all members related to the team values
  1. Performing stage;
  • A sense of mutual trust and acceptance is established.
  • Leadership is necessary to direct team performance during this stage. to maintain team harmony, it is better to reward the team rather than individual performances

Groupthink, is an agreement-at-any-cost mentality that results in ineffective decision-making by work teams and may lead to poor solutions.

  1. Adjourning stage,
  • terminating task behaviours and disengaging from relationships
  • this stage is not always planned and can be abrupt
  • Team members often experience feelings of closure and sadness as they prepare to leave.

Feelings, reflect the emotional climate of a group. The key feelings that most likely influence work team effectiveness and productivity are:

  • Trusting members
  • Openness towards other members
  • Freedom to participate responsibility without any pressure and held accountable
  • commitment to working together to achieve common goals.
    The stronger the feelings the stronger the cohesiveness(willingness to stay)

Behavioural norms;

  • They set standards for members' behaviours under specific circumstances
  • Their main function is to regulate and standardise the behaviours viewed as important by team members

Criteria for a work team;

  • standard of appropriate behaviour for team members.
  • Members generally agree on the standard. that does not mean that all team members agree.
  • members are aware that the team supports a particular standard through a system of rewards for compliance and punishments for violations

Norm developments;


  • Explicit statements;


    Superiors or co-workers; make explicit rules with regards to behaviour for team to meet goals


    • i.e. Smoke areas in designated areas

  • Critical events;


    the occurrence of a traumatic event or accident in the work place


    • i.e. someone lost their arm and now everyone monitors each other.

  • First behaviours;


    the overall efficiency, conduct and mannerisms of displayed upon first impressions lay the standard.


    • i.e. seating arrangements

  • Past experiences;


    the carry-over of norms from past experiences influence the formation of norms


    • i.e. corporate culture and the necessities.

4. work team effectiveness;

  • the achievement of outcomes by indie members and the whole team,
  • work teams are effective in some respects and not with others, thus teams often rate their performance on criterions.
    • those being customer satisfaction
    • teams satisfaction
    • satisfaction with the entirety of the team

Work Team Leadership,
in some work teams, 1 person remains the leader throughout the life of the team, whereas in other teams, the leadership role is rotated among team members.

  • Empowerment, managing the external boundaries and disbanding effective work team
  1. Empowerment,
    putting the employees in charge of allowing them to make decisions that affect themselves and what they do.
  • Work teams could and can work at a satisfactory level with little desire to improve.
  • Leaders need to be responsible for having a clear goal for the work team to work towards. should work
  • responsible for explaining the business plan to the team
  • Team leaders held accountable for training of the new staff.

7 steps leading to highly empowered teams and encourage team cohesiveness;

  1. Offer empowerment that matches the skill set of the team and challenges the teams abilities.
  2. Communicate the intention of empowerment to the team and ask for their input on what type of empowerment they anticipate
  3. align team empowerment with org vision
  4. provide positive and constructive feedback to ensure team members trust the reason for empowerment
  5. Offer mentoring or coaching to team members
  6. offer rewards to team members who engage in team empowerment
  7. Address problem solving by providing insight into successful problem-solving methods
  1. Managing the external boundary;
  • work team members and leaders alike naturally focus much of their attention on the teams internal process; i.e. progression and cohesiveness.
  • Experienced team member still look towards the leader for updates on the business plan of the company and the external conditions
  • Effective leaders manage relationships with important external stakeholders.
  • team leaders act as liaisons for TM and key clients.
  1. Disbanding an ineffective work team;
  • Work team leaders must learn to recognise when poorly functioning work teams have reached the point of no return.
  • occasionally despite all efforts to build an effective team, conflicts between members escalate beyond repair
  • Disbanding therefor occurs when the team is terminated or breaks up.

The time is in sync and understand what each member needs to do and trust that they can do what is required, everyone accepts each other

What the team members and team actually get done, base these thing on Satsifaction.

Informal group