Organizational Behaviour, emerging knowledge and practice for the real world, by S. McShane, M. Von Glinow (fifth edition) – Book summary
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Teams are groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization. Different types of teams can be distinguished by team permanence (1), skill diversity (2) and authority dispersion (3). Team permanence refers to how long that type of team usually exists. Authority dispersion refers to the degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team or is vested in one or a few members of the team.
There are three types of teams: departmental teams (1), self-directed teams (2) and task force teams (3). Informal groups exist because humans are social animals, they want to belong to a group, they accomplish personal objectives and we are comforted by the presence of others.
People are more motivated in groups because they have a drive to bond, because of the accountability to fellow team members and because co-workers are used for comparisons. Teams make use of process losses, which are resources expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task. If a task can be performed by one person, process losses can make a team less effective than an individual working alone. Process losses are amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team. Brook’s law states that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Social loafing is a problem that occurs when people exert less effort when working in teams than when working alone. Social loafing is more likely when individual performance is difficult to distinguish (1), the work is not very significant (2), employees lack motivation (3) and because of individual characteristics (4).
There are several strategies to reduce social loafing: form smaller teams (1), specialize tasks (2), measure individual performance (3), increase job enrichment (4) and select motivated, team-oriented employees (5).
A team is effective when it benefits the organization and its members, and survives long enough to accomplish its mandate. The team effectiveness model includes organizational and team environment, team design, team processes and team effectiveness. The organizational and team environment represents all conditions beyond the team’s boundaries that influence its effectiveness. The environment is a drive but can also generate drivers for change within teams, such as societal expectations.
There are several team design elements:
The advantage of team diversity is that diverse groups make better decisions than homogeneous teams and diverse teams have a broader pool of technical abilities. The disadvantage of team diversity is that it can lead to more conflict and effective problem solving and communication takes longer.
Team development is a team process and consists of several stages:
Developing team identity and developing team mental models and coordinating routines are the two set of processes that are the essence of team development. Team development occurs when employees make the team part of their social identity. Team development includes forming shared mental models of the work and team relationship.
A role is a set of behaviours that people are expected to perform because they hold certain positions in a team and organization. Roles can help the team achieve its goals or maintain relationships within the team. Team building is a process that consists of formal activities intended to improve the development and functioning of a work team. Team-building interventions are often organized in four categories and activities can include two or more of these categories: goal setting (1), problem-solving (2), role clarification (3) and interpersonal relations (4). Team-building interventions are most effective when participants receive training on specific team skills.
Norms are the informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behaviour of their members. Norms 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 or to select people with appropriate values. Leaders can introduce new norms or alter existing norms and team-based rewards can be used to subdue dysfunctional norms while developing useful norms.
Team cohesion refers to the degree of attraction people feel toward the team and their motivation to remain members. Team cohesion is an emotional experience. There are six important influences on team cohesion: member similarity (1), team size (2), member interaction (3), somewhat difficult entry (4), team success (5) and external competition and challenges (6).
Teams with higher cohesion tend to perform better than those with low cohesion. A team’s existence depends on a minimal level of cohesion. The relationship between team cohesion and team performance depends on task interdependence and whether the team’s norms are compatible with the organizational objectives.
Trust refers to positive expectations one person has toward another person in situations involving risk. Trust is based on calculus, knowledge and identification. Calculus-based trust represents logical calculations that other team members will act appropriately because they face sanctions if their actions violate reasonable expectations. Knowledge-based trust is based on the predictability of other team members’ behaviour. Identification-based trust is based on mutual understanding and an emotional bond among team members. Swift-trust is an initial trust and exists because people usually believe fellow team members are reasonably competent.
Self-directed teams are cross-functional workgroups that are organized around work processes, complete an entire piece of work requiring several interdependent tasks and have substantial autonomy over the execution of those tasks. The successful implementation of self-directed teams depends on several factors. They should be responsible for an entire work process (1), they should have sufficient autonomy (2) and when the worksite and technology support coordination and communication among team members and increase job enrichment (3).
Virtual teams are teams whose members operate across space, time, and organizational boundaries and are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks. Virtual teams differ from traditional teams because their members are not co-located and the members depend primarily on information technologies. High virtuality exists when team members are spread around the world.
There are four common problems of team decision making:
There are four team structures that encourage creativity in a team setting: brainstorming (1), brainwriting (2), electronic brainwriting (3) and nominal group technique (4). Brainstorming refers to a freewheeling, face-to-face meeting where members aren’t allowed to criticize but are encouraged to speak freely generate as man ideas as possible and build on the ideas of others. Brainwriting is a variation of brainstorming whereby participants write and share their ideas. Electronic brainstorming is a form of brainwriting that relies on networked computers for submitting and sharing creative ideas. Nominal group technique is a variation of brainwriting and consists of three stages. In the first stage, participants silently and independently document their ideas. In the second stage, participants collectively describe these ideas without critique and in the third stage participants silently and independently evaluate the ideas presented.
Teams are groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization. Different types of teams can be distinguished by team permanence (1), skill diversity (2) and authority dispersion (3). Team permanence refers to how long that type of team usually exists. Authority dispersion refers to the degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team or is vested in one or a few members of the team.
There are three types of teams: departmental teams (1), self-directed teams (2) and task force teams (3). Informal groups exist because humans are social animals, they want to belong to a group, they accomplish personal objectives and we are comforted by the presence of others.
People are more motivated in groups because they have a drive to bond, because of the accountability to fellow team members and because co-workers are used for comparisons. Teams make use of process losses, which are resources expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task. If a task can be performed by one person, process losses can make a team less effective than an individual working alone. Process losses are amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team. Brook’s law states that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Social loafing is a problem that occurs when people exert less effort when working in teams than when working alone. Social loafing is more likely when individual performance is difficult to distinguish (1), the work is not very significant (2), employees lack motivation (3) and because of individual characteristics (4).
There are several strategies to reduce social loafing: form smaller teams (1), specialize tasks (2), measure individual performance (3), increase job enrichment (4) and select motivated, team-oriented employees (5).
A team is effective when it benefits the organization and its members, and survives long enough to accomplish its mandate. The team effectiveness model includes organizational and team environment, team design, team processes and team effectiveness. The organizational and team environment represents all conditions beyond the team’s boundaries that influence its effectiveness. The environment is a drive but can also generate drivers for change within teams, such as societal expectations.
There are several team design elements:
Frequent, timely and accurate communication is the primary means through which employees and work units effectively synchronize their work. The functions of communication are coordination, organizational learning, decision making, changing behaviour and support employee well-being.
The communication process model states that messages are formed and encoded and decoded and feedback is formed and encoded before being sent back and being decoded. According to this model, effective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of this encoding-decoding process. A codebook makes effective communication easier (1), experience makes the process easier (2), the process is easier if the sender and receiver are skilled and motivated (3) and the process depends on the sender’s and receiver’s shared mental models of the communication context (4).
The medium is the channel through which information is transmitted. There are verbal and nonverbal channels. The use of e-mail in an organization reduces social and organizational status differences between sender and receiver. Written digital communication (e.g: e-mail) can potentially reduce stereotyping and prejudice because age, race and other features are unknown or less noticeable. The lack of face-to-face contact may also increase reliance on stereotypes.
There are several problems with email and other digital message channels. It is difficult to communicate emotions using digital message channels (1), there is less politeness and respectfulness (2), it is inefficient in ambiguous, complex and novel situations (3) and it contributes to information overload (4). Flaming describes digital messages that convey strong negative emotions.
Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance and silence. Nonverbal cues are generally more ambiguous and susceptible to misinterpretation. Emotional contagion is the automatic process of catching or sharing another person’s emotions by mimicking that person’s facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviours. Emotional contagion influences communication and social relationships in three ways. Mimicry provides feedback (1), mimicking seems to be a way of receiving emotional meaning from people (2) and mimicry helps us fulfil the drive to bond (3).
There are four important factors when deciding which communication channel to use:
Power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to influence others. Power is based on the target’s perception that the power holder controls. Power is also based on dependence, the target needs to believe that someone has access to a resource that can help or hinder him to achieve a goal. Countervailing power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to keep a more powerful person or group in the exchange relationship. A minimum level of trust is crucial in order to have power. There are several sources of power:
Humans have a norm of reciprocity, a felt obligation and social expectation to help someone who has previously helped you. This norm is a form of legitimate power because it is an informal rule of conduct we are expected to follow. Charisma is a personal characteristic that serves as a form of interpersonal attraction and referent power over others.
There are four important contingencies of power:
Social networks are social structures of individuals or social units that are connected to each other
.....read moreConflict is the process in which one party perceives that its interest is being opposed or negatively affected by another party. Conflict is based on perception. One party can believe they have a conflict without the other party believing this. Conflict can lead to lower performance, higher stress, dissatisfaction and turnover, less information sharing and coordination, increased organizational politics, wasted resources and weakened team cohesion. There are also benefits of conflict. The optimal conflict perspective states that organizations are most effective when employees experience some levels of conflict but become less effective with high levels of conflict. Conflict can lead to better decision making, make people more responsive to the changing environment and lead to a stronger team cohesion if the conflict is between the team and outside opponents.
There are two types of conflict:
The stronger the level of debate and the more the issue is tied to our self-view, the more likely that task conflict will evolve into relationship conflict. There are three conditions that potentially minimize the level of relationship conflict during task conflict: emotional intelligence and emotional stability (1), cohesive team (2) and supportive team norms (3).
There are different sources of conflicts in organizations:
Pooled interdependence occurs where individuals operate independently except for reliance on a common resource or authority. Reciprocal interdependence refers to high mutual dependence as well as higher centrality.
There are five ways of resolving conflicts:
Leadership refers to influencing, motivating and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. Leadership refers to a role and not a position. Shared leadership is the view that leadership is a role, not a position assigned to one person and people within the team and organization lead each other. In order for shared leadership to be effective, formal leaders need to be willing to give up some power.
Transformational leadership refers to a leadership perspective that explains how leaders change teams or organizations by creating, communicating and modelling a vision for the organization and inspiring employees to strive for that vision. There are four elements of transformational leadership:
Charisma is a personal trait or relational quality that provides referent power over followers. It can be useful for transformational leadership but is not required for it. Charismatic leadership tends to produce dependent followers. A crisis leads to a greater attribution of charisma.
Managerial leadership is a perspective that states that effective leaders help employees improve their performance and well-being toward current objectives and practices. Managerial leadership assumes stable goals and external environment. Managerial leadership is more related to specific performance and transformational leadership is more abstract.
There is a difference between task-oriented behaviour and people-oriented behaviour:
Servant leadership is the view that leaders serve followers. Servant leaders have a desire to help others and remain humble. The path-goal leadership theory states that the most effective leadership style depends on the employees and situations. This theory highlights four leadership styles:
Employee characteristics
.....read moreOrganizational structure refers to the division of labour as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow and formal power that direct organizational activities.
Organizational structures include two requirements, the division of labour into distinct tasks (1) and the coordination of labour (2). Division of labour refers to the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people. Job specialization increases work efficiency. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate with each other. There are three coordination mechanisms:
People with liaison roles are expected to communicate and share information with co-workers in other work units. People with integrator roles are responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities.
Organizational structure has four elements: span of control, centralization, formalization and departmentalization.
The span of control refers to the number of people directly reporting to the next level above in the hierarchy. The best span of control is decided by the degree of autonomy for staff members (1), whether employees perform routine tasks (2) and the degree of interdependence among employees within the department or team (3). A highly interdependent job requires a narrow span of control because there is more conflict. The span of control is interconnected with organizational size and the number of layers in the organizational hierarchy. A wide span of control is only achievable by removing layers of management.
Centralization means that formal decision-making authority is held by a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Larger organizations often decentralize, they disperse decision making authority and power throughout the organization.
Formalization is the degree to which organizations standardize behaviour through rules, procedures, formal training and related mechanisms. Formalization can increase efficiency and compliance, but it can reduce organizational flexibility, organizational learning and creativity. Formalization is also a source of job dissatisfaction and work stress.
A mechanistic structure is an organizational structure with a narrow span of control and a high degree of formalization and centralization. An organic structure is an organizational structure with a wide span of control, little formalization and decentralized decision making. Mechanistic structures operate better in stable environments because they rely on efficiency
.....read moreValues are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations. Shared values are values that people within the organization or work unit have in common. Shared assumptions are nonconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behaviour that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities. Espoused values are the stated values and enacted values are values we actually act upon. The organization’s culture consists of shared values and shared assumptions.
There are seven main corporate cultures, although many of the popular organizational culture models and measures oversimplify the variety of organizational cultures because as long as employees have diverse values, an organization’s culture will have noticeable variability. The seven main corporate cultures are innovation (1), stability (2), respect for people (3), outcome orientation (4), attention to detail (5), team orientation (6) and aggressiveness (7).
Subcultures can enhance the dominant culture by espousing parallel assumptions and values. Countercultures embrace values or assumptions that directly oppose the dominant culture. Countercultures potentially create conflict and dissension among employees, but can also maintain the organization’s standards of performance and ethical behaviour and they act as spawning grounds for emerging values that keep the firm aligned with the evolving needs and expectations of the environment.
Artefacts are the observable signs and symbols of an organization’s culture. There are four broad categories of artefacts:
The strength of an organization’s culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company’s dominant values and assumptions. Organizational culture has three important functions: control system (1), it influences employee decisions and behaviour, social glue (2), it bonds people together and makes them feel part of the organizational experience and sense-making (3), it helps employees make sense of what’s going on.
Strong organizational cultures only improve organizational effectiveness under specific conditions. There are three conditions:
Lewin’s force field analysis model describes the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change. Driving forces are forces that lead to organizational change. Restraining forces are forces that maintain the status quo. Stability occurs when both forces are equal. Unfreezing occurs when there is disequilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces, leading to effective change. Refreezing occurs when systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviours. This model states that effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to the desired position and then refreezing the situation.
Subtle resistance to change is more common than overt resistance to change. Some people experience change as relational conflict, although experiencing it as a task conflict would be more productive. There are several reasons why employees resist change:
Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces. Increasing the driving forces can be done by using threats, but this is ineffective. Weakening the restraining forces doesn’t lead to motivation to change.
Developing an urgency to change can help produce change in the organization and can be done by informing and reminding employees about competitors and other forms of external turbulence. A successful company is often less vigilant about threats. Creating an urgency to change when the organization is ahead of the competition requires a lot of persuasive influence that helps employees visualize future competitive threats and environmental threats.
There are six main strategies for reducing the restraining forces:
Organizational behaviour is the study of what people think, feel and do in and around organizations. It also encompasses how organizations interact with their environment. Organizations are groups of people who work interdependently toward some purpose. Organizations are collective entities. Organizational behaviour theories are important because they influence organizational events (1), they comprehend and predict work events (2) and they adopt more accurate personal theories (3).
There are several major environmental developments facing organizations:
Telecommuting is working from home one or more workdays per month rather than commute to the office. Telecommuters usually experience better work-life balance, but these telecommuters need privacy at home for this. Telecommuting increases productivity and is better for the environment. Disadvantages of telecommuting include more social isolation, lower team cohesion and a weaker organizational culture.
There is a difference in deep-level diversity among age cohorts. Workforce diversity has advantages, such as more creativity and better decision making. Disadvantages to diversity in the workplace are that diverse people take longer to effectively communicate and there is a risk of dysfunctional conflict, which reduces information sharing and satisfaction with co-workers.
There are several anchors of organizational behaviour knowledge:
The systematic research anchor states that knowledge should be based on systematic research. This is the basis for evidence-based management. This is the practice of making decisions and taking actions based on research evidence. Managers rarely make use of evidence-based management, because they receive a lot of ideas, the sources of those ideas are rewarded for marketing those ideas and the research is often very broad. The multidisciplinary anchor states that knowledge and theories from other disciplines should be welcomed. The contingency anchor states that the effect of one variable on another variable often depends on the characteristics of the situation or people involved. The multiple levels of analysis anchor state that organizational events should be placed into three levels of analysis: individual, team and organization.
Organizational effectiveness refers to a broad concept which includes the organization’s fit with the external environment, internal subsystems, configuration for high performance, emphasis on organizational learning and ability to satisfy the needs
.....read moreThe MARS model consists of motivation, ability, role perception and situational factors:
There are five categories of individual behaviour:
Personality is the relatively enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that characterize a person, along with the psychological processes behind those characteristics. Traits are broad concepts that allow us to label and understand individual differences. Personality is not consistent across all situations, because some situations override the personality (e.g: a funeral). Personality typically stabilizes by around age 30, although it can still change. The five-factor model (Big Five) represents the five most broad dimensions of personality:
Self-concept is an individual’s self-belief and self-evaluations. Our self-concept is defined at an individual, relational and collective level. An individual’s self-concept can be described by three characteristics: complexity (number of distinct and important roles), consistency (amount of self-views that require similar personality traits) and clarity (clear, defined and stable). Clarity increases with age because personality and values become relatively stable by adulthood and people develop better self-awareness through life experiences. Clarity is higher when the consistency is high.
The higher the complexity, consistency and clarity, the better well-being people tend to have. Too much variation causes internal tension and conflict, but consistency can help with this. Employees with complex self-concept tend to be better at adaptive performance. Self-concept clarity improves performance. There are four processes that shape self-concept and motivate a person’s decisions and behaviour:
Perception begins when environmental stimuli are received through our senses. Through selective attention and emotional marker response, we make a perceptual organization and interpretation and this leads to attitudes and behaviour. One selective attention bias is the effect of our assumptions and expectations about future events. Our assumptions and expectations determine what we see (or what is more salient). Another selective attention bias is confirmation bias.
Categorical thinking refers to organizing perceptions into preconceived categories that are stored in our long-term memory. Another form of perceptual grouping involves filling in the missing information. The tendency to look for patterns is also a form of perceptual grouping, the grouping of perceptions in trends. Mental models are knowledge structures that we develop to describe, explain and predict the world around us. Mental models partly rely on the process of perceptual grouping. Questioning ourselves about our assumptions and working with people from diverse backgrounds is a good way to change mental models.
Stereotyping is the process of assigning traits to
.....read moreBehaviour in the workplace is influenced by cognitive processes and emotions. Emotions may have a greater effect because they can occur prior to cognitive processes. Emotions are physiological, behavioural and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person or event. Emotional states are short-term and moods are long-term. All emotions have two common features: emotions have a certain valence, also called core affect (e.g: approach or avoid object) (1) and emotions ready us to some extent (2).
Attitudes are evaluations of an object or event. Attitudes consist of beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions. Feelings can make sure that attitudes differ, even though the beliefs and the behaviours are the same for two people. Having more positive emotions at work can counteract negative experiences at work. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable physiological state when attitudes and behaviour conflict. Cognitive dissonance can be reduced by changing the attitude or behaviour. Emotions are partly determined by personality. The actual situation in which people work has a stronger influence on their attitudes and behaviour than personality.
Emotional labour refers to the effort, planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. Emotional labour is higher when the display rules are precise, if the contact with the client is frequent and long and if the emotions have to be intense. Norms about displaying or hiding your true emotions vary across cultures. Emotional dissonance refers to the tension when the emotions people are required to display differ from the emotions they are actually experiencing at the moment. Surface acting can help with this, pretending to feel the expected emotion. Surface acting can lead to higher stress and burnout. The psychological damage can be reduced by seeing surface acting as part of a role. This does not deprive the person’s self-worth. Deep acting involves visualizing reality differently, which produces emotions more consistent with the required emotion. Deep acting requires emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is a set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion and regulate emotion in oneself and others. Emotional intelligence consists of four dimensions:
The four dimensions form a hierarchy and one dimension needs to be fulfilled in order to go to the next one (4-3-2-1). Emotional intelligence improves employee performance and well-being. It only improves tasks that require social interaction. Emotional intelligence can be improved through training and improves with age.
Job satisfaction is a person’s evaluation of his or her job and work context. It is
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The meaning and effect of money differ between men and women. Men attach more value to money than women. Women see money in terms of things they can do with it and men see it as a symbol of power and autonomy. People in countries with high power distance have a high priority for money.
There are four types of objectives of rewards:
There are several types of performance-based rewards:
Very large rewards can result in lower performance. Reward systems motivate most employees, but only under the right conditions. There are several strategies for improving reward effectiveness:
Decision making is the process of making choices among alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs. Rational choice decision making selects the best alternative by calculation the probability that various outcomes will occur from the choices and the expected satisfaction from each of those outcomes. An opportunity is a deviation between current expectations and a potentially better situation that was not previously expected.
There are five main problems of problem identification:
Identifying problems can be improved by acquiring new perspectives, having leaders that have the willpower to resist the temptation of decisive decision making and create a norm of divine discontent (never being satisfied with the current conditions).
Bounded rationality is the view that people are bounded in their decision-making capabilities, including access to limited information, limited information processing and a tendency toward satisficing rather than maximizing when making choices. Problems with goals are that problems are often ambiguous and problems can conflict. Sequential evaluation occurs because all alternatives are not usually available to the decision-maker at the same time. The implicit favourite is a preferred alternative that the decision-maker uses repeatedly as a comparison with other choices. The main reason why decision-makers compare alternatives against an implicit favourite is the need to minimize cognitive dissonance. There are three main decision-making heuristics:
Clustering illusion is the tendency to see patterns from a small sample of events when those events are random. Satisficing is selecting an alternative that is good enough, rather than the alternative with the highest value. People stop searching for alternatives the moment they find one option that is good enough. Maximizing decision making is difficult when there are a lot of alternatives.
Emotions affect the evaluation of alternatives
.....read moreTeams are groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization. Different types of teams can be distinguished by team permanence (1), skill diversity (2) and authority dispersion (3). Team permanence refers to how long that type of team usually exists. Authority dispersion refers to the degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team or is vested in one or a few members of the team.
There are three types of teams: departmental teams (1), self-directed teams (2) and task force teams (3). Informal groups exist because humans are social animals, they want to belong to a group, they accomplish personal objectives and we are comforted by the presence of others.
People are more motivated in groups because they have a drive to bond, because of the accountability to fellow team members and because co-workers are used for comparisons. Teams make use of process losses, which are resources expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task. If a task can be performed by one person, process losses can make a team less effective than an individual working alone. Process losses are amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team. Brook’s law states that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Social loafing is a problem that occurs when people exert less effort when working in teams than when working alone. Social loafing is more likely when individual performance is difficult to distinguish (1), the work is not very significant (2), employees lack motivation (3) and because of individual characteristics (4).
There are several strategies to reduce social loafing: form smaller teams (1), specialize tasks (2), measure individual performance (3), increase job enrichment (4) and select motivated, team-oriented employees (5).
A team is effective when it benefits the organization and its members, and survives long enough to accomplish its mandate. The team effectiveness model includes organizational and team environment, team design, team processes and team effectiveness. The organizational and team environment represents all conditions beyond the team’s boundaries that influence its effectiveness. The environment is a drive but can also generate drivers for change within teams, such as societal expectations.
There are several team design elements:
Frequent, timely and accurate communication is the primary means through which employees and work units effectively synchronize their work. The functions of communication are coordination, organizational learning, decision making, changing behaviour and support employee well-being.
The communication process model states that messages are formed and encoded and decoded and feedback is formed and encoded before being sent back and being decoded. According to this model, effective communication depends on the sender’s and receiver’s ability, motivation, role clarity and situational support to efficiently and accurately encode and decode information. There are four main factors that influence the effectiveness of this encoding-decoding process. A codebook makes effective communication easier (1), experience makes the process easier (2), the process is easier if the sender and receiver are skilled and motivated (3) and the process depends on the sender’s and receiver’s shared mental models of the communication context (4).
The medium is the channel through which information is transmitted. There are verbal and nonverbal channels. The use of e-mail in an organization reduces social and organizational status differences between sender and receiver. Written digital communication (e.g: e-mail) can potentially reduce stereotyping and prejudice because age, race and other features are unknown or less noticeable. The lack of face-to-face contact may also increase reliance on stereotypes.
There are several problems with email and other digital message channels. It is difficult to communicate emotions using digital message channels (1), there is less politeness and respectfulness (2), it is inefficient in ambiguous, complex and novel situations (3) and it contributes to information overload (4). Flaming describes digital messages that convey strong negative emotions.
Nonverbal communication includes facial gestures, voice intonation, physical distance and silence. Nonverbal cues are generally more ambiguous and susceptible to misinterpretation. Emotional contagion is the automatic process of catching or sharing another person’s emotions by mimicking that person’s facial expressions and other nonverbal behaviours. Emotional contagion influences communication and social relationships in three ways. Mimicry provides feedback (1), mimicking seems to be a way of receiving emotional meaning from people (2) and mimicry helps us fulfil the drive to bond (3).
There are four important factors when deciding which communication channel to use:
Power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to influence others. Power is based on the target’s perception that the power holder controls. Power is also based on dependence, the target needs to believe that someone has access to a resource that can help or hinder him to achieve a goal. Countervailing power is the capacity of a person, team, or organization to keep a more powerful person or group in the exchange relationship. A minimum level of trust is crucial in order to have power. There are several sources of power:
Humans have a norm of reciprocity, a felt obligation and social expectation to help someone who has previously helped you. This norm is a form of legitimate power because it is an informal rule of conduct we are expected to follow. Charisma is a personal characteristic that serves as a form of interpersonal attraction and referent power over others.
There are four important contingencies of power:
Social networks are social structures of individuals or social units that are connected to each other
.....read moreConflict is the process in which one party perceives that its interest is being opposed or negatively affected by another party. Conflict is based on perception. One party can believe they have a conflict without the other party believing this. Conflict can lead to lower performance, higher stress, dissatisfaction and turnover, less information sharing and coordination, increased organizational politics, wasted resources and weakened team cohesion. There are also benefits of conflict. The optimal conflict perspective states that organizations are most effective when employees experience some levels of conflict but become less effective with high levels of conflict. Conflict can lead to better decision making, make people more responsive to the changing environment and lead to a stronger team cohesion if the conflict is between the team and outside opponents.
There are two types of conflict:
The stronger the level of debate and the more the issue is tied to our self-view, the more likely that task conflict will evolve into relationship conflict. There are three conditions that potentially minimize the level of relationship conflict during task conflict: emotional intelligence and emotional stability (1), cohesive team (2) and supportive team norms (3).
There are different sources of conflicts in organizations:
Pooled interdependence occurs where individuals operate independently except for reliance on a common resource or authority. Reciprocal interdependence refers to high mutual dependence as well as higher centrality.
There are five ways of resolving conflicts:
Leadership refers to influencing, motivating and enabling others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members. Leadership refers to a role and not a position. Shared leadership is the view that leadership is a role, not a position assigned to one person and people within the team and organization lead each other. In order for shared leadership to be effective, formal leaders need to be willing to give up some power.
Transformational leadership refers to a leadership perspective that explains how leaders change teams or organizations by creating, communicating and modelling a vision for the organization and inspiring employees to strive for that vision. There are four elements of transformational leadership:
Charisma is a personal trait or relational quality that provides referent power over followers. It can be useful for transformational leadership but is not required for it. Charismatic leadership tends to produce dependent followers. A crisis leads to a greater attribution of charisma.
Managerial leadership is a perspective that states that effective leaders help employees improve their performance and well-being toward current objectives and practices. Managerial leadership assumes stable goals and external environment. Managerial leadership is more related to specific performance and transformational leadership is more abstract.
There is a difference between task-oriented behaviour and people-oriented behaviour:
Servant leadership is the view that leaders serve followers. Servant leaders have a desire to help others and remain humble. The path-goal leadership theory states that the most effective leadership style depends on the employees and situations. This theory highlights four leadership styles:
Employee characteristics
.....read moreOrganizational structure refers to the division of labour as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow and formal power that direct organizational activities.
Organizational structures include two requirements, the division of labour into distinct tasks (1) and the coordination of labour (2). Division of labour refers to the subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people. Job specialization increases work efficiency. An organization’s ability to divide work among people depends on how well those people can coordinate with each other. There are three coordination mechanisms:
People with liaison roles are expected to communicate and share information with co-workers in other work units. People with integrator roles are responsible for coordinating a work process by encouraging employees in each work unit to share information and informally coordinate work activities.
Organizational structure has four elements: span of control, centralization, formalization and departmentalization.
The span of control refers to the number of people directly reporting to the next level above in the hierarchy. The best span of control is decided by the degree of autonomy for staff members (1), whether employees perform routine tasks (2) and the degree of interdependence among employees within the department or team (3). A highly interdependent job requires a narrow span of control because there is more conflict. The span of control is interconnected with organizational size and the number of layers in the organizational hierarchy. A wide span of control is only achievable by removing layers of management.
Centralization means that formal decision-making authority is held by a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Larger organizations often decentralize, they disperse decision making authority and power throughout the organization.
Formalization is the degree to which organizations standardize behaviour through rules, procedures, formal training and related mechanisms. Formalization can increase efficiency and compliance, but it can reduce organizational flexibility, organizational learning and creativity. Formalization is also a source of job dissatisfaction and work stress.
A mechanistic structure is an organizational structure with a narrow span of control and a high degree of formalization and centralization. An organic structure is an organizational structure with a wide span of control, little formalization and decentralized decision making. Mechanistic structures operate better in stable environments because they rely on efficiency
.....read moreValues are stable, evaluative beliefs that guide our preferences for outcomes or courses of action in a variety of situations. Shared values are values that people within the organization or work unit have in common. Shared assumptions are nonconscious, taken-for-granted perceptions or ideal prototypes of behaviour that are considered the correct way to think and act toward problems and opportunities. Espoused values are the stated values and enacted values are values we actually act upon. The organization’s culture consists of shared values and shared assumptions.
There are seven main corporate cultures, although many of the popular organizational culture models and measures oversimplify the variety of organizational cultures because as long as employees have diverse values, an organization’s culture will have noticeable variability. The seven main corporate cultures are innovation (1), stability (2), respect for people (3), outcome orientation (4), attention to detail (5), team orientation (6) and aggressiveness (7).
Subcultures can enhance the dominant culture by espousing parallel assumptions and values. Countercultures embrace values or assumptions that directly oppose the dominant culture. Countercultures potentially create conflict and dissension among employees, but can also maintain the organization’s standards of performance and ethical behaviour and they act as spawning grounds for emerging values that keep the firm aligned with the evolving needs and expectations of the environment.
Artefacts are the observable signs and symbols of an organization’s culture. There are four broad categories of artefacts:
The strength of an organization’s culture refers to how widely and deeply employees hold the company’s dominant values and assumptions. Organizational culture has three important functions: control system (1), it influences employee decisions and behaviour, social glue (2), it bonds people together and makes them feel part of the organizational experience and sense-making (3), it helps employees make sense of what’s going on.
Strong organizational cultures only improve organizational effectiveness under specific conditions. There are three conditions:
Lewin’s force field analysis model describes the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change. Driving forces are forces that lead to organizational change. Restraining forces are forces that maintain the status quo. Stability occurs when both forces are equal. Unfreezing occurs when there is disequilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces, leading to effective change. Refreezing occurs when systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviours. This model states that effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to the desired position and then refreezing the situation.
Subtle resistance to change is more common than overt resistance to change. Some people experience change as relational conflict, although experiencing it as a task conflict would be more productive. There are several reasons why employees resist change:
Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces. Increasing the driving forces can be done by using threats, but this is ineffective. Weakening the restraining forces doesn’t lead to motivation to change.
Developing an urgency to change can help produce change in the organization and can be done by informing and reminding employees about competitors and other forms of external turbulence. A successful company is often less vigilant about threats. Creating an urgency to change when the organization is ahead of the competition requires a lot of persuasive influence that helps employees visualize future competitive threats and environmental threats.
There are six main strategies for reducing the restraining forces:
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