Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SUMMARY
Chapter 9
Foundation of Group Behavior
DEFINING AND CLASSIFYING GROUPS
COMMAND GROUP
A group composed of the individuals
who report directly to a given
manager.
FORMAL
A designated work group defined by
an organization's structure.
TASK GROUP
People working together to complete
a job task.
GROUP
Two or more individuals, interacting
and interdependent, who have come
together to achieve particular
objectives. INTEREST GROUP
People working together to attain a
specific objective with which each is
INFORMAL concerned.
A group that is neither formally
structured nor organizationally
determined; such a group appears in
response to the need for social
contact. FRIENDSHIP GROUP
People brought together because
they share one or more common
characteristic.
Our tendency to take personal pride or offense for the accomplishments of a group is
the territory of social identity theory. It propose that people have emotional reactions
to failure or success of their group because their self-esteem gets tied into the
performance of the group.
Ingroup favoritism: we see members of our ingroup as better than other people, and
people not in our group as all the same.
i. Stage I: Forming
Characterized by much uncertainty.
ii. Stage II: Storming
Characterized by intragroup conflict.
iii. Stage III: Norming
Characterized by close relationships and cohesiveness.
iv. Stage IV: Performing
During which the group is fully functional.
v. Stage V: Adjourning
Characterized by concern with wrapping up activities rather than task performance.
All group members have roles. Many of these roles are compatibles; some create
conflicts.
Role perceptions: our view on how someone is supposed to act in a given situation.
Role expectations: how others believe a person should act in a given situation.
Norms: acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s
members.
Norms can cover virtually any aspect of group behavior which is:
1. Performance norm: explicit cues about how hard member should work, etc.
2. Appearance norm; dress codes, unspoken rule about when to look busy.
3. Social arrangement norm.
4. Allocation norm; distribution of resource, assignment of difficult job, etc.
Conformity: the adjustment of one’s behavior to align with the norms of the group.
People conform to reference group, the important groups to which they belong or hope
to belong.
Status: a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group member by others.
Smaller groups are faster at completing tasks than larger ones and that individuals
perform better in smaller groups than larger ones. But, in problem solving, large groups
consistently gets better marks than their smaller counterparts.
Social loafing: the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working
collectively than alone.
Cohesiveness: the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are
motivated to stay in group.
- Conformity pressures.
- Dominated by one or a few members.
- Ambiguous responsibility.
Groupthink: a phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic
appraisal of alternative courses of action.