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Informal groups in global work environment: group work or team work?

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Informal Groups in Global Work Environment: Group Work or Team
Work?
Zoltan Raluca
„Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration
raluca.zoltan@gmail.com
Vancea Romulus
„Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration
vancea.romulus@gmail.com
Abstract
Groups and teams within the
organizations represent a widespread subject
of research nowadays. But there are aspects
that still need to be considered, especially in
a global economy which brings along new
opportunities and challenges. In this context,
in the present paper we aim to clarify the
differences between formal group, informal
group and team, but mostly between group
work and team work, as different work styles
in organization. We also point out the
consequences of using the wrong type of
work style in a specific task situation which is
particularly important in actual global work
environment.
Key words: formal group, informal group,
work team, group work, team work.
J.E.L. classification: D23, L29, M12, M19,
M54, O15
1. Introduction
The most general classification of the
organizational groups takes into
consideration the degree of informality in the
relations between employees, respectively
are delimited formal groups, with low levels
of informality, and informal groups, with
high level of informality.
Formal group is a group that exists within
an organization, by virtue of manager desire,
for performing the tasks that lead to
achievement of organization objectives. The
arrangement of members in areas such as
marketing, human resources and production
departments are examples of formal groups,
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Volume XV, Issue 1 /2015
and these departments are clearly defined and
structured. [1]
Informal group is defined as being
composed of a number of persons whose
joint work experiences give rise to a system
of interpersonal relationships which extends
beyond the limits of work relations set by
management; he naturally evolves as people
interact with each other.
Although teams is a much broader matter
and they are entitled to bear significant
differences from formal group in
organization, from the management
perspective, work team falls, however, in the
category of formal groups. Therefore, we
consider of great pragmatic interest the
comprehension of the base differentiation
between groups, whether formal or informal,
and teams, on one hand, and between group
work and team work, on the other hand. We
highlight and analyze these differences
having as benchmark, primarily, the type of
task to be accomplished by members of
groups and teams, and secondly, the elements
which give shape to informality in
organizational groups. This endeavor is made
because the differences above mentioned pull
along among the most diverse effects on
performance at group and team level and also
at organization level.
2. Work team between formal group and
informal group
Setting up informal groups is determined
by the existence of several factors, the most
representative for their functioning and
sustaining are: [2, p.347] the role that each
member has within the group, the aim of
constituting the group, the individual

satisfactions within the group, and the
influence of individual within the group.
Informal groups tend to evolve in
organizations due to the advantages which
their members can get, namely: [3, p.310]
▲ perpetuating the social and cultural
values which group members consider to be
important;
▲ social status and satisfaction that
people achieve only if they are members of
the group;
▲ facilitating the communication
between group members;
▲ improvement of general work
environment.
Related with those two types of groups we
can discuss about a formal role (derived from
aspects defined by the organization for any
job/position and detailed in official
documents – for example, organization chart)
and about an informal role (that assumed by
person “as an expression of its needs mostly
unconscious, as part of his personality and as
a reaction to «group invocation»” [4, p.223]).
According to Homans, informal group is
established in order to provide satisfaction
and development opportunities to its
members. At the same time, feelings,
interactions and activities that occur within
an informal group arise from feelings,
interactions and activities that are already
manifested in formal group. [5, p.510] Figure
1 summarizes the George Homans’s theory
on the evolution of informal groups.
Figure 1. Homans’s conception on how
informal groups develop
Formal Informal Effects on
groups groups group
Emotions Emotions Satisfaction
Interactions Interactions and
Activities Activities development
Feedback
Source: Certo, S.C., Managementul modern –
diversitatea, calitatea, etica şi mediul global, Ed.
Teora, Bucureşti 2002, p. 510
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Thus, in view of these two premises, it
follows that on the basis of feedback on the
functioning of the informal group, managers
can modify the formal group so as to increase
the likelihood that members of the informal
group obtain the satisfaction and
development which they desire. The final
consequence will be strengthening solidarity
and productivity of formal group, and this
consequence is wholly beneficial for the
organization. [6, p.114]
Figure 2. Team localization within the
organizational groups
Organizational context
Formal Work team
Informal
group group
In contrast to roles of employees
belonging to formal groups, roles which are
stated by the organization chart, formal roles
of team members are quite difficult to
separate from those informal, as long as
unwritten norms exist, but they are
collectively and by mutual agreement
assumed at the team level, for which these
norms gain particular theoretical meanings
but also important practical implications for
team functioning.
In any case, it seems likely that the
overlapping “area” of formal groups with
informal ones (in so far as they are identified
in the organization) can indicate a high
probability that members belonging to both
types of groups to perform better together
than members belonging to only one of them,
but upon condition that their objectives are
consistent with or derived from
organizational objectives. This idea is
suggested graphically in Figure 2.

3. Some differences between work teams
and work groups
Regardless of the approaching manner of
work team as a particular type of group, most
authors agree that all work teams are groups,
but not all groups are work teams. [7] A
group consists of people who work together
but can work even without each other. A
team is a group of people who can not do the
work, at least not effectively, without the
other members of their team. [8]
In fact, according to some authors,
specialists in leadership, the differences
between a team and a group reside in the
following: [9, p.75]
♦ Target – teams have a goal or purpose
unto all their members tend to. There is a
leadership that gives them some direction and
guidance in their activities towards the target.
As targets can change and they should
change, leader must take care to renew
people’s energy and concentration,
maintaining their alignment with the
collective goal, even if circumstances
permanently change.
♦ Engagement – people want to be part
of the team, they engage themselves to
achieve its objectives and struggle to
accomplish them through personal
contribution, and through performance
achieved with the support of the others.
♦ Action – all activities are directed
towards attaining the target. People act
interdependently, ensuring that all their
actions are coordinated in a convergent
manner. Each of them focuses to contribute
with their full capability at any time, and all
their actions are directed towards achieving
the target.
♦ Maintenance – any team needs care
and maintenance in order to ensure its
development and sustainability just as a high-
performance engine needs to be provided
with a regular service to give the best results.
Team members can have such a significant
role, able to care for one another and support
each other. For maintaining a team is
important for people to reciprocally
appreciate each contribution, to appreciate
each other, to enjoy successes.
♦ Synergy – basically, a team produces
better results than those obtained by its
members, working separately. People are
concerned with the continuous improvement
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of their work and with attaining synergy so
that their collective result is greater than the
sum of individual results.
Shortly, a group can be considered a team
only if its members help each other to
achieve the common objectives [10, p.12],
both at individual level as well as group level
and organization level.
4. Team work versus group work
The basic unit for most organizations,
regardless of their size, should be the team in
the real sense of the word, and not a group
that is labeled by management with the name
of team. [11] And yet, teams are not always
best suited to all organizations and/or for all
tasks thereby the primary concern for
management is to identify the nature of
common task that the small work collective
has to fulfill.
Thus, teams might not be the answer to
any organizational problem because there are
tasks which do not match with team work.
For example, urgent tasks are often best
fulfilled by individuals alone, and repetitive
tasks, by machines [12], team work
representing a more effective approach than
independent work when must be addressed
complex problems. [13]
To the extent that the task type that a
work collective has to achieve can be
rigorously determined, it may prove
particularly useful the demarcation we
proposed in Figure 3. Starting from the
assumption that the goals of work group
differ from those of work team by the low or
non-existent level of interdependence
between members’ activities, we underline
and detail some ideas with important
practical consequences:
– Work group has to realize simple tasks
that do not necessarily involve collaboration
and exchange of information between
members since their activities are
independent and can be aggregated, which
can be defined as group work. For group, the
application of work style specific to team,
that is team work, can be a matter of choice,
and the focus is mainly on affective relations,
on sympathy between members: it is the
option of members to help each other, to
exchange ideas, to compensate each other the
possible low performance, to work harder to
achieve the objectives which if can not be

higher because is not the case [14], then can
be attained sooner than expected. But a
complex task assigned to a work group will
make from this nothing than a dysfunctional
group due to the overall lack of perspective
that is specific to group work. The group
needs a person that integrates its activities in
the group outcome and that person is usually
a manager appointed from outside the group:
he sets objectives for the group, allocates
subtasks to members, ensure that the group
meets the a priori established criteria of
efficiency, which conflicts with team work
style that involves, by definition, at least a
minimum of autonomy in achieving the
common goal.
– In the case of work team, the level of
dependence between members’ activities
(individual subtasks) is high and requires
team work, respectively imposes an
organized cooperation and more, a minimum
of self-organized cooperation. Emotional,
affective relations are not excluded, but
dependence is given by the nature of the task,
so as team work is no longer a matter of
choice, it is absolutely necessary because the
achievement of common goal could not be
possible without the “mix” of individual
contributions, respectively, without synergy.
Much more in the case of activities in form
of projects, the compensation of a poorer
performance, for example, is not (anymore) a
matter of friendship or expected reciprocity,
but a sine quo non condition in order to
correctly and timely finalize the project or a
complex sequence of it.
On the other hand, the combination of a
simple task and team work only lead to
failure, often invoked in case of teams, but
without a prior analysis of its causes. For
example, Millward, Banks and Riga believes
that team work is a designing strategy for
organizing the work in a flexible and
coordinated manner which essentially should
produce synergies, but most often fails to
obtain even the summative criterion. [15]
Well, if we consider the summative criterion,
then the task is simple, entirely additive, and
suitable to group work and by no means to
team work. Frequently, managers used to
adopt various forms of organizing the work
in line with what “is in vogue” and in the
case of teams, to attribute to a group of
employees, which they name it “team”, tasks
which are not appropriate to a team
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respectively, are not sufficiently complex and
do not involve diverse knowledge and skills.
Thus, it can not be claimed from a small
group to work as a team, collaborate,
intensively communicate, exchange
information, support each other and so on
when the task does not require these things;
members will tend to believe that the
problem to be solved is more complex than it
really is as long as they should “team up”
with others, and will end up unnecessarily
complicating issues, will lose all spirit and
such experience will tell them that team work
is a waste of time and not at all a challenge,
an opportunity for personal development and
a unique source of professional and personal
satisfaction.
Therefore, effective work team
(functional, mature team) practices team
work because it is appropriate to complex
tasks that require from members besides
domain-specific knowledge and skills, a high
degree of creativity and proactiveness. The
quality of team player is mandatory by the
virtue of the context imposed by the task
difficulty which requires task related
expertise and knowledge that can not be
owned by one person, and also requires
relational abilities. In addition, the time
required to achieve the common task exceeds
the time available to a single person.
Figure 3. Effectiveness of group and team
depending on the work style and task type
Complex Dysfunctional Functional
task group team
Simple Functional Dysfunctional
task group team
Group work Team work
And then, team members must be
“technically” prepared with their own
expertise and contribution, but also
“tactical”, with a very clear idea of the
project as a whole [16], while the group
members do not need to know what their

colleagues do in order to perform their own
duties. Given the interdependence between
the activities that compose the team task,
even though at the individual level some
modifications are small changes, small
innovations, their incremental effect can be
huge. For example, in the car industry, the
production flow involves many successive
activities [17], which means that an error in
one point can propagate along the entire
production flow and may compromise the
work of all employees involved. Similarly,
for any complex task involving interrelated
activities, such as projects of any kind,
attention granted to both overall common
task as well as subtasks that compose it, is
crucial for the performance at team level.
And this indicates that collective work can
not be replaced by individual work in
complex situation, no matter how gifted are
some individuals.
Finally, the absolute differentiation
between work team and work group shall be
made in the light of nature of result produced
and nature of responsibilities exercised. “A
work group relies primarily on the individual
contributions of its members, the amount of
which lead to the group result. Conversely, a
work team tends to amplify the collective
impact of what could bring each member if
he or she would work alone in order to
achieve what we call a product of collective
work.” [18, pp. 88-89] This product,
however, can not be quantified using
summative criterion, invoked in all
definitions of synergy in team, because
behaviors are those that give the measure of
team work and implicitly of its synergy
effects. More precisely, positive forms of
synergy in teams are caused by individual
behaviors that lead to extra efforts exerted for
completion of the team task and, therefore,
have a positive influence on the overall team
performance. [19]
5. Conclusions
Team work represents “a set of values that
encourage listening and constructive reaction
to the views expressed by others, treating
with interest the views of others, support and
recognition of the interests and achievements
of others.” [20]
Usually, informal structures appear and
function on the ground of formal ones either
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to compensate some of the shortcomings of
formal groups or to complete them or simply
to deny their rigidity. There are also
situations when informal structures within a
group, although initially presented as such,
tend to formalize themselves along the way
in order to confer some degree of efficiency
to the group. In this case, we discuss about
the evolution of group to the team stage,
which takes time as long as team represents a
superior stage in group development.
Therefore, teams will hold both the
advantages of formal group (efficiency,
rigorous organization, normative system,
common to all members) and also those of
the informal group (open communication,
flexibility, adaptability).
Further, the application of work style,
either group work or team work, appropriate
to task that members must fulfill, will be a
measure of management efficiency and will
be reflected in the results of the organization.
This is especially valid for multinational
organizations that integrate in groups and
teams employees very diverse not only in
terms of professional training, but especially
in cultural terms. Thus, the leadership applied
should be different from team to team and
from group to group, and adapted to
members which must be coordinated and
motivated, otherwise, it will not be reached
the full potential of work team and/or work
group.
Hence, team work is an “umbrella”
concept that is often understood as the
measure, the degree of cooperation that exists
in teams or between teams, but more
empirical research is needed in order to
articulate the components of effective team
work, especially in the services sector. [21]
Moreover, is required empirical research
showing more specifically the differences
between the real teams and groups which
work in the same spatial/geographic
proximity and virtual teams and groups
which collaborate in a global virtual space,
and lack physical contact and face to face
communication. All this requires extensive
changes in organization management
forasmuch as “web work style differs
significantly from work style of the
traditional organizations” [22, p.193], and “at
the world economy level there is a trend
which reveals that large corporations convert
to several small companies focused on

different areas of corporate activities”. [23,
p.196] These small companies may well be a
team itself or can be composed of several
teams, but with no more then two
hierarchical levels.
Finally, in order to face the opportunities
and challenges of the actual global market,
managers and leaders should address now
more than ever the issue of informality in
their organization, group or team because the
employees’ ideas and involvement can be
crucial in a extremely competitive
environment in which a small change, a little
innovation can trace the line between success
or failure.
6. References
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4, Issue 2(7), 2015, in printing
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