Group level OB concepts and theories
These include, group dynamics, teams and conflict
There is a difference between a group, a working group and a team (André 2008). Being able to define those entities helps to manage them: their size, the type of tasks their members can or cannot achieve, the governance to apply, as well as their goals are different (satisfice or optimise); one should ensure those characteristics are taken into account when building them in order to increase the chance to reach the expected goal.
Teams can produce different level of outputs depending on the commitment of their members; high-performance team is a real team whose “members [are] deeply committed to each others’ personal growth and success” (André 2008)
They are stages of group development from its forming to its adjourning but short-term groups[i] defined by the punctuated equilibrium model suggests that, “time-pressured groups progress through long period of inertia, punctuated by concentrated, creative periods of significant change” (André 2008).
One can monitor the participation within a group by evaluating a few amounts of criteria like: who is talking most frequently, why? Who interrupts others? How are quite members handled? Etc. A visual tool can be used to facilitate the monitoring: a sociogram.
They are many modes or behaviours a group can take that endanger the efficacy of the group; they have to be discovered and tackled as soon as possible:
- A groupthink is a mode of thinking leading to inefficiency within a group as “group members avoid criticising their leaders’ or colleagues’ ideas” (André 2008)
- The polarization: “the tendency that groups have to make more extreme decisions [adventurous or conservative] than individuals” (André 2008)
They are believes regarding how a group can produce better results that are wrong:
- Brainstorming is less productive than having the same number of people working alone and then collecting and organising their ideas
- Electronic brainstorming are more productive than traditional brainstorming
They are three main types of conflict in an organisation, They are constructive and destructive conflicts:
- relationship conflict,
- task conflict
- and process conflict.
“More communication always creates more clarity” (André 2008) is a myth; but parties can overcome this myth if they truly listen to and understand each other’s positions before additional talk can become useful.
They are five styles for managing interpersonal conflict depending whether people are oriented towards others or themselves:
- integrators,
- obligers,
- dominators,
- avoiders
- or compromisers.
One emotion that is generally felt during a conflict is anger; we are generally angry with people who are important for us, people we value or people on whom we depend. Feeling angry energises and educates us; it forces us to examine what makes us angry and learn more about our own commitments and values.
[i] The author doesn’t value the length of a short-term group
