week 10: Decision making in groups

Group and organizational effectiveness hinge on minimizing process losses, achieving process gains, aligning group goals with organizational goals, and having the appropriate level of group cohesiveness. Three types of groups that are especially important in many organizations include the top management team, self-managed work teams, and research and development teams.Actual group performance often falls short of potential performance; process losses result from coordination and motivation problems in groups. Process gains cause the potential performance of a group to rise, and they enhance group effectiveness.

Group tasks can be characterized in terms of the nature of interdependence between group members. Thompson describes three types of task interdependence: pooled, sequential, and reciprocal. The nature and causes of process losses and process gains depend on the type of task involved and the degree of interdependence among group members. Group cohesiveness is the attractiveness of a group to its members. Group size, the similarity/diversity of group members, competition with other groups, success, and the exclusiveness of the group help to determine the level of participation and communication within a group, the level of conformity to group norms, and group goal accomplishment. Group goals aligned with organization goals, lead to an optimal level of group cohesiveness that results in high performance. When group goals are not aligned with organization goals, group cohesiveness is dysfunctional for an organization. Four kinds of work groups that have the potential to affect organizational performance dramatically are top-management teams, self-managed work teams, research and development teams, and virtual teams.

Download Files

lecture-17-18.pdf (0.97 MB )

lecture-17-18.pptx (0.32 MB )