Organisational Behaviour (OB)
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Multiple Levels of Analysis
OB topics are relevant at three levels of analysis: individual, group & organisational
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Personality
Values
Perception
Emotions & Moods
Attitudes - Job Satisfaction
Stress
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Topic 6
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Why Have
Teams Become
So Popular?
As organizations have restructured
themselves to compete more
effectively and efficiently, they
have turned to teams as a better
way to use employee talents.
• Teams are more flexible and responsive to changing events
than traditional departments or other forms of permanent
groupings.
• They can quickly assemble, deploy, refocus and disband.
• Teams facilitate employee participation in operating
decisions.
• Teams are an effective means for management to
democratize organizations and increase employee
motivation. 4
Learning Objectives
Define group and Identify the five
Analyse the growing
distinguish the Contrast groups and stages of
popularity of teams
different types of teams. group/team
in organisations.
groups. development.
Identify the Show how Decide when to use
characteristics of organisations can individuals instead
effective teams. create team players. of teams.
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Defining and classifying groups
Group: Formal group: Informal group:
Two or more individuals, A designated work group defined A group that is neither formally
interacting and interdependent, by an organisation’s structure. structured nor organisationally
who have come together to determined; such a group appears
achieve particular objectives. in response to the need for social
contact.
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Why do
people form
informal
groups?
• innate drive to bond
• goal accomplishment
• emotional support
• social identity
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Formal groups = Teams
A team is a group whose members have complementary skills and are committed
to a common purpose for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.
1) Groups of two or more people
2) Exist to fulfil a purpose
3) Interdependent - interact and
influence each other
4) Mutually accountable for
achieving common goals
5) Perceive themselves as a
social entity
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ALL TEAMS ARE
GROUPS, BUT Note: In the business study, the terms of ‘groups’ and ‘teams’
NOT ALL GROUPS are often used loosely and interchangeably.
ARE TEAMS.
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Advantages and disadvantages of teams
Advantages:
‒ make better decisions, products and services
‒ better information sharing
‒ increase employee motivation and engagement
Disadvantages:
(individuals better and/or faster on some tasks)
‒ process loss (e.g. Brooks’ Law)
‒ social loafing
Do you complain about doing group work? Why/Why not?
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How to minimise social loafing
• Make individual performance more visible
• Increase employee motivation
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When are teams better
than individuals?
Team Effectiveness Model
creating effective teams by organizing the key components of effective teams into three general categories
(source: McShane et al 2016)
(source: Robbins et al 2016)
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• Teams work better when tasks are clear and easy to implement
• Teams preferred with higher task interdependence
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Levels of task
interdependence
Low
<-----
High
• Smaller teams are better, but
• The team must be large enough to accomplish the task
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The team composition
category includes variables
that relate to how teams
should be staffed:
Abilities of Personality of Diversity of Member
Allocation of roles
members members members preferences
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Informal rules and shared expectations that the team establishes to regulate member behaviours
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Beware! Teams
aren’t always the
answer
Three tests can be applied to see whether a team
fits your situation.
1) Can the work be done better by more than
one person?
2) Does the work create a common purpose or
set of goals for the people in the group that
is more than the aggregate of individual
goals?
3) Are the members of the group
interdependent?
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"Leading and
working in Teams”
by Professor Amy Edmondson
Organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the
teams within those organizations work. What does it take to
create a high-performing team? Based on her years of
research working with teams across different industries,
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson reveals
how high performance arises when teams are encouraged
to take risks, fail, and learn from those small failures, a
process she calls "teaming." In this course, she outlines
what leaders can do to create the right environment for
teaming and explains the responsibilities of individual team
members to speak up, collaborate, experiment, and reflect.
Imagine you've been scheduled for open-heart
surgery. A team of surgeons, nurses, and
technicians will be coming together, maybe meeting
each other for the first time to coordinate their actions
and expertise to produce a successful operation. Your
outcome is utterly dependent on how well they work
together. You start to think about the fact that they're
only human, and you wonder what it will take for their
teamwork to be exquisitely well executed.
Who do you think is responsible for your company's success?
You may think it's the CEO, or your boss, or your boss's boss. But I want to
make the case that it's you. And to do that, I have to make a distinction
between big L Leadership, and little l leadership. Big L Leadership refers to
the leadership exercised at or near the top of large organizations of all
kinds. Those high-level executives make decisions that influence everyone in
the organization. And these leadership roles are critical to the success of the
organization, and to the success of teaming. It includes developing the right
organizational culture, and setting the kinds of clear direction, that others can
rally around, to work together, to achieve their goals.
But let's think about little l leadership for a moment. This is the kind of
leadership that you exercise when you're working together to get something
done with other people. It's about creating the conditions to help make
complex, interdependent work get done, as well as you possibly can.
In small l leadership, people who are in the thick of working
together, are trying to ensure that they can team
effectively. Sometimes, that leadership involves formal
responsibility for a project, or a department, or a region. But at
other times, you're simply the one who sees an opportunity to
lead, and you act upon it.
So where do you fit in? Are you a big L Leader, or a small l
leader? And are you exercising the leadership that you can in
those moments where someone can see something that
needs to be done and jump in to make it go better.
This course emphasizes the necessity of leadership behaviour throughout the
organization, top to bottom. This is how you bring about the new ways of
working, upon which the success of your company, and everybody's company today,
fully depends.
So, whether it's big or little l, leadership is an essential function in helping
people manage the challenges of teaming, and learning, and executing, all at the
same time. Yet teaming involves taking risks, technical risks, and interpersonal risks.
The nature of teaming, is that the work is not and can not be scripted in
advance. It's impossible to get everything right the first time around, failures are
inevitable. The only real failure, is failing to learn from them. This means that each
and every one of us has the opportunity to exercise leadership at different points in
time. No matter where you sit, there's something you can do to make the work go
better, to make the teaming work better.
Summary
• Teams are groups of two or more people who interact and influence each other, are mutually accountable
for achieving common goals associated with organisational objectives and perceive themselves as a social
entity within an organisation.
• All teams are groups, because they consist of people with a unifying relationship; however, not all groups
are teams, because some groups do not exist to serve organisational objectives. People join informal
groups (and are motivated to be on formal teams) for four reasons:
o they have an innate drive to bond
o group membership is an inherent ingredient in a person’s self-concept
o some personal goals are accomplished better in groups
o individuals are comforted in stressful situations by the mere presence of other people
• Teams have become popular because they tend to make better decisions, support the knowledge
management process and provide superior customer service. People also tend to be more motivated
when working in teams. However, teams are not always as effective as individuals working alone. Process
losses and social loafing are two particular concerns that drag down team performance.
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