Organizational
Behavior, 8e
Schermerhorn, Hunt, and
Osborn
Prepared by
Michael K. McCuddy
Valparaiso University
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
2
Chapter 9
The Nature of Groups
 Study questions.
– What is the nature of groups in organizations?
– What are the stages of group development?
– What are the foundations of group
effectiveness?
– What are group and intergroup dynamics?
– How do groups make decisions?
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
3
What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 A group is a collection of two or more
people who work with one another
regularly to achieve common goals.
 Groups:
– Help organizations accomplish important
tasks.
– Help to maintain a high-quality workforce by
satisfying members’ needs.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Effective groups achieve high levels of:
– Task performance.
• Members attain performance goals regarding quantity,
quality, and timeliness of work results.
– Members satisfaction.
• Members believe that their participation an experiences are
positive and meet important personal needs.
– Team viability.
• Members are sufficiently satisfied to continue working
together on an ongoing basis.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Synergy.
– Effective groups offer synergy.
– With synergy, groups accomplish more than
the total of the members’ individual
capabilities.
– Synergy is necessary for organizations to
compete effectively and achieve long-term
high performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Situations in which groups are superior to
individuals.
– When there is no clear expert in a particular
problem or task.
– When problem solving can be handled by a
division of labor and the sharing of
information.
– When creativity and innovation are needed.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Social loafing as a performance problem.
– Social loafing is the tendency of people to
work less hard in a group than they would
individually.
– Reasons for social loafing.
• Individual contributions are less noticeable in the
group context.
• Some individuals prefer to see others carry the
workload.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Social loafing as a performance problem — cont.
– Ways of preventing social loafing.
• Define member roles and tasks to maximize individual
interests.
• Link individual rewards to performance contributions to the
group.
• Raise accountability by identifying individuals’ performance
contributions to the group.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Social facilitation as a performance
problem.
– Social facilitation.
• The tendency for a person’s behavior to be
influenced by the presence of others.
• Positively affects performance when a person is
proficient on the task.
• Negatively affects task performance when the task
is not well-learned.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Formal groups.
– Officially designated to serve a specific
organizational purpose.
– May be permanent or temporary.
• Permanent work groups are command groups in
the vertical organization structure.
• Temporary work groups are task groups
specifically created to solve a problem or perform a
a defined task.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Formal groups — cont.
– Virtual groups.
• Groups whose members convene and work
together electronically via networked computers.
• Activities are facilitated by groupware.
• Can accomplish the same things as members of
face-to-face groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Informal groups.
– Emerge without being officially designated by
the organization.
– Types of informal groups.
• Friendship groups.
• Interest groups.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What is the nature of groups
in organizations?
 Benefits of informal groups.
– Can speed up work flow by supplementing
formal lines of authority.
– Can satisfy needs that are thwarted or unmet
by the formal group.
– Can provide members with social satisfaction,
security, and a sense of belonging.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 A group or team passes through five
lifecycle stages.
– Forming.
– Storming.
– Norming.
– Performing.
– Adjourning.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 Forming stage.
– Initial entry of members to a group.
– Members concern’s include:
• Getting to know each other.
• Discovering what is considered acceptable
behavior.
• Determining the group’s real task.
• Defining group rules.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 Storming stage.
– A period of high emotionality and tension
among group members.
– Members concern’s include:
•
•
•
•
•
Formation of coalitions and cliques.
Dealing with outside demands.
Clarifying membership expectations.
Dealing with obstacles to group goals.
Understanding members’ interpersonal styles.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 Norming stage.
– The point at which the group really begins to
come together as a coordinated unit.
– Members concern’s include:
• Holding the group together.
• Dealing with divergent views and criticisms.
• Dealing with a premature sense of
accomplishment.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 Performing stage.
– Marks the emergence of a mature, organized,
and well-functioning group.
– Members deal with complex tasks and handle
internal disagreements in creative ways.
– Primary challenge is to continue to improve
relationships and performance.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the stages of
group development?
 Adjourning stage.
– Particularly important for temporary groups.
– A well-integrated group is:
• Able to disband when its work is finished.
• Willing to work together in the future.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 From a systems perspective, group inputs are the
foundation for all subsequent group action.
 Key group inputs are:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Nature of the task.
Goals.
Rewards.
Resources.
Technology.
Membership diversity.
Group size.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Tasks.
– Technical demands of a task.
• Routineness, difficulty, and information
requirements.
– Tasks that are complex in technical demands
require unique solutions and more information
processing.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Tasks — cont.
– Social demands of a task.
• Relations, ego involvement, and controversies over
ends and means.
– Tasks that are complex in social demands
involve difficulties in reaching agreement on
goals or methods for accomplishing them.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Goals, rewards, and resources.
– Long-term performance accomplishments rely
on:
• Appropriate goals.
• Well-designed reward systems.
• Adequate resources.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Technology.
– Provides the means to get work accomplished.
– The right technology must be available for the
task at hand.
– Work-flow technology can affect the way
group members interact.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Membership characteristics.
– A group must have the right skills and
competencies available for task performance
and problem solving.
• Homogeneous groups may not perform well if they
lack the requisite experiences, skills, and
competencies.
• Heterogeneous groups may perform well if they
effectively utilize a variety of experiences, skills,
and competencies.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Membership characteristics — cont.
– Diversity-consensus dilemma.
• Increasing diversity among group members makes
it harder for group members to work together, even
though the diversity itself expands the skills and
perspectives available for problem solving.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Membership characteristics — cont.
– FIRO-B theory.
• Identifies individual differences in how people
relate to one another in groups.
• Based on needs to express and receive feelings of
inclusion, control, and affection.
• Groups whose members have compatible
characteristics are likely to be more effective.
• Groups whose members have incompatible
characteristics are likely to be less effective.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Membership characteristics — cont.
– Status.
• A person’s relative rank, prestige, or standing in a
group.
– Status congruence.
• Occurs when a person’s position within the group
is equivalent in status to positions held outside the
group.
• When status incongruence is present, problems will
likely occur.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Group size.
– As group size increases, performance and
member satisfaction increase up to a point.
• Division of work promotes performance and
increased satisfaction.
• Communication and coordination problems occur,
in turn decreasing performance and satisfaction.
– Problem-solving groups should have 5 to 7
members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are the foundations
of group effectiveness?
 Group size — cont.
– Groups with an odd number of members may
be more effective for resolving disagreements
and reaching a speedy decision.
– Groups with an even number of members may
be more effective when careful deliberation,
consensus building, or complex problem
solving is required.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are group and
intergroup dynamics?
 From a systems perspective, the
throughputs for a group or team are group
dynamics.
 Group dynamics concern the forces
operating within groups that affect the way
members relate to and work with one
another.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are group and
intergroup dynamics?
 What goes on within groups.
– Required behaviors.
• Those formally defined and expected by the
organization.
– Emergent behaviors.
• Those that group members display in addition to
what the organization asks of them.
– Emergent behaviors often supplement and
extend required behaviors.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are group and
intergroup dynamics?
 What goes on within groups.
– Member relationships revolve around:
• Activities — the things people do or the actions
they take.
• Interactions — interpersonal communications and
contacts.
• Sentiments — the feelings, attitudes, beliefs, or
values held by group members.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are group and
intergroup dynamics?
 What goes on between groups.
– Intergroup dynamics.
• The dynamics that take place between two or more
groups.
– Organizations and their members seek to avoid
the negative aspects and achieve the positive
aspects of intergroup dynamics.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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What are group and
intergroup dynamics?
 What goes on between groups.
– On the negative side, intergroup dynamics may divert
energies as members focus on animosities rather than
performance.
– On the positive side, competing groups may:
• Work harder.
• Become more focused on key tasks.
• Develop more internal loyalty and satisfaction.
• Achieve creativity in problem solving.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 How groups make decisions.
– Decision by lack of response.
– Decision by authority rule.
– Decision by minority rule.
– Decision by majority rule.
– Decision by consensus.
– Decision by unanimity.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Potential advantages of group decision making.
– More knowledge and expertise is applied to solve the
problem.
– A greater number of alternatives are examined.
– The final decision is better understood and accepted
by all group members.
– More commitment among all group members to make
the final decision work.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Potential disadvantages of group decision
making.
– Individuals may feel compelled to conform to
the apparent wishes of the group.
– The group’s decision may be dominated by
one individual or a small coalition.
– Group decisions usually take longer to make.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Groupthink.
– The tendency for members of highly cohesive groups
to lose their critical evaluation capabilities.
– Groupthink can lead the group to make poor decisions.
– Group members and leaders should:
• Be sensitive to the occurrence of groupthink.
• Take actions to prevent the occurrence of groupthink.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 How to improve group decision making.
– Brainstorming.
– Nominal group technique.
– Delphi technique.
– Computer-mediated decision making.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Brainstorming.
– Group members actively generate as many
ideas and alternatives as possible, and they do
so relatively quickly and without inhibitions.
– Brainstorming rules.
•
•
•
•
All criticism is ruled out.
Free-wheeling is welcomed.
Quantity is wanted.
Piggy-backing is good.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Nominal group technique.
– A form of structured group decision making
that enables everyone to participate and have
his/her ideas heard without hostile criticism or
distortions.
– A structured voting procedure is used to
prioritize responses to the nominal question.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Delphi technique.
– Used in situations where group members are unable to
meet face to face.
– The process.
• A series of questions is distributed to a panel.
• Panel members submit their responses to a decision
coordinator.
• The decision coordinator summarizes the responses, and
sends the summary along with a follow-up questionnaire to
the panel.
• Panel members send in their responses.
• The process is repeated until a consensus is reached.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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How do groups make decisions?
 Computer-mediated decision making.
– Electronic brainstorming through the use of
special software and personal computers..
– The nominal group and Delphi techniques lend
themselves to computer mediation.
Organizational Behavior: Chapter 9
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