MGMT 100: Fundamental of
Management
Week on Managing Quality
Workforce
Lecture 3: Group Dynamics
What to expect from today?
• Reading:
– Daft & Marcic (2017). Understanding management.
Cengage.
– Pages 594-599; 606-607; 611-623
After completing your study of this topic you should be
able to:
• Recognise what makes effective teams
• Explain organisational context, inputs, team processes, and how
they impact work team effectiveness.
What is a team?
• A unit of two or more people who interact and coordinate their
work to accomplish a common goal.
• 2 or more people
• Complementary skills
• Regular interaction
• Shared goal, commitment
• Mutually accountable
Teamwork: The process of people actively working
together to accomplish ________________.
Model of team effectiveness
“Inputs”
Model of team effectiveness
Fig 14.5 p. 606
Team
characteristics
Team size
• Small teams (2-4) tend to show more agreement, ask more
questions and exchange more opinions
– Dynamics with small groups of different sizes?
• Large teams (12+) tend to have more disagreements and
differences in opinion, and are challenging to coordinate
– Tend to form subgroups
– “two-pizza rule”
• No optimal team size (~3-6)
• Diversity in skills is key (note concept of synergy later)
Team
characteristics
Team diversity
• Different values, personalities, experiences, etc., can
create challenges.
– E.g., interdisciplinary teams
• But with complexity come greater variety of ideas,
perspectives and experiences that add value to
problem-solving and task performance
• Solving initial process challenges ________________
Process
Stages of team development
Fig 14.7, p. 615
Process
Cohesiveness
– The degree to which members are attracted to
a team and motivated to remain part of a team
– Members of highly cohesive teams are often
committed to team activities, attend meetings and
are happy when the team succeeds.
– Beneficial when paired with
___________________________________.
Process
How to increase team cohesion?
– Shared goals.
– Increase interaction among members.
– Introduce competition with other teams.
– Team success
Cohesiveness leads to: Better _________
& ___________
Process
What can go wrong in teams?
– Common problems:
• Personality conflicts
• Differences in work styles
• Task ambiguity
Process
Conflict

Two types of conflict, relating to
issues/disagreements on:
 __________ Substantive issues regarding e.g.,
goals.
 ____________. Emotional issues arising from
feelings of e.g., distrust, and personality clashes.
 Conflict that is well managed can help promote high
performance, creativity and innovation.
 Functional conflict
 Often task conflict
 Moderately intense conflict
 Constructive; stimulates people towards greater work
efforts, cooperation and creativity.
 Can prevent _______________
 Dysfunctional conflict
 Often relationship conflict.
 Low-intensity and very high-intensity conflict
 Destructive; hurts task performance.
Balancing conflict and cooperation
Fig 14.9, p. 621
Conflict management styles
Fig 14.10; p. 622
Process
What can go wrong in teams?
– Common problems:
• Personality conflicts
• Differences in work styles
• Task ambiguity
• Social loafing
Process
Social loafing
“a reduction in individual effort when working
on a collective task compared to when working
either alone or coactively”
• As group size increases, new members have
decreasingly significant impact.
• _____________________
Model of team effectiveness
“Inputs”
Model of team effectiveness
Effectiveness
 Team effectiveness may be summarised by
the following equation:
Team effectiveness
= Quality of inputs
+ (Process ______ – Process _______)
Cohesion, diversity
Conflict,
social loafing
Take home messages