Organizational Behaviour, emerging knowledge and practice for the real world, by S. McShane, M. Von Glinow (fifth edition) – Summary chapter 8
Teams are groups of two or more people who interact with and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common goals associated with organizational objectives and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization. Different types of teams can be distinguished by team permanence (1), skill diversity (2) and authority dispersion (3). Team permanence refers to how long that type of team usually exists. Authority dispersion refers to the degree that decision-making responsibility is distributed throughout the team or is vested in one or a few members of the team. There are three types of teams: departmental teams (1), self-directed teams (2) and task force teams (3). Informal groups exist because humans are social animals, they want to belong to a group, they accomplish personal objectives and we are comforted by the presence of others. People are more motivated in groups because they have a drive to bond, because of the accountability to fellow team members and because co-workers are used for comparisons. Teams make use of process losses, which are resources expended toward team development and maintenance rather than the task. If a task can be performed by one person, process losses can make a team less effective than an individual working alone. Process losses are amplified when more people are added or replace others on the team. Brook’s law states that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later. Social loafing is a problem that occurs when people exert less effort when working in teams than when working alone. Social loafing is more likely when individual performance is difficult to distinguish (1), the work is not very significant (2), employees lack motivation (3) and because of individual characteristics (4). There are several strategies to reduce social loafing: form smaller teams (1), specialize tasks (2), measure individual performance (3), increase job enrichment (4) and select...
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