Chapter 8

Team dynamics
Learning Objectives
8.1 Explain why employees join informal groups, and
discuss the benefits and limitations of teams
8.2 Outline the team effectiveness model and discuss how
task characteristics, team size and team composition
influence team effectiveness
8.3 Discuss how the four team processesteam
development, norms, cohesion and trustinfluence
team effectiveness
8.4 Discuss the characteristics and factors required for the
success of self-directed teams and virtual teams
8.5 Identify four constraints on team decision making and
discuss the advantages and disadvantages of four
structures aimed at improving team decision making
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-2
Self-Managed Teams at RPG
At RPG Group, the introduction of work teams is based
on the assumption that empowered employees will
contribute to a high-performance work culture. To
support this initiative, team members are trained to work
together, identifying and solving work-related problems
with minimal supervision

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-3
What are Teams?
Groups of two or more people
Exist to fulfil a purpose
Interdependentinteract and influence each other
Mutually accountable for achieving common goals
Perceive themselves as a social entity

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-4
Many Types of Teams
Departmental teams Task force (project)
Production/service/ teams
leadership teams Skunkworks
Self-directed teams Virtual teams
Advisory teams Communities of
practice

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-5
Informal Groups
Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of
their members
Reasons why informal groups exist:
Innate drive to bond
Social identitywe define ourselves by group
memberships
Goal accomplishment
Emotional support

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-6
Advantages/Disadvantages of
Teams
Advantages
Make better decisions, products and services
Better information sharing
Increase employee motivation and engagement
Fulfils drive to bond
Closer scrutiny by team members
Team members are benchmarks of comparison
Disadvantages
Individuals better/faster on some tasks
Process lossescost of developing and maintaining
teams
Social loafing
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-7
How to Minimise Social
Loafing
Make individual performance more visible
Form smaller teams
Specialise tasks
Measure individual performance
Increase employee motivation
Increase job enrichment
Select motivated employees

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-8
Team Effectiveness Model

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-9
Organisation/Team
Environment
Reward systems
Communication systems
Organisational structure
Organisational leadership
Physical space

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-10
Teams Task Characteristics
Teams work better when tasks are clear and
easy to implement
Learn roles faster, easier to become cohesive
Ill-defined tasks require members with diverse
backgrounds and more time to coordinate
Teams preferred with higher task
interdependence
Extent that employees need to share materials,
information or expertise to perform their jobs

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-11
Levels of Task
Interdependence

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-12
Team Size
Smaller teams are better because they:
Need less time to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
Require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment
But the team must be large enough to
accomplish the task

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-13
Going Ape for Teams at Flight
Centre
Following evolutionary
principles, Flight Centre
<<Insert and Symantec started
to break up large work
Ape teams, and to reduce
their managers direct
Image p. reports
258>> Small Flight Centre
families report to
village-sized clusters of
five teams, which in turn
form a Flight Centre
tribe of up to 25 teams
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-14
Team Composition
Effective team
members must be
willing and able to
work on the team
Effective team
members possess
specific
competencies (5 Cs)

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-15
Five Cs of Team-member
Competencies

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-16
Team Composition: Diversity
Team members have diverse knowledge,
skills, perspectives, values, etc.
Advantages
View problems and possible solutions from
different perspectives
Broader knowledge base
Better representation of teams constituents
Disadvantages
Take longer to become a high-performing team
More susceptible to fault lines
Increased risk of dysfunctional conflict
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-17
Stages of Team Development

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-18
Team Development as
Membership and Competence
Two central processes in team development:
Team membership formation
Transition from them to us
Team becomes part of persons social identity
Team competence development
Forming routines with others
Forming shared mental models

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-19
Team Roles
A set of behaviours that people are expected
to perform
Some formally assigned; others informally
Informal role assignment occurs during team
development and is related to personal
characteristics

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-20
Team Building
Formal activities intended to improve the
teams development and functioning
Types of team building
Clarify teams performance goals
Improve teams problem-solving skills
Improve role definitions
Improve relations

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-21
Team Norms
Informal rules and shared expectations that
the team establishes to regulate member
behaviours
Norms develop through:
Initial team experiences
Critical events in teams history
Experience and values members bring to the
team

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-22
Preventing/Changing
Dysfunctional Team Norms
State desired norms when forming teams
Select members with preferred values
Discuss counter-productive norms
Reward behaviours representing desired
norms
Disband teams with dysfunctional norms

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-23
Team Cohesion
The degree of attraction people feel toward
the team and their motivation to remain
members
Both cognitive and emotional process
Related to the team members social identity

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-24
Influences on Team Cohesion

Member Similarity-attraction effect

similarity Some forms of diversity have less effect

Team
Smaller teams tend to be more cohesive
size

Member Regular interaction increases cohesion

interaction Calls for tasks with high interdependence

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-25
Influences on Team Cohesion continued

Somewhat Team eliteness increases cohesion

difficult entry But lower cohesion with severe initiation

Team Successful teams fulfil member needs

success Success increases social identity with team

External Challenges increase cohesion when not

challenges overwhelming

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-26
Team Cohesion Outcomes
Motivated to remain members
Willing to share information
Strong interpersonal bonds
Resolve conflict effectively
Better interpersonal relationships
Better performance (if norms aligned)

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-27
Team Cohesion and
Performance

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-28
Trust Defined
Positive expectations one person has of
another person in situations involving risk

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-29
Three Levels of Trust

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-30
Self-Directed Teams
SDTs are cross-functional work groups
organised around work processes
They complete an entire piece of work
requiring several interdependent tasks
They have substantial autonomy over the
execution of those tasks

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-31
Self-Directed Team Success
Factors
Responsible for entire work process
High interdependence within the team
Low interdependence with other teams
Autonomy to organise and coordinate work
Work site and technology support team
communication/coordination

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-32
Multicultural teams
Teams built from employees around the
globe
Can be affected by cultural differences:
Norms (about power, communicating and
decision making)
Values
Local versus global perspectives

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-33
Managing Multicultural Teams
Managers of multicultural teams can make
one of three kinds of interventions:
Encourage adaptation
Implement a structural intervention
Direct manager intervention

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-34
Virtual Teams
Teams whose members operate across
space, time and organisational boundaries
and are linked through information
technologies to achieve organisational tasks
Increasingly possible because of:
Information technologies
Knowledge-based work
Increasingly necessary because of:
Organisational learning
Globalisation

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-35
Virtual Team Success Factors
Member characteristics
Technology savvy
Self-leadership skills
Emotional intelligence
Flexible use of communication technologies
Opportunities to meet face-to-face

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-36
Team Decision-Making
Constraints
Time constraints
Time to organise/coordinate
Production blocking
Evaluation apprehension
Belief that others are silently evaluating you
Peer pressure to conform
Suppressing opinions that oppose team norms
Groupthink
Tendency in highly cohesive teams to value
consensus at the price of decision quality
Concept losing favourconsider more specific
features
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-37
General Guidelines for
Team Decisions
Team norms should encourage critical
thinking
Sufficient team diversity
Ensure neither leader nor any member
dominates
Maintain optimal team size
Introduce effective team structures

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-38
Constructive Conflict

Courtesy of Johnson Space Center/NASA

People focus their discussion on the issue

while maintaining respectfulness for others
having different points of view
Problem: constructive conflict easily slides
into personal attacks
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-39
Rules of Brainstorming
Speak freely
Dont criticise
Provide as many ideas as possible
Build on others ideas

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-40
Evaluating Brainstorming
Strengths
Produces more creative ideas
Less evaluation apprehension when team
supports a learning orientation
Strengthens decision acceptance and team
cohesiveness
Sharing positive emotions encourages creativity
Weaknesses
Production blocking still exists
Evaluation apprehension exists in many groups

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-41
Electronic Brainstorming
Relies on networked computers to submit
and share creative ideas
Strengthsmore creative ideas, minimal
production blocking, evaluation apprehension
or conformity problems
Limitationstoo structured and technology-
bound

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-42
Nominal Group Technique

Individual Team Individual

Activity Activity Activity

Possible
Write down Vote on
Describe solutions
possible solutions
problem described
solutions presented
to others

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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-43
Summary
People have a drive to bond. As such, they
join informal groups and work in teams
A team is effective when able to achieve its
objectives, fulfil the needs of its members
and maintain its survival
The model of team effectiveness considers
the team and organisational environment,
team design and team processes
Different team types (SDTs, virtual or
multicultural) have different challenges and
conditions for success
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McShane, Olekalns, Travaglione, Organisational Behaviour, 4e 8-44
 Chapter 8

Team dynamics