Independent Study

Running Header: GROUP COHESION AND GROUP DYNAMICS 1
The Effects on Group Cohesion and Group Dynamics from a
Short-Term International Experience
Keaton Lund
University of Colorado Boulder

GROUP COHESION AND GROUP DYNAMICS 2
Abstract
The objective of this study is to examine the impact of a short-term international experience on
group cohesion, specifically looking at group dynamics. The study looks at the BADM 1260
class going to Costa Rica at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder
which consisted of fourteen first- and second-year business students. Though it was not possible
to do statistically significant analysis of the data, the data showed that a short-term international
experience improved relationships amongst the subjects and improved overall group efficacy.

Introduction
As business and the world become more internationally connected, it becomes more
necessary for students and workers to be able to work efficiently together. Business students
today need to be able to work in diverse groups as well as be comfortable working in new and
different situations. Engle and Crowne (2013) have examined the value of a short term
international experience from a cultural intelligence stand point, but there is still a gap in existing
research with regards to the effectiveness of the groups that participated in these programs.
This study looks more closely at group dynamics from a social standpoint and their
effects on group cohesion. The purpose of this study is to see if there is any effect on group
cohesion and group dynamics from a short-term international experience, as well as to see if
there is a correlation between group cohesion and group dynamics.
Literature Review
The two definitions that this study works from on are Festinger’s (1950) and Carron’s
(1998). Festinger defined cohesion as “the resultant of all the forces acting on members to
remain in the group” (1950, p.272). This definition has been used in other studies of group
cohesion, namely Nibler and Harris’s (2003) study of the effect of culture and cohesiveness on
group conflict and effectiveness. Nibler and Harris also built off of Festinger’s definition adding
that “These forces depend on…the personalities of the members in the group, and on the
activities in which the group engages” (2003, p.616). This helps better describe the group
dynamics that this study examines. This study also references a similar definition of group
cohesion presented by Carron. Carron’s definition of cohesions is “a dynamic process that is
reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its
instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs” (1998, p.213).
This definition has been used in other studies on group cohesion such as Carron and Brawley’s

(2012) study of conceptual and measurement issues with cohesion. Carron’s definition of group
cohesion includes “a dynamic process” and a “pursuit of…objectives,” both of which were
observed over the duration of this study.
Cronin, Weingart and Todorova’s study (2011) defines group dynamics as the behavior
of variables within groups that shape and constrain the essence of the group. They identified
these variables to encompass status structures within groups, norms, group cohesiveness, group
identity, conflict, and leadership as well as task performance effectiveness within the group
setting. Binsiddiq and Alzahmi (2013) studied group dynamics by examining “factors that
enhance group interactions and learning” (p.124). They specifically looked at belongingness and
information sharing, which this study examines as comfort and communication. The other
factors that this study looks at are efficacy, social interactions, and the groups’ motivation for
success.
Nibler and Harris’s findings indicated that groups that contained people with existing
friendships took longer to complete tasks and had more relationship conflicts than groups of
strangers that were tested. This study analyzes friendship as a dimension of group dynamics, and
my hypothesis was that after the short-term international experience, the students would identify
with more of the other students as friends than they did before, and a subsequent hypothesis
being that this “stronger” relationship with other students would in turn improve group efficacy.
This hypothesis did contradict Nibler and Harris’s findings, however it is a similar hypothesis
that they used when testing group efficiency between groups of friends and groups of strangers.
My study will counter Nibler and Harris’s findings because I expect that the short-term
international experience will improve social dynamics which will in turn improve group
cohesion and efficacy.

A similar study done by Engle and Crowne (2013) showed that short term study abroad
programs similar to the BADM 1260 class increased individuals’ cultural intelligence (CQ).
Cultural intelligence is a person’s ability to effectively function in culturally diverse situations
(Earley & Ang 2003). Their study took groups of American college students and had them study
a particular country and then travel there for a short period. An issue that they acknowledged in
their study was the ‘honeymoon phase’ (2013). The ‘honeymoon phase’ is defined by
Winkelman (1994) as:
“being characterized by interest, excitement, euphoria, sleeplessness, positive
expectations, and idealizations about the new culture. The differences are exciting and
interesting…. This is because honeymooners, vacationers, and business people have
experiences [in this earliest phase] largely limited to institutions (hotels, resorts, business,
airports) that isolate them from having to deal with the local culture in a substantive way
and on its own terms (p. 122).”
Like Engle and Crowne’s study, my study minimized this effect because the students
stayed with a local family for the majority of the trip. The students were forced to work and live
with local residents rather than staying in locations with high amounts of foreign travelers. This
presented challenges in communication and cultural adaptation that the students had to face in
order to successfully complete their work. The community that the students stayed in has a
population of approximately 100 people, and is nearly an hour away from the closest city, with
almost no proficient English speakers. Observing how the students dealt with these challenges,
whether through working independently or as a group, provided additional information in
understanding how the group dynamics changed over the duration of the trip. My study does not,

however, look at the direct effects CQ, but CQ does affect how the group functions abroad, as
Engle and Crowne’s study found, so it must be acknowledged.
Carless and Paola (2000) performed an extensive study of five different measures of
group cohesion within work teams: team cohesion, work-group characteristics, team
effectiveness, job satisfaction, and work-group performance. Though Carless and Paola’s study
did not find high statistical correlation between group cohesion and group performance I still
used some of the same or similar measures and surveys as they did, such as an adapted form of
the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) (Widmeyer et al., 1985). The Group
Questionnaire (GQ) (Burlingame, Krogel, & Johnson 2008) was also used in this study. The GQ
looks at positive bonding, positive working, and negative relationship and has been found to be a
useful tool in group treatment and measures the above factors with fairly high statistical
reliability (Krogel et al., 2013).
Methodology
The sample used for this study was fourteen students from the BADM 1260 First Year
Global Experience class going to Costa Rica. All of the students were either first- or second-
year students in the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. The
students studied international business as well as business in Costa Rica during the 2014 spring
semester, prior to a nine-day trip to Costa Rica. The students were also broken up into four
groups where they had to produce a final project after working and studying together throughout
the semester. The sample size was small, and the class had two international students and was
half male and half female.

For this study I incorporated a survey, personal interviews, as well as field notes to gather
data. The survey was created based off of previously created surveys that analyze group
cohesion. The questions were also adapted to fit the setting of this study. Questions from the
Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) (Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1985) and the Group
Questionnaire (GQ) (Burlingame, Krogel, & Johnson, 2008) were used in my questionnaire as
well as other questions created to fit the specific situation. The questions where yes/no or
agree/disagree on a 1-9 Likert scale. The questionnaire was 65 questions long and was
administered in the class period after the students had returned from the trip to Costa Rica.
Responses were voluntary and anonymous.
The questionnaire asked questions about how the students felt about all of the students in
class as well as the students in their individual groups for their final project in the class. The
class questions were broken into four categories: communication, comfort, efficacy, and social
dynamics. The group questions focused on five areas of cohesion: efficacy, social interactions,
communication, comfort, and the groups’ motivation for success.
A colleague and I also conducted personal interviews with one student from each of the
four groups. The interviews were voluntary. The students were asked several different questions
about their experience on the trip and their observations of other students on the trip. The
questions focused on social dynamics amongst the class as well as the students’ cultural
adaptation. The questions were designed to be open ended so that more information could be
gathered than would be possible in a survey. I gathered field notes during the trip to record how
the students’ behaviors and interactions changed over the duration of the trip. I coded the
qualitative data from my field notes and the interviews, and developed conclusions from themes
and patterns that emerged from these results.

The hypotheses that I will be testing are:
1. Group cohesion will improve over the duration of the short-term international experience.
2. Social dynamics of the group will change significantly over the duration of the short-term
international experience.
3. The short-term international experience will improve group cohesion.
4. These changes/improvements will improve overall group efficacy.
Results
The first theme that arose from the personal interviews and my field notes was that
people did not make much, if any, effort to strengthen relationships before the trip. Two of the
students interviewed specifically indicated that they did not make any effort to build
relationships with any of the other students in the class, which met for 75-minute sessions on a
weekly basis. All subjects interviewed indicated that they only knew one or two other students
in the class fairly well before the trip and did not feel close to anyone in the class before the trip.
One student said that everyone else felt “foreign” before the trip. I observed that in the classes
before the trip, all the students were very quiet and reserved and most did not interact with one
another or they had very brief interactions. This is a great contrast to after the trip. My
observation of the first class after the trip was that everyone was much more talkative and open.
They had many more and longer interactions with one another in the first class after the trip and
the subsequent classes. All of the students interviewed said that they felt closer to all of the
students in the class after the trip and would consider all their fellow classmates to be friends.
One student even said that he felt that the class had turned into a “family.”
Another theme that arose was that people felt that it was easier to work with other
students because of their closer relationship. Three of the students expressly said that they felt

that feeling closer and being friends with their classmates made it easier to work together.
During the trip, I observed that the students seemed to work well together overall, but it was easy
to tell that when students were asked to collaborate, communication came much quicker than
during class. The students would immediately begin engaging with each other rather than
waiting for a leader to emerge and force everyone to star working.
None of the students interviewed indicated any discomfort with any of their classmates,
but they did have discomfort with the homestay portion of the trip in Costa Rica initially. The
students interviewed and my field notes indicated that there was a general discomfort with the
homestays initially, but almost all of the students felt very comfortable with them by the end. I
had also noticed the discomfort with certain cultural aspects of the trip, but only among some of
the students in the class. There never appeared to be discomfort with any of the students towards
each other. The students were respectful of each other the entire trip, especially during a cultural
activity in the rural community. The activity involved slaughtering a pig and students were
respectful of each other’s wishes regarding not taking pictures of the students engaging in the
activity or not talking about it with other students.
Three of the students who were interviewed did experience some minor conflicts amongst
the group. Two students said that they noticed when students would become annoyed with other
students or “pissed off” with one another, as one students said. One student said that they
noticed that students would frequently have a negative attitude going into an activity, but that
everyone would seem happy after they had finished the activity or even during the activity.
Another student had a similar comment that they personally had a negative attitude initially with
an activity that involved going around the community and explaining a new recycling project to

them in Spanish. After the activity however, they said that they felt that that it was a beneficial
experience that they were happy that they did it.
Another theme that three of the students interviewed talked about was that they saw
separation of the class. Two of the students interviewed said that they noticed a separation of
male and female students, and that the female students had different dynamics arise throughout
the trip. The students were not specific as to what happened, but they did note that the female
students had more complex relationships with one another compared to the male students.
During free time at nights, where people were able to go out during the Costa Rica trip, I noticed
that there were typically two groups that consistently formed; one wanting to go out and one that
wanted to stay in. This separation did cause a conflict the first time that the students were able to
go out. About half of the students wanted to go into the city while the other half wanted to stay
in a quieter, “out of the way” location. There was an argument between the two groups, but the
conflict was quickly resolved by the group and the majority of students appeared to be happy
with each other afterwards.
Two of the students interviewed claimed that the strengthening of their relationships with
other students was because they were forced to live with the other students for nine days. One
student mentioned that working together during the community service projects also helped to
bring people together. All of the students who were interviewed said that just being around each
other for nine days caused the increase in friendship amongst the class. The students were forced
to spend the majority of each day together for nine days, which they all noted to have been a
major cause for the improvement in relationships. One thing that I noticed as well as one of the
students that was interviewed was how positive of an attitude and a general feeling of openness
the group had from the beginning of the trip. The class met at the airport for their flight at

around 3:30 A.M. and the majority of students had a positive attitude and the students talked
quite openly with each other. It appeared that many students were trying to get to know one
another from the beginning of the trip, and as the student who brought this up in the interview
noted, it helped to reduce conflicts later on during the trip.
Something that I noticed while on the trip that did not come up in any of the interviews
was that some of the first-year students emulated some of the second-year students’ behaviors.
This was more noticeable amongst the female students in the class over the male students. Some
level of emulation of other peers would be expected, but I had not anticipated the degree to
which it happened. It was most noticeable amongst a couple of the first-year female students
who tended to mimic the attitudes and actions of one of the second-year students. These first-
year students tended to agree with and cling to the second-year student. Whether this affected
group cohesion or not was not looked at in this study, but it could be another possible area of
group cohesion to look at in other studies.
Class Descriptives (Table 1)
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
COMMUNICATION 14 5.00 7.50 6.2857 .75229
COMFORT 14 6.38 8.75 8.0982 .66899
EFFICACY 14 6.33 9.00 8.1667 .78174
SOCIAL 14 5.00 8.83 7.7857 1.19011
Valid N (listwise) 14

Group Descriptives
Group 1 (Table 2)
Descriptive Statisticsa
GCOMFORT 4 7.82 9.00 8.4853 .51589
GSUCCESS 4 7.57 9.00 8.3214 .61029
GEFFICACY 4 7.50 8.50 8.0000 .57735
GSOCIAL 4 6.57 8.43 7.5357 .83605
GCOMMUNICATION 4 7.13 8.88 8.3438 .81889
a. Group (1 through 4) = 1.00
Group 2 (Table 3)
GCOMFORT 4 7.71 8.76 8.2500 .53348
GSUCCESS 4 7.57 8.86 8.2143 .55328
GEFFICACY 4 7.50 8.75 7.9375 .59073
GSOCIAL 4 7.43 8.14 7.7500 .31677
GCOMMUNICATION 4 7.38 8.88 8.0938 .76632
Group 3 (Table 4)
GCOMFORT 3 7.29 8.76 7.8039 .83258
GSUCCESS 3 7.29 8.71 7.9048 .73309
GEFFICACY 3 6.50 8.75 7.5000 1.14564
GSOCIAL 3 5.71 6.71 6.1429 .51508
GCOMMUNICATION 3 6.88 8.75 7.5417 1.04831

Group 4 (Table 5)
GCOMFORT 3 8.00 8.76 8.2745 .42554
GSUCCESS 3 7.57 8.71 8.0952 .57735
GEFFICACY 3 8.00 8.75 8.2500 .43301
GSOCIAL 3 7.29 8.43 7.7143 .62270
GCOMMUNICATION 3 7.38 8.88 7.9167 .83229
Because of the small sample size, I could not run any statistically significant analysis on
the quantitative data. Above are the averages for the responses of the fourteen students to the
post-trip survey. The results of the quantitative data tended to line up with the responses from
the students interviewed, with medium to high averages in all of the scales measured.
The comfort, efficacy, and social dynamic scales all had averages above 7 and all fall into
a high level of agreement. Communication was below a 7, with a mean of 6.2857, which falls
into the medium level of agreement. Of the twenty questions about the class, only two were on
communication which could have been a cause for the lower mean compared to the other scales.
This lines up with what I observed and what the students who were interviewed indicated during
their interviews as I discussed earlier.
Similarly, all of the groups had means that fell into the high agreement level for their
scales, except for Group 3’s social dynamics, which fell into the medium agreement with a mean
of 6.1429. This group also had overall lower averages on all of their scales, not having a single
scale over 8. Interestingly, as the student who was interviewed from this group said, all the
students in the group all knew each other prior to the class and had worked on a group project the
semester prior to this class. All of the other students interviewed indicated that they did not
know their other group members well, or at all, prior to the class. It did not seem to me that this

group worked worse together than the other groups, in fact they seemed to work very well
together, but more likely they may have not felt as drastic of an improvement in relationships
amongst each other as the groups who did not know each other as well.
Another trend amongst the group responses was that the social dynamics scale had the
lowest mean of any of the scales in each group. It is a possibility that this was because of the
conflicts that arose or the separations amongst the class that formed during the trip that the
students felt this way in their groups. The students were only forced to work in their groups a
few times (less than five) during the trip in Costa Rica and did not have to do the majority of
their final project until after they returned from the trip so the interactions within the individual
groups were not fully analyzed in this study.
Conclusion
The data that was gathered supported all of the hypotheses presented to some extent. The
first hypothesis: Group cohesion will improve over the duration of the short-term international
experience appears to be true from my data. Of the factors that this study looked at, all of the
factors that were tested through the quantitative data averaged medium-high in agreement. The
students that were interviewed also gave responses that indicated an increase in group cohesion
at both the class and small group level.
The second hypothesis: Social dynamics of the group will change significantly over the
duration of the short-term international experience also appears to be true from the collected
data. Though social dynamics had the lowest averages in from the quantitative data, the
qualitative data showed that the students felt that there was a change in how the students
interacted with one another. I also observed the change from before the trip and after the trip.

It is harder to conclude that the third hypothesis, The short-term international experience
will improve group cohesion, is true from the data as there were no tests done to show correlation
between the improvement of group cohesion and the actual short-term international experience.
There did appear to be an improvement in group cohesion during and after the short-term
international experience so it can be concluded that the trip had an effect on group cohesion, but
to what degree the trip affected group cohesion cannot be determined from the data.
It is also difficult to say that the last hypothesis: These changes/improvements will
improve overall group efficacy is true bases on the available data. I was unable to test
correlation between the factors and group efficacy and the other factors that were looked at in
this study. The data did indicate that there was an increase in efficacy after the short-term
international experience so there it can be assumed that this increase was due to the
improvement/change in other factors.
This study did have a great limitation in sample size which limited the extent to which
statistically significant tests could be conducted. Similar factors could be looked at with similar
circumstance with a larges sample size so that statistical tests could be run. This was a flaw that
affected the usefulness of the quantitative data and the extent to which it could be used in testing
my hypotheses. There were nine sections of BADM 1260, each going to a different country, and
the study could be improved by using all of the classes as the sample size rather than just one
section.
There are other factor that could also be looked at in similar tests than just group
dynamics and group cohesion. Cultural intelligence has already been looked at by Engle and
Crowne, but factors like knowledge of the language of the country and make-up of the groups
going to other countries could be looked at. Few students had prior knowledge of Spanish in my

sample (less than five were known to have taken significant Spanish classes or knowledge of
Spanish). My sample also had two students whose first language was not English and whether
factors like these could have an effect on group efficacy or cohesion could also be studied.
An implication for this research would be to apply it to businesses and other business
programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels. It is becoming increasingly important for
businesses to have workers that can not only work efficiently in groups, but also in foreign
environments. Having students with these skills and experience could greatly improve their
effectiveness in future jobs and businesses could implicate similar programs into their training
for employees working internationally. Whether experiences like this actually would help in
students getting jobs or better jobs is another area that could be looked at.

References
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