USC BA12N

1. E I G H T
C H A P T E R
Team dynamics

2. • Groups of two or more people
• Exist to fulfill a purpose
• Interdependent -- interact and influence each other
• Mutually accountable for achieving common goals
• Perceive themselves as a social entity

3. • Departmental teams
• Production/service/
leadership teams
• Self-directed teams
• Advisory teams
• Task force (project)
teams
• Skunkworks
• Virtual teams
• Communities of
practice

4. • All teams are groups
•Some groups are just people assembled
together
•Teams have task interdependence
whereas some groups do not (e.g.,
group of employees enjoying lunch
together)

5. • Groups that exist primarily for the
benefit of their members
• Reasons why informal groups exist:
1. Innate drive to bond
2. Social identity -- we define ourselves
by group memberships
3. Goal accomplishment
4. Emotional support

6. Advantages
– Make better decisions, products/services
– Better information sharing
– Higher employee motivation/engagement
• Fulfills drive to bond
• Closer scrutiny by team members
• Team members are benchmarks of comparison

7. Disadvantages
– Individuals better/faster on some
tasks
– Process losses - cost of developing
and maintaining teams
– Social loafing

8. • Make individual performance more
visible
– Form smaller teams
– Specialize tasks
– Measure individual
performance
• Increase employee motivation
– Increase job enrichment
– Select motivated employees

9. Team effectiveness model
Team design
•Task characteristics
•Team size
•Team composition
Team
effectiveness
• Achieve
organisational
goals
• Satisfy member
needs
• Maintain team
survival
Team processes
•Team development
•Team norms
•Team roles
•Team cohesiveness
Organisational and
team environment
• Reward systems
• Communication
systems
• Physical space
• Organisational
environment
• Organisational
structure
• Organisational
leadership

10. Task
characteristics
Team
composition
Team size

11. Team’s Task Characteristics
• Teams work better when tasks are clear,
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.

12. Levels of Task Interdependence
Reciprocal
Sequential
Pooled
A
B C
A B C
Resource
A B C
High
Low

13. Team Size
• Smaller teams are better because:
– need less time to coordinate roles and resolve
differences
– require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment
• But team must be large enough to
accomplish task

14. Five C’s of Team Member Competencies

15. Team Composition: Diversity
• Team members have with diverse knowledge, skills,
perspectives, values, etc.
• Advantages
– better for creatively solving complex problems
– broader knowledge base
– better representation of team’s constituents
• Disadvantages
– take longer to become a high-performing team
– more susceptible to “faultlines”
– increased risk of dysfunctional conflict

16. Homogeneous vs heterogeneous teams
Homogeneous teams Heterogeneous teams
• Higher satisfaction
• Less conflict
• Faster team development
• More efficient coordination
• Performs better on simple
tasks
• More conflict
• Slower team development 
takes longer to agree on
norms and goals
• Better knowledge and
resources for complex tasks
• Tend to be more creative
• Higher potential for support
outside the team

17. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust

18. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Existing teams
might regress
back to an
earlier stage of
development
Forming
Storming
Norming
Performing
Adjourning
Stages of Team Development

19. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Team Norms
• Informal rules and shared expectations team
establishes to regulate member behaviors
• Norms develop through:
– Initial team experiences
– Critical events in team’s history
– Experience/values members bring to the team

20. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Preventing/Changing Dysfunctional Team Norms
Trust
• State desired norms when forming teams
• Select members with preferred values
• Discuss counter-productive norms
• Reward behaviors representing desired norms
• Disband teams with dysfunctional norms

21. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
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 member’s social identity

22. Causes of team cohesiveness
• Regular interaction increases
cohesion
• Calls for tasks with high
interdependence
• Successful teams fulfillmember needs
• Success increases social identity with team
Team
cohesiveness
• Smaller teams tend to be
more cohesive
Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Member
similarity
Member
interaction
Team
size
• Challenges increase cohesion when not
overwhelming
Somewhat
difficult entry
External
challenges
Team
success
• Similarity-attraction effect
• Some forms of diversity have
less effect
• Team eliteness increases
cohesion
• But lower cohesion with severe
initiation

23. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Team Cohesion Outcomes
1. Motivated to remain members
2. Willing to share information
3. Strong interpersonal bonds
4. Resolve conflict effectively
5. Better interpersonal relationships

24. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Team Cohesion and Performance
Team norms
support
firm’s
goals
Team norms
oppose
firm’s
goals
High team
cohesiveness
Low team
cohesiveness
Low task
performance
Moderately
high task
performance
Moderately
low task
performance
High
task
performance

25. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust Trust Defined
Positive expectations one person has of
another person in situations involving risk

26. Development
Team
Processes
Norms
Cohesion
Trust
Three Levels of Trust
Identification-based Trust
Knowledge-based Trust
Calculus-based Trust
High
Low

27. Self-Directed Teams Defined
Cross-functional work groups organized around work
processes, that complete an entire piece of work requiring
several interdependent tasks, and that have substantial
autonomy over the execution of those tasks.

28. Self-Directed Team Success Factors
• Responsible for entire work process
• High interdependence within the team
• Low interdependence with other teams
• Autonomy to organize and coordinate work
• Technology supports team communication/coordination

29. Virtual Teams
Teams whose members operate across space,
time, and organizational boundaries and are linked
through information technologies to achieve
organizational tasks
– Increasingly possible because of:
• Information technologies
• Knowledge-based work
– Increasingly necessary because of:
• Organizational learning
• Globalization

30. Virtual Team Success Factors
• Member characteristics
– Technology savvy
– Self-leadership skills
– Emotional intelligence
• Flexible use of communication technologies
• Opportunities to meet face-to-face

31. Team Decision Making Constraints
• Time constraints
– Time to organize/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 favor -- consider more specific features

32. 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

33. Constructive Conflict
• 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

34. Rules of Brainstorming
1. Speak freely
2. Don’t criticize
3. Provide as many ideas as possible
4. Build on others’ ideas

35. 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

36. Electronic Brainstorming
• Relies on networked computers to submit and share
creative ideas
• Strengths -- more creative ideas, minimal production
blocking, evaluation apprehension, or conformity
problems
• Limitations -- too structured and technology-bound

37. Nominal Group Technique
Describe
problem
Individual
Activity
Team
Activity
Individual
Activity
Write down
possible
solutions
Possible
solutions
described
to others
Vote on
solutions
presented