Work and organisational psychology second exam summary (UvA, first year, second semester, bachelor psychology)

WOP II
Team dynamics
Team: Groups of two or more people who:
- Influence one another
- Exist to achieve goals associated with organizational objectives
- Are interdependent: Coordinate, share information
- Perceive themselves to be a team

Team characteristics:
1. Permanence
a. How long a team exists (hours to years)
2. Skill diversity
a. Variety of member skills & knowledge
3. Authority dispersion
a. Degree to which decision-making responsibility is distributed
throughout the team (high dispersion) or centralized, one or
a few members (low dispersion)

Informal groups in organizations (NO TEAMS!): Groups that exist
primarily for the benefit of their members (yet they can benefit
organizations!)
They exist because:
- Innate drive to bond (creating social networks which is beneficial
for organization)
- Social identity (we define us by group memberships)
- Achieve personal objectives (coalitions with others), cannot be
achieved alone

Types of teams:
- Self-directed teams
o Success factors:
 Responsible for entire work process
 High interdependence within the team, independent
from other teams
 Autonomy to organizes and coordinate work
 Work site/technology support team
communication/coordination and job enrichment
- Virtual/remote teams
o Members operate across space, time and firm’s boundaries,
linked through information technologies
 Increasingly possible (and possible) due to technologies,
knowledge-based work & globalization
o Success factors:
 Member characteristics (e.g., technology savvy)
 Flexible use of various communication technologies
 Fairly high task structures (e.g., clear objectives)
 Opportunities to meet face-to-face

,Team advantages and disadvantages
Team advantages:
- Breadth of knowledge & expertise
- Diversity of perspectives
- Potential for synergy & creativity
Can lead to:
- Better decisions, products/services, information sharing &
coordination
- Higher employee motivation: Drive to bond, accountability to team
members, benchmarks (other’s performance is a benchmark how
you should perform)

Team disadvantages:
- Process losses (resources expended towards developing &
maintaining teams instead of task)
o Brook’s law (adding people might slow down project)
- Social loafing: People exert less effort in a team
o Ringelmann effect: Group performance was better than
individual performance but the individual performance in team
(per person) was decreased
 This loss increases as group becomes larger
o More likely when:
 Individual performance hidden/indistinguishable
 Solution: Make individual performance visible
o Smaller teams
o Measure individual performance in a team
o Specialize task
 Work has low significance (boring)
 Individual characteristics (low conscientiousness and
low agreeableness)
 Team dynamics undermine employee motivation (e.g.,
low cohesion)
 Solution: Increase employee/team motivation
o Increase job enrichment
o Increase awareness of social loafing and
team obligations
o Select motivated, team-oriented employees

Team effectiveness model:

,- Organizational and Team Environment:
o Broad supportive resource pool available, supportive &
inspiring leader
o Frequent communication encouraged by workplace design &
technology
o Possible external motivating forces (e.g., competition) or
team-based rewards

- Team Design
o Task characteristics
 Complex tasks divisible into specialized roles
 Well-structured tasks
 Higher task interdependence (only when sharing
common goal)
 Pooled interdependence (sharing pooled
recourses)
 Sequential interdependence (one’s output is
forwarded to the next employee to add to it and
pass it along)
 Reciprocal interdependence (work output is
exchanged back and forth)
 Low task variability & high task analyzability
o Team size
 Smaller teams are better (± ≤6)
 Less process loss: Less coordination, quicker
agreement
 Faster team development
 More engaged with team (know members better)
 Feel more responsible for team’s success
 Team must be large enough to accomplish task
o Team composition
 The 5 Cs model
 Team members
must engage in task
work and team work
o Task work:
Behaviors that
complete the
assigned tasks
o Team work:
5Cs behaviors
that support
the team
 Diversity: The presence
of a variety of
backgrounds, perspectives, experiences, and attributes
among team members
o Advantage: Different perspectives & broader
knowledge base, better representation

, o Disadvantage: Slower team development,
susceptible to fault lines (categorizing)
 Demographic diversity: Surface-level
characteristics
 Psychological diversity: Traits and attitudes

- Team processes
o Team development
 Existing teams might regress back to an earlier
stage of
development
 Forming: Learn
about each other;
evaluate membership
 Storming: Conflict;
compete for roles;
influence
goals/means
 Norming: Roles
clear; consensus
objectives, common
understanding,
develop cohesion
 Performing: Efficient coordination; high cooperation +
trust; commitment to team objectives; strong team
identity
 Adjourning: Disbanding; shift from task to relationship
focus
o Team norms
 Informal rules & shared expectations that help a group
regulate (group-relevant) behavior
 Norms develop through:
o Initial team experiences
o Critical events in team’s history
o Experience and values members bring to the
team
o Team cohesion
 Degree of attraction people feel toward the team and
their motivation to remain members
 Team role: Set of behaviors that people are expected to
perform because of their role in a team
 Team cohesion is stronger & occurs faster with:
o Higher member (coworker) similarity
o Smaller team size
o Regular and frequent member interaction
o Somewhat difficult entry into the team
o Higher team success
o More external competition and challenges
 Particularly when: