Group- Definition and Role
Group
A group is defined as two or more individuals interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can either be formal or informal. Formal groups are designated work group defined by the organization’s structure. Informal groups are network of personal and social relations not established or required by the formal organizations but arising spontaneously as people associate with on another.
Groups are further sub classified into command, task interest or friendship groups command and tasks groups are dictated by the formal organizations, while interest and friendship groups are informal alliances.
The organizational chart determines a command group. It is composed of individuals who report directly to a given manager.
Task group are also organizationally determined. Represents those working together to complete the job task. However, as task group’s boundaries are not limited to its immediate hierarchical superior. It can cross command relationship. All command groups are also task group, but because tasks groups can cut across the organization, the reverse needs not be true.
Interest groups includes those working together to attain a specific objective with each is concerned. Employees who band together to have their vacation schedules altered, to support to peer who has been forced, or to seek improvement in working conditions represents the formations of unified body to further their common interests.
Friendship groups are formed by those who share on or more common characters.
People join groups for various reasons like:
• Security: By joining a group individuals can reduce the insecurity of standing alone. People feel stronger, have fewer self doubts, and more resistant to threats when they are part of the group.
• Status: Inclusions in a group that is viewed as important by others, provides recognition and status for its members.
Self –esteem – Groups can provide people with feelings of self worth. That is , in additi9on to conveying status to those outside the group, membership can also give increased feelings of worth to the group members themselves.
• Affiliation: Groups can fulfill social needs. People enjoy the regular interactions that come with group membership. For many people, these on – the job – interactions are their primary source for fulfilling their needs for affiliation.
• Power: what cannot be achieved individually often becomes possible through group action. There is power in numbers.
• Good achievements: There are a times it takes more than one person to accomplish a particular tasks- there is need to pool talents, knowledge or power in order to complete a job. In such instances, management will rely on the use of a formal group.
Group generally pass through a standardizes sequence in three eruditions. Group passes through five stages in its developmental process.
The first stage forming is characterizes by as great deal of uncertainty about the group’s purpose structure and leadership. Members are “testing the waters” to determine what types of behavior are acceptable. This stage is complete when members have begun to think of themselves as part of a group.
The storming stage is one of intra-group conflict. Members accept the existence of the group, but there is resistance to the constraints that the group composes on the individuality. furthermore, relatively clear hierarchy of leadership within the group.
The third stage is one in which close relationship develops and the group demonstrates cohesiveness. There is now a strong sense of group identity and camaraderie. This forming stage is complete when the group structure solidifies and the group assimilated a common set of expectations of what defines correct member behavior.
The fourth stage is performing. The structure at this point is fully functional and accepted. Group energy has moved from getting to know and understand each other to performing the task at hand.
For permanent work groups. Performing is the last stage in their development, however, for temporary committees, team, and task forces. And similar groups that have a limited task to perform, there is an adjourning stage. In this stage, the group prepare for its disbandment. High task performance is no longer the group’s top priority. Instead, attention is directed towards wrapping up activities. Responses of group members vary in this stage. Some are upbeat, basking in the group’s accomplishments. Other may be depressed over the loss of camaraderie and friendship gained the work group’s life.
• Group structure: Work groups are not unorganized. They have structure that shapes the behavior of members and makes it possible to explain and predict a large portion of individual behavior within the group as well as the performance of the group itself. They include formal leadership, roles, norms, status, size and the degree of group cohesiveness.
• Formal leadership: Almost every group has a formal leader. He or she is typically identified by titles such as unit or department managers, supervisors etc. This leader can play an important role in the group success.
• Role: Role is a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Different groups impose different role responsibilities on individuals.
• Role Perception: As individual‘s view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation.
• Role Expectation: How others believe a person should act in a given situation. How a person believe is determined to a large extend by the role defined in the context in which a person is acting.
• Role Conflict: When an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations, the result is role conflict. It exists when an individual finds compliance with one role requirement may make it more difficult to comply with another. At the extreme, it would include situations in which two or more role expectations are mutually contradictory.
Norms
Norms are acceptable standards of behavior within a group that are shared by the group’s members.
Norms tell members what they ought and ought not to do under certain circumstances. From an individual’s standpoint, they tell what is expected of a person in certain conditions. When agreed to and accepted by the group, norms act as a means of influencing the behavior of group member’s with a minimum of external controls.
Common Classes of Norms
a) Performance Norms: Most common classes of norms .Work groups provide their members with explicit cues on how hard they should they work, how to get job done , their level of output, appropriate level of tardiness and the like.
b) Appearance Norms: This includes things like appropriate dress, loyalty to the work group or organization, when to look busy and when it is acceptable to goal off.
• Social Arrangements Norms: These norms come from informal work groups and primarily regulate social interactions within the group. With whom group members eat lunch, friendships on and off the job; social games and the like are influenced by these norms.
• Allocation of Resources Norms: These norms cover things like pay, assignment of difficult jobs and allocation of new tools and equipments.
Conformity
It refers to adjusting one’s behavior to align with the norms of the group. As a member of a group, a person desire acceptance by the group. Because of his desire for acceptance, person is susceptible to conforming to the group norms. There is considerable evidence that groups can place strong pressures on individual members to change their attributes and behavior to conform to the group’s standards.
• Status: A socially defined position or rank given to groups or group’s members by others. Status is an important factor in understanding human behavior because it is a significant motivator and has major behavioral consequences. When individuals perceive a disparity between what they believe their status to be and what others perceive it to be.
• Composition: Most group activities require a variety of skills and knowledge. Group is diverse in terms of personality, gender, age, education, functional specializations and experience. There is an increased probability that the group will possess the needed characteristics to complete its tasks effectively. The group may be more conflict laden and less expedient as varied positions are introduced and assimilated but the evidence generally supports the conclusion that heterogeneous groups perform more effectively than do those that are homogenous. Essentially diversity promotes homogenous. Essentially, diversity promotes conflict which stimulates creativity, which leads to improved decision making.
Cohesiveness
Cohesiveness refers to degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group. For instance, some work groups are cohesive because the members have spent a great deal of time together, or the group small size of facilitates high interaction or the group has experienced external threats that have brought the member together. Cohesiveness is important because is has been found to be related to the group’s productivity.
Relationship of cohesiveness and productivity depends on the performance- related norms established by the group. If performance related norms are high (for example high output, quality work, cooperation with individuals outside the group) a cohesive group will be more productive than will a less cohesive group.
Factors that encourage group cohesiveness
• Make the group smaller
• Encourage agreement with group goals
• Increase the time members spend together
• Increase the status of the group and the perceived difficulty of attaining membership in the group.
• Stimulate competition with other groups.
• Give rewards to the group rather than to individual members.
Group decision making
• Strengths of Group Decision Making: Groups generate more complete information and knowledge .By aggregating the resources of several individuals, groups bring more input into the decision process. In addition to more input, groups can bring heterogeneity to the decision process. They offer increased diversity of views. This opens up the opportunity for more approaches and alternatives to be considered. The evidence indicates that a group will almost outperform even the beat individuals. So groups generate high quality decisions. Finally, group lead to increased acceptance of a solution. Many solutions fail after the final choice is made because people don’t accept the solution. Group members who participated in making a decision is likely to enthusiastically support the decision and encourage to accept it.
• Weakness of Group Decision Making: Group decision making is time consuming. They typically take more time to reach a solution than would be the case if individuals were making the decision alone.
There are conformity pressures in groups . The desire by group members to be accepted and considered an asset to the group can result in squashing any overt disagreement. Group discussion can be dominated by one or few members. If this dominant coalition is composed of low and medium ability members, the group’s overall effectiveness will suffer.
Finally, group decisions suffer from the ambiguous responsibility. In an individual decision, it’s clear who is accountable for the final outcome. In a group decision’ the responsibility of any single member is watered down.
• Effectiveness and efficiency: In terms of accuracy, group decisions will tend to be more accurate. However, if decision effectiveness is defined in terms of speed, individual decision making is superior. Similarly, in terms of acceptance again group decision making is superior.
• Group Think: Group think is a phenomenon in which the norms for consensus override the realistic appraisal of alternative course of an action. It describes situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group from critically appraising unusual, minority or unpopular view. Individuals who hold a position that is different from that of the dominant majority are under pressure to suppress, withhold or modify their true feelings and beliefs. As a member of a group, a person finds it more pleasant to be in agreement – to be a positive part of the group- than to be a disruptive force, even if disruptive force is necessary to improve the effectiveness of the group’s decision.
Symptoms of group think phenomenon
Members apply direct pressure on those who momentarily express doubts about any of the group’s shared views or those who question the validity of arguments supporting the alternative favored by the majority.
Members who have doubts or hold the different point of view seek to avoid deviating from what appears to be group consensus by keeping silent about misgivings and even minimizing to themselves the importance about their doubts.
There appears to be an illusion of unanimity. If someone doesn’t speak, it’s assumed that he or she is in a full accord. In other words, abstention becomes viewed as “yes” vote.
Group Shift: A change in decision risk between the group’s decision and the individual decision that members within the group would make; can be either towards conservatism or greater risks.
The group shift can be viewed as a special case of groupthink .The decision of the group reflects the dominant decision- making norm that develops during the group’s discussion. Whether the shift in the group’s decision is towards greater caution or more risk depends on the dominant pre discussion norm.
Group Decision Making Techniques
The most common form of group decision making takes place in interacting groups. In these groups, members meet face to face on rely on both verbal and non verbal interaction to communicate with each other.
• Brain Storming: An ideal generating process that specifically encourage any or all alternatives while withholding any criticism of those alternatives .Brainstorming , however is merely a process for generating ideas.
• Nominal Group Techniques: A group decision –making method in which individual members meet face to face to pool their judgment in a systematic but independent fashion. Specifically, a problem is presented and then the following steps take place:
Members meet as a group but before any discussion takes place, each member independently writes down his or her ideas on the problem.
After this silent period, each member presents an idea to the group. Each member takes his or her turn presenting a single idea until all ideas have been recorded. No discussion takes place until all ideas have been presented.
The group now discusses the idea for clarity and evaluates them.
Each group member silently and independently rank-orders the ideas. The idea with the highest aggregate ranking determines the final decision.
Electronics Meeting
A meeting in which members interact on computers, allowing for anonymity of comments and aggregation of votes.
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