Written on April 16, 2019.
My reflection on: 1) How group cohesiveness is developed and sustained; 2) Five stages of group development; 3) Why teams and groups are not the same.
1.) According to Borkowski (2016), the level of cohesiveness of a group depends on many different factors, which may include the dependence of members or physical location. There are four main important factors that contribute to the group cohesiveness: the size of the group, experience of success by the group, group status, and outside threats to the group. The size of the group directly affects the cohesiveness of the group. For example, it is said that five people in a group would be ideal size and it is also the optimum group size (Kameda et al., 1992). Social loafing means when the size of the group increases, the effort of individual members in a group will decrease. Explained by Borkowski (2016), several members’ contribution may not be effective because they assume that other members will pick up and handle their work or slack. When there is a lack of accountability, members will just work on their own self-serving interests. For instance, if some individuals see that other members do not perform the task with equal efforts, they may hold back and stop putting too much work on the task.
Experience of success makes a direct impact on the group cohesiveness because people are more interested in joining the winning team instead of losing teams. In other words, success or failure history of a group is said to attract or discourage members from working in the same group again (Norvell & Forsyth, 1984). For instance, institutions such as Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, which have a reputation of incredible teams of employees, will attract more high performing oncology surgeons to join the team (Sutton, 2015). Group status often includes barriers or high criteria, which makes admission to the group more difficult. For example, it is harder to become a member of a group of brain surgeons than becoming a member of the group of nursing assistants. The last factor, outside threats to the group, may help to increase the group cohesiveness because members are aware of the impacts of those outside threats to their group goals. Moreover, in such cases, members will unite to deal with the external factors, forces or threats (Borkowski, 2016). For example, in order to cope with barriers, uncertainty, and adversity, employees who work at the Mayo Clinics claimed to commit to their best services and performance (Sutton, 2015).
Group norms may control the relationship between cohesiveness and performance. Cohesive groups are said to perform a higher level of productivity, and it is also said that group cohesiveness is a product of social identification (Borkowski, 2016). When members feel positive about their groups, they will likely cooperate and support each other. In addition, the more cohesive a group is, the more influence and social interactions occur among members in the group (Turner, 1987). Therefore, if group norms support performance-related activities, cohesiveness tends to improve performance (Borkowski, 2016).
2.) The five stages of a group development include: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The first stage of development is forming. In this stage, members try to determine their core values, proper behaviors, objectives, and tasks of the group. In the second stage - storming - members try to find their group identity and their social power within the group. A hierarchy is established in this stage because people react to what is supposed to be accomplished. Intermember criticism and judgments may occur as a struggle for control. The third stage - norming - develops cohesion and structures of the group after group norms and values are accepted. In this stage, rules for behavior are defined and there is a greater degree of order and a strong sense of group membership. In the fourth stage, performing, members found their roles and focus mainly on their tasks to get to the final stage which is adjourning. The last stage refers to the dissolution or termination of the group membership. For example, an experimental reexamination (Haines, 2014) showed similar group development progresses of virtual teams, which could present the five steps described above. Their first stage was called “dependency and inclusion” because the situation was new to the members, and their main task was to determine group members. Their second stage was named “counter-dependency and fight,” which explained and defined their goals, values, boundaries, and tasks. Their third stage was named “trust and structure,” in order to negotiate about the goals, roles, and create trust within members. Their fourth stage was mentioned as “work” because it determined the productivity and effectiveness of the group, which could lead to the last stage - termination. It was the stage when they had a distinct ending point, and members assessed the performance of the group (Haines, 2014).
3.) A group is a collection of two or more individuals that perceive themselves as a group or have similarities. For instance, a group of old deaf men living in New York City, a group of young physicians or a group of Muslim women working in the Emergency Departments of the Carolina Healthcare System. A group often includes a stable structure, and members in a group may share common interests or goals. In the workplace, groups can be classified into two types: formal groups and informal groups. The informal groups are created mainly based on members’ interests or goals, and these groups usually have a short life cycle. For example, a group of nursing assistants who are not satisfied with some of the working policies would meet weekly during lunch to discuss and complain about those policies. In contrast, the formal groups are created by the organization and they are a part of the organization’s formal structure. These groups can have a long life cycle or short life cycle, depending upon their goals, tasks, objectives or issues. Formal groups can be divided into three types: functional group, command group, or task group. For example, the Human Resources and Financial Department can belong to functional groups meanwhile policy-making groups generally belong to task groups.
A team is a group that commits or shares the same goals or purposes. Members of a team possess complementary skills, agree on specific performance goals, and hold themselves mutually accountable (Katzenback & Smith, 1993). For example, the Mayo Clinics are famous for their knowledgeable teams of surgeons, urologists, gynecologists, nurses, and oncologists (Sutton, 2015). According to Cohen and Bailey (1997), there are four types of teams in the workplace: work teams, parallel teams, project teams, and management teams. Work teams are responsible for producing goods or providing services, and they usually have little or no role in decision making, except for the self-managing teams. For example, work teams can be surgical teams or primary care teams. Parallel teams draw members from various units, jobs, or departments to perform functions that their regular organization does not perform well. These teams often focus on problem-solving and improvement-oriented activities (Borkowski, 2016). Patient satisfaction task forces can be a good example of the parallel team. Project teams have a specific output, mostly time limited, and tend to recruit members from other disciplines. An example of project teams can be a new electronic health record implementation team. Management teams manage and direct the subunits under their responsibility, they also coordinate subunits or multiple teams across the organization. The executive team is an example of management teams.
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References:
Borkowski, N. (2016). Organizational Behavior, Theory, and Design in Health Care.
Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Cohen, S. G., & Bailey, D. E. (1997). What Makes Team Work: Group Effectiveness Research
from the Shop Floor to the Executive Suite. Journal of Management, 23(3), 239-390.
Haines, R. (2014). Group Development in Virtual Teams: An Experimental Reexamination.
Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.07.019
Kameda, T., Stasson, M. F., David, J. H., Parks, C., & Zimmerman, S. (1992). Social Dilemmas,
Subgroups, and Motivational Loss in Task-oriented Groups: In Search of an “Optimal”
Team Size. Social Psychology Quarterly, 55, 47-56.
Katzenbach, J.R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-performance
Organization. Boston, MA: Havard Business School Press/McKinsey & Co.
Norvell, N., & Forsyth, D. (1984). The Impact of Inhibiting or Facilitating Causal Factors on
Group Members’ Reactions After Success and Failure. Social Psychology Quarterly,
47(3), 293–297. https://doi.org/10.2307/3033827
Sutton, P. (2015). Characteristics of Highly Performing Surgical Oncology Units – A Personal
Reflection on the Mayo and Cleveland Clinic Models. European Journal of Surgical
Oncology, 41(4), 439–440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejso.2015.01.008
Turner, J. (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group. New York, NY: Basil Blackwell.
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