Fluid & Electrolyte Imbalances

Groups and Teams Work groups include command or functional groups and affinity groups as well as teams. Let's take a look. Work groups are formal groups established by the organization to do its work. A command group is a relatively permanent group characterized by functional reporting relationships, such as having both a group manager and those who report to the manager. Command groups are usually included in the organizational chart. In business organizations, most employees work in command groups, as typically specified in an organizational chart. The size, shape, and organization of a company's command groups can vary considerably. Typical command groups in organizations include the quality assurance department, customer service department, the accounting department, and the human resource department. Affinity groups are relatively permanent collections of employees from the same level in the organization who meet on a regular basis to share information, capture emerging opportunities, and to solve problems. Affinity groups are a special type of formal group. They are set up by the organization, yet they're not really part of the formal organizational structure. They're not really command groups because they're not part of the organizational hierarchy, and they are not task groups because they stay in existence longer than any one particular task. Affinity groups are groups of employees who share roles, responsibilities, duties, and interests, and which represent horizontal slices of the normal organizational hierarchy. Because the members share important characteristics such as roles, duties, and levels, they are said to have an affinity for one another. Employees sometimes form groups to discuss or pursue common interests. The members of functional teams come from the same department or functional area. A team of marketing employees and a team of finance employees are examples of functional teams. Cross-functional teams have members from different departments or functional areas. This is one of the most common types of work teams. Some organizations are organized such that the company's core work is done in cross-functional teams. For example, IDEO, a product innovation and design company, believes that interdisciplinary teamwork boosts innovation and creativity. Teams share and improve ideas, build on other team members' skills, and provide more opportunities for problem solving. Cross-functional teams have several strengths. In addition to getting things done faster, particularly customer service and new product development, they can increase creativity. Cross-functional teams also improve a firm's ability to solve complex problems by bringing different sets of skills, perceptions, and experiences together. Because they're driving diverse people from functional background areas together, they also increase employees' knowledge about other areas of the organization. The same diversity that can be a strength for cross-functional teams can also be a weakness if this diversity is not properly managed and conflicts are not effectively handled. Problem-solving teams are established to solve problems and make improvements. The core strength of problem-solving teams is that because employees are the ones actually doing the work, they usually know the job best. Putting employees in teams responsible for solving problems puts this expertise to work. Self-directed teams set their own goals and pursue them in ways desired by the team. Team members are responsible for tasks typically reserved for team members or managers, including schedule work and vacation, ordering supplies, and evaluating their own performance. Venture teams are teams that operate semi-autonomously and create and develop new products, product development teams, processes, process design teams, or businesses, venture teams. Virtual teams are teams of geographically and or organizationally dispersed coworkers who communicate using the Internet and other information technologies. Global teams have members from different countries. Global teams can be virtual or meet face-toface. Whereas formal groups and teams are established by the organization, informal groups are formed by their members and consists of friendship groups which are relatively permanent and interest groups which may be shorter-lived. Friendship groups arise out of cordial relationship among members and the enjoyment they've gotten from being together. Interest groups are organized around a common activity or interest, although friendships may develop among members. Virtual teams are becoming increasingly common in organizations. New forms of technology, coupled with pressures to reduce travel costs, make it easy for colleagues who are geographically dispersed to interact in ways that mirror face-to-face interactions. The composition of a group plays an important role in determining group productivity. Group composition is most often described in terms of the similarities and differences in group members. A substantial amount of research has explored the relationship between a group's composition and its productivity. A group's heterogeneity in terms of age and tenure with the group has been shown to be related to turnover. Groups with members of different ages and experiences with the group tend to experience frequent changes in membership. A homogeneous group is likely to be more productive when the group task is simple. Cooperation is necessary, group tasks are sequential, and quick action is required. A heterogeneous group is more likely to be productive when the task is complex, requires a collective effort, that is, each member does a different task, and the sum of these efforts constitutes a group output, demands creativity, and when speed is less important through deliberations. Group composition becomes especially more important as organizations become increasingly more culturally diverse. Cultures differ in the importance they place on group membership and how they view authority, uncertainty, and other important factors. Increasing attention is being focused on how to deal with groups made up of people from different cultures. In general, a manager in charge of a culturally diverse group can expect several things. First, members will probably distrust one another. Stereotyping will present a problem, and communication problems will almost certainly arise. Thus, managers need to recognize that such groups will seldom function smoothly, at least at first. Managers may therefore need to spend more time helping a culturally diverse group through the rough spots as it matures, and they should allow a longer than normal time before expecting it to carry out its assigned task. A group can have as few as two members or as many members as can interact and influence with one another. Group size, the number of people in the group, can have an important effect on performance. Social loafing is the tendency of some group members not to put forth as much effort in a group situation as they would working alone. The most effective size of a group is determined by the group members' ability to interact and influence with each other effectively. The need for interaction is affected by the maturity of the group, of the tasks of the group, and the maturity of individual members, and the ability of a group leader or manager to manage the communication, potential conflicts, and task activities. In some situations, the most effective group size is three or four. Other groups can function effectively with 15 or more members. A norm is a standard against which appropriateness of behavior is judged. Thus, norms determine the behavior expected in certain situations. Norms result from the combination of members' personality characteristics, the situation, the task, and the historical traditions of the group. Norms serve four purposes in organizations. First, they help the group survive. Second, they simplify and make more predictive the behaviors expected of group members. Third, norms help the group avoid embarrassing situations. And finally, norms express the central values of the group and identify the group to others. Group cohesiveness is the extent to which a group is committed to remaining together. It results from forces acting on the members to remain in the group, the forces that create cohesiveness and attraction to the group, resistance to leaving the group, and motivation to remain a member of the group. Cohesiveness may also be a primary factor in the development of certain problems for decision-making groups. An example is groupthink, which occurs when a group's overriding concern is a unanimous decision rather than critical analysis of alternatives. The best combination is for the group to be cohesive and for the group goals to be congruent with the organization's goals. Because friendship and interest groups are formed by the members themselves, however, any formal leader must be elected or designated by the members. Although some groups do designate such a leader, a softball team may elect a captain, for example. Many do not. Moreover, even when a formal leader is assigned, the group or team may also look to others for leadership. An informal leader is a person who engages in leadership activities but whose right to do so has not been formally recognized. The formal leader and the informal leader in any given group or team may be the same person, or they might be different people. Is informal leadership desirable? In many cases, informal leaders are quite powerful because they draw from referent or expert power. When they're working in the best interests of the organization, they can be a tremendous asset. Given the significant roles that groups and teams play in organizational effectiveness, it's clearly important that this process be approached logically and rationally. Groups are not static, and when a new group or team is created, it generally goes through some growing pains before it becomes fully functional. Traditional research on small groups, per se, as opposed to teams, has focused on a four-stage development process. The four stages of group development include mutual acceptance, communication and decision-making, motivation and productivity, and control and organization. The stages and the activities that typically form them are shown here. We'll discuss the stages as separate and distinct. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when a group moves from one stage to another, however, because the activities in the phases tend to do some overlapping. In the mutual acceptance stage of group development, also called the forming stage, the group forms and members get to know one another by sharing information about themselves. If the members do happen to know one another already, this stage may be brief, but it's unlikely to be skipped altogether because a new group has a new purpose. The group progresses to the communication and decision-making stage, also called the storming stage, once group members have begun to accept one another. People may show more