References for OB-II

• Assigned readings in the course file

• Case discussions
• Recommended text books
• Articles published in HBR
• Research publications
• TED Talks
https://hbr.org/

https://www.ted.com/talks
Desert Survival
Participation
1.Who were the high participators? Why?
To what effect? Who were the low
participators? Why? To what effect?
2.Were there any shifts in participation,
such as an active participator suddenly
becoming silent? Did you see any reason
for this in the group’s interaction, such as
a shift in topic? Was it a sign of
withdrawal?
3.How were silent people treated? Was
their silence taken by others to mean
consent? Disagreement? Disinterest? Why
do you think they were silent?
4.Who talked to whom? Who responded
to whom? Did participation patterns
reflect coalitions that impeded or
controlled the discussion? Were the
interaction patterns consistently excluding
certain people who needed to be
supported or brought into the discussion?
Influence
1.Which members were listened to when they spoke? What ideas were they
expressing?
2.Which members were ignored when they spoke? Why? What were their ideas?
Was the group losing valuable inputs simply because some were not being heard?
3.Was there any rivalry within the group? Were there struggles among individuals
or subgroups for leadership?
4.Who interrupted whom? Did this reflect relative power within the group?
Conflict
1.Did the team tend to consider only a few alternatives when problem-solving?
Were areas of agreement overemphasized while leaving areas of disagreement
unexplored? What was done if people disagreed?
2.What criteria were used to establish agreement (eg. majority vote, consensus, no
opposition interpreted as agreement)?
3.How did the team members feel about their participation in the team? How did
they react in team (apathetic, frustrated, defensive, warm, enthusiastic)?
4.Were team members overly competitive with each other? Were team members
overly nice or polite to each other? Were only positive feelings expressed? Did
members agree with each other too readily? What happened when members
disagreed?
Process Gains
• Increased knowledge: More information, expertise, and skills than
any individual member
• More objective evaluation
• Role modelling
• Shared mental models
• Increased motivation: Heightened engagement, peer pressure, and
observation
• Collective climate: ‘groupiness’
Process Losses
• Free riding: Social loafing
• Coordination problems: difficulty integrating members’ contributions
can lead to incomplete discussions
• Social facilitation: Perceived risk of being wrong in front of peers
• Dysfunctional conflict: Politicized subgroups
• Failure to surface all ideas and information
• Premature consensus: Overriding desire for harmony
• Poor allocation of airtime
 If deliberating groups do well, we can imagine two principal reasons.

1. Groups are equivalent to their best members

2. The whole is the sum of the parts: aggregating

information
Tuckman’s Five-Stage Theory
of Group Development

Cooperation
Performing
Conflict Adjourning
Norming
Storming Return to
Independence
Forming
Dependence/
interdependence

Independence
 Stage 1

✓Getting acquainted
✓Understanding goals
✓Developing procedures for performing task

• Group members tend to remain uncertain and anxious about roles, people
• Mutual trust is low and good deal of holding back to see who takes charge
and how
Stage 2
✓Members remain committed to the idea
they bring to the team
✓Unwillingness to accommodate
other’s ideas triggers conflict
✓Some withdraw/isolation

• Key is to manage conflict

Stage 3
• Realization that they need to work together
to accomplish team goal
• Sharing of information
• Acceptance of different options
• Positive attempts to make decisions
that may require compromise
Stage 4
• Solving task problems
• Members are comfortable working within
their roles
• Team makes progress toward goals

• Climate of open communication, strong

cooperation and lots of helping behaviour
• Cohesiveness and personal commitment
to group goals
Performing De-norming

De-storming

De-forming
Erosion of
standards of Discontent
conduct surfaces and Care little beyond
cohesiveness their self-imposed
Group Decay weakens borders
 Punctuated-Equilibrium Model

(High)

Phase 2
Performance

Completion
First
Meeting
Transition
Phase 1
(Low)
A (A+B)/2 B
Time

Temporary Groups with Deadlines

 Conformity
changing one’s behaviour or beliefs in response to explicit or implicit
(whether real or imagined) pressure from others

There is no direct request to comply with the group

nor
Any reason to justify the behavior change

The convergence of individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and

behavior toward a group norm …
Informational Social Influence/Conformity:

The Need to Know What’s “Right”

Informational social influence
Normative Social Influence:

The Need to Be “Accepted”

Distortion of individual judgment by unanimous
but incorrect opposition
 Need for Acceptance/ Need for Certainty
Approval of Others

Subjective
Uncertainty
Power of others to
Normative Reward/Punish Informational
Influence Need for information Influence
to reduce uncertainty

Conflict between own Comparison with

and others’ opinions others

Compliance Internalization

Private Disagreement Public Acceptance Private Acceptance

 Are Norms enforced?

• Norms are likely to be enforced if they:

▪ Facilitate group survival

▪ Make predictable what behavior is expected of group members

▪ Help the group avoid embarrassing interpersonal problems

▪ Clarify the group’s or organization’s central values

https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMR.1984.4277934
 How do Norms develop?

• Explicit statement by supervisors or co-workers

• Critical events in group’s history

• Primacy – the first behavior pattern that emerges in a group often sets group’s expectations

• Carryover behaviors from past situations

https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMR.1984.4277934
 Psychological Contract
• Perceived Role
• Expected Role
• Enacted Role
Role Set of expected
behavior patterns
expected of a person
occupying a given
position in a social unit

Role conflict
Multiple Roles
Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment

"The first day they came there it was a little prison set up in a
basement with fake cell doors and by the second day it was a
real prison created in the minds of each prisoner, each guard
and also of the staff" Philip Zimbardo
Cohesiveness Rewards to the group
than to individual members

Stimulate competition Increase the time members

with other groups spend together

Encourage agreement with Make the group

team goals smaller

Physically isolate
the group Increase perceived difficulty of
attaining membership in the group
Social Loafing
The phenomenon in which participants, who work together,
generate less effort than do participants who work alone

Social Loafing
 Merit Corporation

https://www.ideo.com/post/ideo-on-60-minutes-and-cbs-this-
morning
Merit Corporation

GROUP TASK DESIGN

COMPOSITION ❑Required activities GROUP
CONTEXT
❑Demographics ❑Required CULTURE
❑ Purpose EFFECTIVENESS
❑Competencies interactions ❑Emergent
❑ History ❑Performance
❑Interests ❑Interdependence activities
❑ Nature of business ❑Member well-
❑Working styles ❑Variety and scope ❑Emergent
❑ Physical setting being and
❑Values ❑Novelty vs. routine interactions
❑ Competitors
❑Autonomy ❑Norms development
❑ Regulators ❑Shared
❑Roles
❑ Labor market ❑Rituals, capacity to
❑ Financial market adapt and
myths and
❑ Political, social, FORMAL ORGANIZATION learn
shared
economic, legal and •Structure language
cultural systems •Systems
•Staffing
LEADERSHIP
STYLE DESIGN FACTORS
 • group culture arises from the interaction of the three
design factors – the group’s composition, its task
design, and the formal organization within which the
group is located.

• it also depends on the leader’s style.

Merit Corporation
• the design factors and how they interact are in turn
shaped by a set of contextual factors.

• group culture has a direct impact on team

effectiveness.
January 28, 1986
 Advocacy and Inquiry Orientation
Attribute Advocacy Inquiry
What is the goal? To WIN To arrive at the best possible solution
together
How do you play? Forcefully present your point Seek to surface relevant information and
of view to gain adherents to it perspectives

What are the unstated The points go to the winner, It’s a collective learning exercise
rules of the game? those with more power often • purpose of which is to develop understanding
get the last word. and new possibilities

How do you see others? As competitors As collaborators

What do you do when Hide them Reveal them – they can trigger places
there are gaps in your where others can be of most help
argument?
How do you deal with Suppress them Welcome them as helping enrich the
dissenters? analysis
 To promote an inquiry orientation
• Frame as collective learning process
▪ When leader communicates that they see themselves as having as much to learn
from the rest of the group, others are willing to take the interpersonal risks of
speaking up, asking questions and experimenting new behaviours.
• The idea is ‘we are all in this together’.
• None of us know, at the outset, the right answer.
• We have to discover it together by pooling our own experience and insights about the
problem or decision.
▪ When leaders demonstrate awareness of their own fallibility (eg. I am likely to
miss things, and I need your help; I don’t have all the answers), it creates
psychological safety.
 To promote an inquiry orientation

▪ Build a climate of psychological safety

▪ shared belief that team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking

Function of interpersonal trust and mutual respect

Building a psychologically safe workplace |
Amy Edmondson |
Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at
Harvard Business School

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhoLuui9gX8
 Groupthink

“a mode of thinking that people engage in when the

members’ striving for unanimity over-ride their motivation
to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
Janis, 1971
 Symptoms of Groupthink

• Illusion of invulnerability
• Collective rationalization
• Belief in inherent morality
• Stereotyped views of out-groups
• Direct pressure on dissenters
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity
• Self-appointed ‘mindguards’

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872679104400601
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bdm.3960020304
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/chptnine.pdf
 US Escalation of the
Vietnam War
Bay of Pigs Fiasco in 1961
Road to Abilene (Symptoms)
❑ Agree privately (as individuals), as to the nature of the situation or problem facing
the organization
❑ Agree privately (as individuals), as to the steps that would be required to cope with
the situation or problem they face
❑ Fail to accurately communicate their desires and/or beliefs to one another. They
do just the opposite and thereby lead one another into misperceiving the collective
reality.
❑ With such invalid and inaccurate information, organizational members take
collective decisions that lead them to take actions contrary to what they want to do,
and thereby arrive at results that are counterproductive to the organization’s intent
and purposes.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-24368-001
Road to Abilene (Symptoms)
❑ As a result of taking actions that are counterproductive, organizational members
experience frustration, anger, irritation, and dissatisfaction with their organization
❑ They form sub-groups with trusted acquaintances and blame other subgroups for
the organization’s dilemma
❑ If organizational members do not deal with the issue, cycle repeats itself with
greater magnitude

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-24368-001
 Abilene Paradox

Organizations frequently take actions in contradiction

to what they really want to do

And, therefore defeat the very purposes they are trying

to achieve

The inability to manage agreement

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-24368-001
Army Crew Team
 Army Crew Team
• A team is almost always either more or less than the sum of its
‘objective’ individual parts.

• Team leaders need to invest time up front selecting the right mix of
members.

• Although technical skills, such as being fast rower, are important,

interpersonal skills, such as being a team player, are important too.

• A team is very impressionable early in its life. Early losses can have a
downward spiral effect and early wins can be motivating and inspiring.

Katz, N. (2001). Sports teams as a model for workplace teams: Lessons and liabilities. The Academy of
Management Executive, 15(3), 56-67.
 Army Crew Team
• Team leaders should orchestrate early wins to take advantage of their positive
effects.

• If losses do occur, leaders should be aware of the various ways (individually or

as a group) and times (immediately or later) that they could intervene to
mitigate the negative effects.

• Interventions should be carefully planned to ensure that they have the desired
effect of increasing team trust and team identity.

• Fostering team trust is crucial to team efficacy. More than just trusting the
members of the team individually, each person needs to trust the team as a
whole to increase confidence that the team can succeed.
Thank you!