Objective: A project involving 60 employees to study how they perceive stronger groups in

the organizations.

Expected Outcome of the Study:

1. To investigate the fear and friendships in the organization.

2. To understand the positive and negative influence of stronger groups in the organization.

INDEX

S.No. Title Page Number

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 2

3 Primary Research 3

4 Key Insights from Primary Research 4

5 Conclusion 8

INTRODUCTION

Groups in organizations have existed since, well, organizations have existed in time. The cropping
up of informal groups have been accepted and expected by the human resources and coworkers,
and although the variety of them differ greatly from place to place, it is undisputed that they hold
power within the organisation. They exist for various purposes like socializing at the workplace
(and beyond), temporary groups who exist after their formal need was satisfied, groups of
coworkers who prefer working with each other, groups for grapevine communication within the
organization, etc. They differ from formal groups by factors like rigidity of structure, rules and
hierarchy; authority and identification, entry and exit methods, need, etc. Some of the benefits of
an informal group include reliving of workplace stress, friendships at workplace, filling gaps in
management activities, encouraging and promoting wellness at the workplace, and being a point
of contact in case of a crisis. But they also hold some disadvantages, which include difficulty of
entry (subjective on a case-to-case basis), easy prey to rumor, conflict of roles, and resistance to
change. They may be perceived to an outsider as aspirational, threatening, unwelcoming or just
another part of a company, based on the group, individual and organization.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

A research study titled “Are Workplace Friendships a mixed blessing? Exploring tradeoffs of
multiplex relationships and their associations with job performance” states that there is a direct
correlation in the number of workplace friendships in one’s social network and their supervisor’s
rating on their job performance. However, it continues, there is an indirect negative correlation
between job performance and friendships, probably through emotional exhaustion. A Gallup study
recently reported that 30% of employees (surveyed by them) reported having a best friend at work.
More importantly, the workplace friendships have shown implications on material and moral
support, information exchange and work and non-work advice. A study by Rath in 2006 states that
an employee who reports having friends at work is seven times more likely to be engaged in his/her
work as compared to their counterparts who report as “friendless”. The research study identifies a
key term called “multiplex relationships”, wherein it states that formal and informal relationships
at workplace overlap, and hence they cannot be studied or regarded in isolation. The research also
states that when it tried to determine the negative effects of these relationships, they weren’t fully
able to determine it because of the overlap between formal and informal relationships (multiplex
relationships). It, however, talks about the expectations from such a friendship like investments in
support and time, conflicting roles of a “coworker” and “friend”, and mismatch in expectations
which can result in loss of performance of a worker.

Another paper by IIM Ahmedabad which talks about workplace bullying is titled “The limits of
workplace bullying”. They focus on our target of study, termed as “bystanders”, and categorise
them into the following: “bully bystander”- one who gets involved and encourages discrimination,
“avoidant bystander”- one who pleads ignorance to knowledge of the situation, “victim
bystander”- the one on whom the hate is being targeted at, and “”helpful bystander”- one who
defuses the situation. They also talk about more negative effects of the presence of such groups-
increase in stress, demotivation of bystanders, lower job satisfaction, productivity, commitment to
organization and work, etc. Rayner and Bowes-Sperry talk about a training programme wherein
the bystanders are encouraged to intervene in case of a wrongdoing at workplace, but place high
importance on a sustainable organizational culture for this to exist.

Another research (Mao, H., Hsieh, A., & Chen, C. (2012)) attempts to find a correlation between
workplace friendship and perceived job significance, which is an important motivator to stay on
the job for a worker. It found that yes, job value is increased when a worker has friends on the job,
but the value and expectations are increased by their co-workers and employees themselves. In
other words, it’s a two-way system, wherein both the parties are interdependent on each other for
increasing their output from the job. An important managerial implication and factor to be
considered for our study is that when an employee is identified as increasing job value to their
peers and employees, they’re more likely to receive promotions, both by the organization and
his/her peers.

2
PRIMARY RESEARCH

Methodology

A total of 61 respondents filled our questionnaire. These respondents are working or have worked
for some time in their lives to be able to answer our questions. We asked the industry they work
in and their organization names. The questions included Likert scale as well as qualitative open-
ended paragraphs to get deeper insights from the respondents. Our main aim was to find out how
the respondents feel about groups or subtle friend circles formed in their workplace. The data asks
basic questions to understand how group dynamics work and the thought process of individuals
who watch friendship circles from a distance, not being a part of them. The questionnaire was not
intrusive and completely comprehensive. It was an accumulation of both qualitative as well as
quantitative data.
The 61 responses gathered were a result of convenience sampling

Types of Respondents

The collected data indicates that these responses were filled by 32 males and 29 females.

Based on work experience, the respondent pool can be divided in the following way-

Years of Experience Number of respondents (%)

0-5 56 (91.8%)

6-10 1 (1.6%)

11-20 1 (1.6%)

20+ 3 (4.9%)

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The respondent pool belongs to people coming from a diverse range of industries, as follows

Industry Number of Respondents (%)

Advertising & Content Writing 3 (4.9%)

IT Services 28 (45.90%)

Construction and Engineering 8 (13.11%)

FMCG 2 (3.2%)

Retail 2 (3.2%)

Pharmaceuticals 1 (1.6%)

Consulting 1 (1.6%)

Education 3 (4.9%)

Healthcare & Research 2 (3.2%)

Media & Marketing 3 (4.9%)

Others 8 (13.11%)

KEY INSIGHTS FROM PRIMARY RESEARCH

We sent out a survey with 40 questions to be marked on a 5 point likert scale to around 60 people
who have had significant work experience. The responses to this survey had different kinds of
details which had to be analysed using a data analysis tool for which we used SPSS.

We grouped similar questions into categories of questions that act as our variables for the analysis.
The type of analysis used is a Two-tailed Pearson Correlation test with a significance level of 0.05.

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Table 1: Correlations

The key findings from the table above are as follows and have been analysed by Quinnipiac
University Scale analysis:

1. The Power Dynamics at work are seen to be affected strongly by Groupism at work as
the Correlation Coefficient lies between 0.5 - 0.6. (.541)
2. The Power Dynamics at work are seen to be affecting the credits given to the individual
employees in a Strong way as the Correlation Coefficient lies between 0.4 - 0.5. (0.473)

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3. The Existing Complaint System seems to have a very weak effect on Power Dynamics
at work as the value lies between 0.2 - 0.3. (.264)
4. Groupism is seen to have a strong effect on the credit that an individual who is not a
part of the group gets for the work he/she does. This is because the correlation coefficient
lies between 0.5 to 0.6. (0.534)
5. The Groupism has had a strong effect on the Existing Complaint System as most of the
respondents feel that their complaints haven’t been heard. This is because the correlation
coefficient lies between 0.4 to 0.5. (0.421)
6. The Existing Complaint System has had a strong impact on the credit that an
individual who’s not a part of the team receives as these individuals feel that their credits
are often snatched away from them. This is because the correlation coefficient lies
between 0.5 to 0.6. (0.558)
7. We also observed that the interpersonal relationship one has is weakly affected by the
credits that the person gets as an employee. This is because the correlation coefficient
lies between 0.2 to 0.3. (0.278) While this has been said, we feel otherwise as credits
affect the interpersonal relationships a person usually has.
8. The Existing Complaint System has a strong effect on the interpersonal relationships
amongst the employees. This is because the correlation coefficient lies between 0.5 to
0.6. (0.554)
9. Discomfort due to groups is not affected by any of the factors stated above,
10. Similarly, rewards and appreciations are given out fairly irrespective of the presence of
any of the above factors.

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When talking about the negative experiences they had when working with groups in their
organizations, our respondents stated that they “weren’t given credit for their work”,found
freeloaders, dumping of work, “scathing remarks about inexperience”, condescending attitude
about work, myopic vision (group thinking), inability to accommodate new ideas, domination in
group discussions, higher expectations from outsiders, less chances of recognition, having things
done their way, and lots of internal talks and discussions, to name a few. It is very evident that
these groups make the bystander feel like an outsider and more than not caring, even go to the
extent of making them feel unwelcome whenever they have to collaborate with them on any
project. They have clear negative impacts on the organization and its stakeholders outside their
group, and aren’t beneficial and open when it comes to working with other people. Also, within
the group, it has been observed that they are unable to entertain or think of new ideas and over a
period of time, have developed a system of thinking which is common to all of them.

When they are asked on what could be done so that a group like this can cut down on their
influence, the following suggestions were made: confidential feedback of all team members after
a project is done, ensuring that a top-level manager does not become part of such a group, doing
team-building activities, talk to each of them separately, more transparency, management should
take bold decisions so that their influence is kept check upon, give them different roles and projects
to work upon individually, continuous feedback system, job rotation, culturalization, performance-
based preference, ensuring all voices are heard, etc. There were also feedback that talked about
their opinion that nothing significant can be done to control their influence, and some talked
drastically about firing them. One feedback also supported the group dynamics by saying that by
their virtue of working well with each other, we can milk off it and “making the groups productive
rather than holding them back”.

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CONCLUSION

We see that workplace environment with respect to Friendship and Fear is impacted by the
presence of Groups. From the above data that we have found through our survey, we see that the
Power Dynamics at work has had a strong impact due to the groupism that exists in the
workplace while also affecting the credits that an individual gets for the work he does. The
Existing Complaint system, where the employees get to talk to the manager or drop letters in a
box, has seen to have a very weak effect on the power dynamics at the workplace too. The
people at power seem to be unaffected by any complaints received. We have also observed that
groupism has a major effect on the individuals that are not a part of the groups which in turn
affect the interpersonal relations of the employee. This is also an effect of the lack of credits that
people face at workplace which leads to workplace frustration. While this has been seen, we also
saw that the rewards and appreciations that employees received have not been affected by any of
the factors we have considered.

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