SESSION 8

Team dynamics

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-1
Learning objectives
8.1 Discuss the benefits and limitations of
teams and explain why employees join
informal groups.
8.2 Outline the team effectiveness model
and discuss how task characteristics,
team size and team composition
influence team effectiveness.
8.3 Discuss how shared perceptions among
members, called team states, emerge
and influence team effectiveness. 
Continued

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-2
Learning objectives (cont.)
8.4 Discuss how team processes such as
taskwork, teamwork, team boundary
spanning and team development
determine team effectiveness. 
8.5 Discuss the characteristics and factors
required for the success of self-directed,
multicultural and virtual teams.
8.6 Identify four constraints on team decision
making and discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of four structures aimed at
improving team decision making.
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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-3
Teams
• Groups of two or more people
• Exist to fulfil a purpose (common
goals)
• Interdependent: interact and
influence each other
• Mutually accountable for
achieving common goals
• Perceive themselves as a social
entity
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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-4
Many types of teams

Continued

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-5
Informal groups
• Groups that exist primarily for the
benefit of their members
• No interdependence or organisational
goal
• Reasons why informal groups exist:
– innate drive to bond
– social identity: we define ourselves by group
memberships
– Perceived goal accomplishment
– emotional support

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-6
Advantages and disadvantages
of teams
• Advantages:
– make better decisions, products and
services
– better information sharing
– increase employee motivation and
engagement
 fulfil drive to bond
 closer scrutiny by team members
 team members are benchmarks of
comparison Continued

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-7
Advantages and disadvantages
of teams (cont.)
• Disadvantages:
– individuals better and/or faster on
some tasks
– process losses: cost of developing
and maintaining teams
– social loafing (members exert less
effort than the team)

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-8
How to minimise social loafing
• Make individual performance more
visible:
– form smaller teams
– specialise tasks
– measure individual performance
• Increase employee motivation:
– increase job enrichment
– select motivated employees

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-9
A model of team effectiveness

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-10
Team design
• Task characteristics
• Team size
• Team composition
• Team Role 

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-11
Task characteristics
• Teams work better when tasks are clear
and easy to implement:
– learn roles faster, easier to become cohesive
– ill-defined tasks require members with diverse
backgrounds and more time to coordinate
• Teams preferred with higher task
interdependence:
– extent to which employees need to share
materials, information or expertise to perform
their jobs

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-12
Levels of task interdependence

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-13
Team size
• Smaller teams are better because they:
– need less time to coordinate roles and
resolve differences
– require less time to develop more member
involvement, thus higher commitment
• However the team must be large
enough to accomplish the task

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-14
Team composition: Five Cs

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-15
Team composition: diversity
• Team members have diverse knowledge,
skills, perspectives, values, etc.
• Advantages:
– view problems and possible solutions from
different perspectives
– broader knowledge base
– better representation of team’s constituents
• Disadvantages:
– take longer to become a high-performing team
– more susceptible to ‘fault lines’
– increased risk of dysfunctional conflict

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-16
Team composition: roles
• A set of behaviours that people are
expected to perform
• Pattern of actions expected of a person
in activities involving others
• Formally assigned, at time could be
informally assigned

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-17
Team states
• Norms
• Cohesion

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-18
Team norms
• Informal rules and shared expectations
that the team establishes to regulate
member behaviours
• Norms develop through:
– initial team experiences
– critical events in team’s history
– experience and values members bring to
the team

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-19
Preventing and changing
dysfunctional team norms
• State desired norms when forming
teams
• Select members with preferred values
• Discuss counterproductive norms
• Reward behaviours representing
desired norms
• Disband teams with dysfunctional
norms
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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-20
Team cohesion
• The degree of attraction people feel
towards the team and their motivation
to remain members
• Both cognitive and emotional process
• Related to the team members’ social
identity

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-21
Consequences of team cohesion
• Motivated to remain members
• Willing to share information
• Strong interpersonal bonds
• Resolve conflict effectively
• Better interpersonal relationships
• Better performance (if norms aligned
and task dependence is high)

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-22
Team cohesion and performance

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-23
Team development

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-24
Punctuated equilibrium model
of team development
• Short-term organisational groups
develop differently
• Inertia transition point redirection

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-25
Self-directed teams (SDTs)
• Cross-functional work groups that are
organised around work processes,
complete an entire piece of work
requiring several interdependent tasks
and have substantial autonomy over
the execution of those tasks
• Success factors: responsibility for entire
work process, autonomy, coordination
and communication 
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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-26
Virtual teams
• Teams whose members operate across
space, time and organisational boundaries
and are linked through information
technologies to achieve organisational tasks
– Increasingly possible because of:
 information technologies
 knowledge-based work
– Increasingly necessary because of:
 organisational learning
 globalisation

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-27
Success factors for virtual teams
• Member characteristics:
– good communication technology
– self-leadership skills
– emotional intelligence
• Flexible use of communication
technologies
• Structure
• Opportunities to meet face-to-face

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-28
Team decision-making constraints
• Time constraints:
– time to organise/coordinate
– production blocking
• Evaluation apprehension:
– belief that others are silently evaluating
you
• Pressure to conform:
– suppressing opinions that oppose team
norms
Continued

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-29
Team decision-making constraints (cont.)
• Overcome confidence:
– inflated team efficacy
• Groupthink:
– tendency in highly cohesive teams to
value consensus at the price of decision
quality
– concept losing favour: consider more
specific features

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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-30
Summary
• People have a drive to bond. As such, they join
informal groups and work in teams.
• A team is effective when able to achieve its
objectives, fulfil the needs of its members and
maintain its survival.
• The model of team effectiveness considers the
team and organisational environment, team
design, team states and team processes.
• Different team types (SDTs, virtual or
multicultural) have different challenges and
conditions for success and they all need to make
decisions effectively.
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McShane, Organisational Behaviour, 6e 8-31