Chapter Eight:
Team
Dynamics
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Learning Objectives
• Define teams and informal groups and explain why
employees join informal groups.
• Discuss the benefits and limitations of teams.
• Outline the team effectiveness model and discuss how
task characteristics, team size, and team composition
influence team effectiveness.
• Discuss how the six team processes—team development,
norms, roles, cohesion, trust, and mental models—influence
team effectiveness.
• Identify the features of self-directed teams (SDTs) and
discuss ways to support the success of SDTs.
• Contrast remote teams with traditional teams in
organizations and discuss ways to support the success of
remote teams.
What are Teams?
Teams: Groups of two or more people who interact
and influence each other, are mutually accountable
for achieving common goals associated with
organizational objectives and perceive themselves as
a social entity within an organization.
Important Components:
Groups of two or more people
Exist to fulfil a purpose
Interdependence and need for collaboration
Mutual accountability
Perceive themselves to be a team
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Types of Teams (distinguishing
characteristics)
1. Permanence – How long the team exists
2. Skill diversity – Degree that members have
different skills and knowledge
3. Authority dispersion – Degree that decision-
making responsibility is distributed throughout
the team
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Informal Groups
“Groups vs. Teams”: Groups include people assembled
together, regardless of whether they have any
interdependence or organizational objectives
Groups that exist primarily for the benefit of their
members.
Reasons why informal groups exist:
• Innate drive to bond
• Social identity
• Goal accomplishment
• Emotional support
Informal groups influence the organization and its
employees.
Benefits of Teams
Benefits
1. Better decisions,
products, and services
2. Improve customer service
3. Better information
sharing and coordination
4. Higher motivation due to
team membership
• Drive to Bond
• High accountability to
other members
• Avoid negative
comparison to other
members
Limitations of Teams
Limitations
1. Individuals are better than teams for some tasks
2. Process losses: resources (including time and
energy) expended toward team development and
maintenance rather than the task.
3. Social loafing
• Free-Rider Effect – lower effort and allowing others to
make up the difference
• Sucker Effect – you see someone free-riding, so you lower
your effort in order to restore equity (i.e. If they aren’t
working hard, I’m not working hard)
Social Loafing Causes
Social loafing is higher
when:
• Individual performance
hidden, indistinguishable
• Work is not intrinsically
motivating
• Due to individual
characteristics
• Employee’s lack
motivation to help team
goals
Social Loafing Remedies
Minimizing social
loafing
• Form smaller teams
• Measure individual
performance
• Specialize tasks
• Increase job enrichment
• Highlight team obligations
• Select motivated, team-
oriented employees
Team Effectiveness Model
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Organization and Team
Environment
Communication systems
Organizational leadership
Organizational structure
Physical space
Reward systems
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Best Task Characteristics for
Teams
1. Complex tasks divisible into specialized roles.
2. Well-structured tasks.
• Low task variability
• High task analyzability
• Well-defined roles
3. Higher task interdependence.
Task interdependence:
extent to which employees
must share materials,
information, or expertise
with others to perform
their jobs.
Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Levels of Task
Interdependence
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Team Size
Smaller teams are better because:
• Less process loss
• Feel more engaged in teamwork
• Faster team development
But team must be large enough to accomplish
task.
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Effective Team Member
Behaviours
Team Composition: Diversity
Team members have diverse knowledge,
skills, perspectives, values, mental models.
Advantages:
• View problems/alternatives from different
perspectives
• Broader knowledge base
• Better representation of constituents
Disadvantages:
• Slower team development
• Susceptible to “faultlines”
Team Processes
Cognitive and emotional
dynamics of the team that
continually change with the
team’s ongoing evolution and
development.
Includes team development,
norms, roles, cohesion, trust,
mental models.
Team development – heart of
team processes – the other
processes are embedded in
team development.
Stages of Team Development
Click the AVENGERS
logo below to see
how the stages of
team development
are evident in the
2012 movie, “The
Avengers”
Team Norms
Informal rules, shared
expectations to regulate
behaviour.
Why teams develop
norms
1. Belief that norms improve
team
performance/wellbeing
2. Improves predictability
and conflict-avoidance
with team members
3. Routinize behaviour with
minimal cognitive effort
Team Norms
Managing team norms
• Select team members with compatible values, past
behavior
• State desired norms when forming teams
• Remove dysfunctional norms by noting and
cautioning
• Ongoing coaching of norms to team members
• Introduce team-based rewards that counter
dysfunctional norms
• Disband teams with dysfunctional norms
Team Roles
Set of behaviors people are expected to
repeatedly perform because they hold formal
or informal positions in a team and
organization.
Roles and norms establish/reinforce behavior,
but roles apply to one/few; norms apply to all
members.
Roles are acquired formally or informally.
Types of roles:
• Taskwork roles – assist the team’s performance
• Teamwork roles – support team
Role Conflict
Role conflict: exists when an individual is
faced with incompatible role expectations.
There are four types of role conflict:
1. Intrasender role conflict
2. Intersender role conflict
3. Interrole conflict
4. Person-role conflict
Team Cohesion
The degree of attraction
people feel toward the team
and their motivation to
remain members.
Factors (1 to 3) that
strengthen team cohesion:
1. Higher member similarity
2. Smaller team size
3. Frequent member interaction
ammentorp/123RF
Team Cohesion
Factors (4 to 6) that
strengthen team cohesion:
4. Somewhat difficult team entry
5. Higher team success
6. More external competition or
challenges
ammentorp/123RF
Team Cohesion and
Performance
High cohesion teams usually perform better
because:
• Value team membership, so motivated to achieve
team goals
• Share information more frequently
• Higher co-worker satisfaction
• Better social support (minimizes stress)
• Resolve conflict more swiftly and effectively
Cohesion increases performance when:
• Task interdependence is high
• Team norms are consistent with organizational
objectives
Trust in Teams
Positive expectations toward another
person/group in situations involving risk.
Swift trust –an initially high or moderate trust
in others when joining a team.
Team Mental Models
Shared mental models — team members
hold similar images and expectations about
the team.
Complementary mental models — each
member’s mental model is unique but
compatible with others.
Benefits of team mental models.
• Improve coordination
• Belief/confidence the team is a functioning social entity
• Directory of the team’s diverse knowledge
repository
Team Building
Formal activities to
improve the team
development processes.
Types of team building:
• Goal setting
• Problem-solving
• Role clarification
• Interpersonal
relations
Team building can be
effective under specific
conditions.
Self-Directed Teams
Teams organized around work processes,
complete an entire piece of work with
interdependent tasks, and have autonomy
over tasks.
Success factors:
• Responsible for entire work process
• High interdependence within the team
• Low interdependence with other teams
• Autonomy to organize and coordinate work
• Setting/resources help team communicate and
coordinate
Remote Teams
Team remoteness varies with:
• Geographic dispersion
• Percentage of members who work apart
• Percentage of time that members work apart
Why remote work is on the rise:
• Increase in knowledge work versus physical
production work
• Better information technology
• Competitive advantage is human capital now more
than ever
Remote Teams
Remote team success
factors:
• Members apply
effective teamwork
behaviors (5 Cs)
• Freedom to use a
toolkit of
communication
channels
• Moderate or higher
task structure
• Opportunities to
meet face-to-face
