Team Dynamics, DecisionMaking and Conflict

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Team Dynamics, Decision-Making and Conflict
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Team-Based Organization
Management Team
Team A
Team B
Manager
Employee
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Team Effectiveness Model
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Team Design Elements

• Task characteristics
• better when tasks are clear, easy to implement
• task interdependence
• share common inputs, work processes, or outcomes
• Team size
• smaller teams are better
• but large enough to accomplish task
• Team composition
• motivation and competencies to perform task in a
  team environment
• team diversity

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Stages of Team Development
Forming
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The Trouble With Teams

• Individuals better/faster on some tasks
• Process losses - cost of developing and
  maintaining teams
• Companies dont support best work environment for
  team dynamics
• Social loafing
• Group think
• Role disfunction

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Organizational conditions imposed upon group

• Organizational Culture, structure and strategy
• Organizational resources
• Performance evaluation and reward system
• Physical work setting

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Conditions for Social Loafing

• Low task interdependence
• Individual output not visible
• Routine, uninteresting tasks
• Low task significance
• Low collectivist values

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Groupthink

• The tendency of highly cohesive groups to value
  consensus at the price of decision quality by
  avoiding conflict and withholding of dissenting
  opinions

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Conditions for Groupthink

• Culturally defined
• Team is highly cohesive
• Team is isolated from outsiders
• Team faces external threat
• Team has recent decision failures
• Team leader tries to influence decision
• Organization does not respond well to mistakes

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Group roles

• Task roles (initiator, information and opinion
  seeker, clarifier, co-ordinator, critic)
• Maintenance roles (encourager, harmoniser,
  tension reliever, feeling expresser, follower)
• Dysfunctional roles (Blocker, agressor, deserter,
  dominator, recognition seeker, cynic)
• Important
• Roles need to be balanced according to outcome
  rather than individual needs or preferences

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Group Polarization Process
High Risk
Social Support Persuasion Shifting Responsibility
Low Risk
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Decision Making Model
1. Identify problem
2. Choose decision style
6. Evaluate decision
3. Develop alternatives
5. Implement solution
4. Choose best solution
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Problems with Problem Identification

• Perceptual Biases
• Perceptual defense
• Mental models
• Poor Diagnostic Skills
• Lack of time
• Complex situation
• Problems defined by solutions

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Problems with Choosing Solutions

• Problems with Goals
• Ambiguous, subjective, conflicting
• Biased by personal goals
• Problems with Information Processing
• Limited info processing capacity
• Sequential evaluation with implicit favourite
• Problems with Maximizing
• Satisficing, not maximizing

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Sources of Conflict
Goal Incompatibility
Differentiation
Task Interdependence
Lack of opportunity --reliance on
stereotypes Lack of ability -- arrogant
communication heightens conflict perception Lack
of motivation -- conflict causes lower
motivation to communicate, increases stereotyping
Scarce Resources

• Increases competition for resources to fulfill
  goals

Ambiguity

• Lack of rules guiding relations
• Encourages political tactics

Communication Problems
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Conflict and contradiction in organisations

• Conditions for conflict
• Decision-making assumes rationality
• Organisations are political
• Marxist theories of organisational conflict
• The de-skilling hypothesis
• Stratification theory
• Organisational diversity

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Conflict Management Styles
High
Competing
Collaborating
Assertiveness
Compromising
Avoiding
Accommodating
High
Low
Cooperativeness
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Structural Conflict Management

• Emphasize Superordinate Goals
• Reduce Differentiation
• Improve Communication/Understanding
• Reduce Task Interdependence
• Increase Resources
• Clarify Rules and Procedures