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GROUPS BEHAVIOR & TEAM WORK

A group is defined as two or more individuals that interact and become interdependent on each other to reach particular objectives. Formal groups are those formed by the management to work on designated assignments. Examples of formal groups are departmental teams, interdepartmental or cross functional teams, committees, task force or tasks groups, made to complete a task, missions, delegations, commissions, etc. Informal groups are those alliances formed unofficially or without any consent of management. A group of five employees meeting regularly and doing lunch together is an example informal group. Other examples include interest groups, sharing common interests, such as playing badminton or blowing alley; and friendship groups, frankly interacting with each other.

WHY DO PEOPLE JOIN GROUPS?
Some key reasons are delineated hereunder:

1. SECURITY:
By joining a group, individuals reduce their insecurity of standing alone. They need help of others to protect and promote their interests.


2. AFFILIATION:
People join groups to make friendly relations with others and socialized with each other.


3. STATUS, POWER & SELF-ESTEEM:
By joining a group, people can gain recognition or status, power or worth in society, and self-respect in their own eyes.


4. GOAL ACHIEVEMENT: There are many tasks that individuals can’t achieve alone, so they form groups.


SOCIOMETARY: ANALYZING GROUP INTERACTION
People in organizations form informal groups in departments and sub-departments, but managers want to know about their informal groups. How might these groups affect communication and performance within the organization or they create potential conflicts or in intrigues? To get answers to these questions, managers use the techniques called sociometry. “Sociometry is an analytical technique for studying group interactions. “ Through the use of interviews or questionnaire, employees are asked: 1) With whom within the organization they would like to work to complete their jobs? 2) Name several members of the organization with whom you want to spend free time? There are many similar questions help understanding group interactions.
This information is then used to create a sociogram, a diagram that graphically maps the preferred social interactions obtained from interviews or questionnaires. Some key terms concerned with sociogram include the following:

1. Social Networks: These are linkages between members of a society.
2. Clusters: Groups that exists within social networks.
3. Prescribed Clusters: Formal groups like departments, teams, task forces, committees, etc.
4. Isolates: Individuals who aren’t connected with the social network.

ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES OF GROUPS
The advantages of making groups within organizations include:
1. Increased cooperation and coordination/ team work among members
2. Increased support of each other
3. Collective efforts for goal accomplishment
4. Increased innovative ideas and problem solution approaches.

The disadvantages of making groups within organizations include:

1. Delayed decisions in groups, particularly when the group size is big
2. Difficulty in reaching at consensus
3. Domination by the few members
4. Ambiguous responsibility; although group members share responsibility, but who is liable or accountable for the final outcome? The solution is to appoint or elect group leader to get the desired results.

GROUP DECISION MAKING
The most common practice in making group decisions is face-to-face meetings or interactions. Other four salient techniques are as under:

1. BRAIN STORMING:
A group of people sit together and share ideas; everyone is allowed to express all the ideas that appear in their mind without any assessment or criticism on their ideas. The purpose is to collect maximum number of ideas and evaluation or screening of ideas is done in the next stage. The technique is used in planning, problem solving, and decision making.


2. NOMINAL GROUP TECHNIQUE:
A group decision making method in which individual members meet face-to-face to pool their judgments, discuss and evaluate ideas, rank the feasible ideas (on paper, etc), and the final decision is made by selecting the idea with the highest aggregate ranking.


3. DELPHI TECHNIQUE:
A group decision making method in which individual members pool their judgment by filling a questionnaire.


4. ELECTRONIC MEETING:
Group members sit in a meeting hall, usually around a horse-shoe shaped table with computer terminals connected with each seat and a projector displayed on a wall; members write their ideas and suggestions on the computer screen, the information is shared electronically to all members, evaluated and decided with consensus.


TEAM WORK

Team work serves as a better way to utilize employees’ talent, train and develop their skills. Teams are more responsive and flexible to changing events. It is important to train team members, polish their skills, direct them thoroughly about their jobs or responsibilities before assigning them core tasks, provide them required information and resources, continually monitor them, and provide feedback. The right approach is not to offer reprimands to team members when they commit first mistake but to observe and praise them generously when they commit first right thing.

QUALITIES OF TEAM MEMBERS

Some of the team members tend to be creators or innovators of new ideas, some are good assessor or experts in analytical skills, others are good forecasters, some are critics, while positive criticism is welcomed and negative criticism discourages members, some are motivators, some are experts in making right decisions and problem solutions, while others are result-oriented. The right mix of qualities of team members result in superior performance.

TEAMS & TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
Total quality management (TQM) is a management philosophy about managing the quality of products and entire systems of an organization, while focusing on customer satisfaction, employee involvement, and continuous improvement in quality, as the three principles for maximizing quality.
The quality system involves employees’ suggestion and complaints and stresses non-stop improvements whether smaller or greater but regular improvements. These concepts will be utilized for better product design and process design. Firms must do purchasing or procurement of raw materials, accessories and supplies carefully/ diligently to assure maximum quality output of goods. Firms also set benchmarks of quality to be met. Benchmarks are also called standards, parameters, yardsticks, or hallmarks. For instance, a benchmark of a fast food restaurant may be to serve an average customer orders within seven minutes; a standards of a top quality car may be to stay defect less till driving of 100,000 kilometers subject to appropriate use by the driver; a parameter for a biscuit manufacturing plant may be to produce 100,000 biscuits in an hour, while the variation in that standardized amount will be called high or below standard. The other examples of benchmarks include cost per unit, revenue per unit, return on investment, customer retention level, etc.

FORD MOTOR’S APPROACH ON QUALITY & PROBLEM-SOLVING TEAMS
Ford’s management identified five goals for better quality and problem solutions:
1. team should be small enough to be efficient and effective;
2. be properly trained on skills they will need;
3. be allocated enough time to work on the problems they plan to address;
4. be given the authority to resolve the problems and implement corrective actions;
5. each team has a designated ‘champion’ whose job is to help the team in getting ahead of the roadblocks that arise.
The only deficiency of the approach is, along with time, team members should be provided sufficient information and resources to get the job done.

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