Automatic process of sharing another person’s emotions by mimicking their facial expressions and other nonverbal behavior

1.      Provides continuous feedback to speaker

2.      Increases emotional understanding of the other person’s experience

3.      Communicates a collective sentiment -- sharing the experience

• Used to examine the impact that different communication media types potentially have on the message

• The Hierarchy varies on the Y-Axis (Media Richness) and the X-Axis (Situation)
  • Media richness refers to media that carries the most information, whereas lean media carries the least information
  • Situation refers to whether a task is routine (clear) or nonroutine (unclear)
    •  Each media type has its own advantages and disadvantages - used when most efficient and when able to convey the intended message accurately
  • The more Media Rich and Routine (situation) = Overloaded Zone 
  • The more Media Lean and Nonroutine (situation) = Oversimplified Zone

What are teams?

•        Groups of two or more people

•        Exist to fulfill a purpose

•        Interdependent -- interact and influence each other

•        Mutually accountable for achieving common goals

•        Perceive themselves as a social entity

Why use teams?

•        Compared with individuals working alone, teams tend to:

–       Make better decisions

–       Make better products and services due to more knowledge and expertise

–       Increase employee engagement

An effective team fulfills objectives assigned to the team (does the work given to them), fulfills satisfaction and well-being of team members (uses communication and working together), and maintains team’s survival (after establishing this trust the team will be able to continue).

The Team Effectiveness Model:

The Organizational and Team Environment affects Team Design and Team Processes, which ultimately affect Team Effectiveness. It’s important to note that team design may also have an affect on team processes because the characteristics, size, and composition may help determine the development, norms, and roles of group members.

-        Task interdependence: the extent to which team members must share common inputs to their individual tasks, need to interact in the process of executing their work, or receive outcomes that are partly determined by the performance of others

-        3 Levels of Task Interdependence:

o      Pooled interdependence (lowest level): individuals operate independently except for reliance on a common resource or authority; work well alone rather than in teams

o      Sequential interdependence (intermediate level): the output of one person becomes the direct input for another person or unit; found in most assembly lines

Team Norms

•Informal rules and expectations team establishes to regulate member behaviors

•Norms develop through:

–Initial team experiences

–Critical events in team’s history

–Experience/values members bring to the team

Changing Team Norms

•Introduce norms when forming teams

•Select members with preferred norms

•Discuss counter-productive norms

•Reward behaviors representing desired norms

•Disband teams with dysfunctional norms

Role – set of behaviors people are expected to perform in certain positions

·        Formally assigned or informally acquired based on personality preferences: Belbin’s Team Role Model

·        Nine team roles -- all needed for optimal team performance

·        People choose preferred role based on their personality

These slides reiterate that virtual teams are much different from traditional teams for two main reasons.

1.      They operate across time, space, and organizational boundaries.

2.      It depends on information technologies and knowledge-based work.

      They are increasingly needed today because of:

1)     Globalization and expanding market

2)     Knowledge management

     Some could argue that virtual teams lead to better performance because of:

1)     Team environments: Creative use of communication channels

2)     Team tasks: Structured tasks and moderate interdependence.

3)     Team size and composition: Smaller size than traditional teams and good communication and cross-cultural skills.

NGT is a system developed to solve a problem effectively by joining ideas and opinions of more than one person.  After the problem is identified, individuals write down solutions that they will then present to the whole group.  This allows multiple ideas to be explored and potentially combined or reshaped to improve their quality.  Finally, individuals vote to determine which idea is best.  One downside of this method is the limitation in overall cohesion of the team.

Simply put, team building is “formal intervention directed to improving development and functioning of a work team.” It can be accomplished through goal setting, clear role definitions, interpersonal processing, and problem solving. Team building activities can often be successful, but must be careful to avoid common problems that lead to failure. They should target specific, relevant team problems, be a continuous process (teams cannot always be fixed with a one-step procedure), and occur on the job, instead of off-site from the workplace.

From this one can infer that effective team building is a process that continues throughout the entire lifespan of the team, targeted at specific team problems or conflicts. This would infer regular team evaluations to actually identify these “specific team problems.” While off-site “team building exercises” are often common in the real world, team building should not be exclusive to weekends spent away from the workplace. To reiterate, team building is a continuous, real-time process of regular evaluation and correction.

• Resistance
  • Occurs when people or work units oppose the behavior desired by the influencer and consequently refuse, argue or delay engaging in the behavior.
• Compliance
  • Occurs when people are motivated to implement the influencer’s request at a minimal level of effort and for purely instrumental reasons.
  • Without external sources to prompt the desired behavior, it would not occur.
• Commitment
  • The strongest form of influence, whereby people identify with the influencer’s request and are highly motivated implement it even when extrinsic sources of motivation are no longer present.

Social Identity Theory:

-        people maintain a social identity (vs. personal identity) by defining themselves in terms of the groups to which they belong and have an emotional attachment

-        complex combination of many memberships arranged in a hierarchy of importance, which is determined by how obvious our membership is in the group (i.e. demographic characteristics) & group status

-        Features:

o      Categorization: categorizing people into distinct groups

o      Homogenization: we tend to think that people within each group are very similar to each other even though every individual is different

o      Differentiation: differentiate groups by assigning more favorable characteristics to people in our groups than to people in other groups

EuroDisney is quite different from Disneyland. Instead of Tomorrowland, there is a Discoveryland because Europeans aren’t interested in science and technology. There is no jungle cruise and no reminder of the colonial past. However, there are many activities in the park that are reminder of fairy tales. It is a multilingual park as Snow White speaks German and Sleeping Beauty speaks French. People criticized the park of having too much of an American theme and opening up “chewing gum jobs.” They were also unhappy with personnel policies and Disney’s use of corporate law. This example does a great job showing how different cultures will hold different views of a theme park. While Americans are absolutely in love with Disney theme parks and the characters in Disney movies, Europeans fail to understand the value of this due to cultural differences.

• Negotiation- occurs whenever two or more conflicting parties attempt to resolve their divergent goals by redefining the terms of their interdependence.
• Preparing for negotiations makes it easier for a person to achieve their goals
• Gathering information and communicating effectively are ways that maintains effective relationships between the parties
• Making concessions toward a potential agreement enables the parties to move towards the area of potential agreement, and symbolize each party’s motivation to bargain in good faith, and tell the other party the relative importance of the negotiating items
• The best strategy is to be moderately tough and give just enough concessions to communicate sincerity and motivation to resolve the conflict
• Being too tough can undermine relations

1. Implicit Activation: “priming;” men and women engage in negotiation styles/behavior that serve to confirm gender-specific stereotypes

What happens: men tend to outperform women when negotiation tasks are perceived as diagnostic of skill/ability or linked to gender-specific traits—men perform better; women perform worse

2. Explicit Activation: gender stereotyping is made explicitly clear in the organization

Depends upon a combination of:

1)     Actions of founders and leaders

a.      Symbolize the new culture or need for one, through memorable events

b.      Model the new culture though the subtle decisions and actions

2)     Culturally consistent rewards

a.      Reward employees for culturally consistent behaviors

b.      Reward managers who help employees understand the culture

3)     Selecting and socializing employees

a.      Hire people whose values are consistent with the culture

b.      Inform and indoctrinate new staff about what the culture means

4)     Aligning artifacts

a.      Share stories supporting the cultures

b.      Celebrate goals/milestones to support the culture

c.   Inhabit buildings that reflect the culture

• Assimilation: Acquired company embraces acquiring firm's culture
  • Wokrs best when acquired firm has a weak culture.
• Deculturation: Acquiring firm imposes its culture on unwilling acquired firm
  • Rarely works - may be necessary only when acquired firm's culture doesn't work but employees don't realize it.
• Integration: Combining the tow or more cultures into a new composite culture
  • Existing cultures can be improved
• Seperation: Merging companies remain distinct entitieswith minimal exchange of culture or organizational practices
  • Firms operate successfully in different businesses, requiring different cultures

• Unfreezing: 1st part of change process
  • Change agent produces disequilibrium between driving and restraining forces
    • Increase driving forces
    • Decrease restraining forces
    • Combo of both = preferred choice
• Changing: Middle part of the change process
  • Introduction of change and new program
• Refreezing: Last part of the change process
  • Systems and conditions are introduced that reinforce and maintain desired behaviors

• Realigning organizational systems and team dynamics with the desired changes
  • Alter rewards to reinforce new behaviors
  • Feedback systems
    • Help employees learn how they are doing
    • Provide support for the new behavior patterns
• 3 Key Components
  • Strategic vision
  • Change agents
  • Diffusion of change

• Anyone who possesses enough knowledge and power to facilitate organizational change effort
• Change agents apply transformational leadership
  • Help develop a vision
  • Communicate vision
  • Act consistently with the vision
  • Build commitment to the vision
• Also apply transactional leadership
  • Aligning employee behavior through rewards, resources, and feedback

• Motivation
  • Start with effective pilot project
  • Provide supervisor support and reinforcement
• Ability
  
  • Competencies to adopt pilot project
  • Role modeling from people in pilot project
• Role Perceptions
  • Translating pilot project practice - neither too specific nor too general
• Situational Factors
  • Resources and time to implement pilot project elsewhere

• Action Research Approach
  • Data-base, proble oriented process
• Appreciative Inquiry Approach
  • Focuses on groups potential/positive elements
• Parallel Learning Structure Approach
  • Participation groups constructed alongside/parallel to formal organization

• Change needs both action and research focus
• Action Orientation
  • solve problems
  • change organizational systems
• Research orientation
  • concepts guide change
  • data needede to
    
    • diagnose problem
    • identify interventions
    • evaluate interventions

• Cross-Cultural Concerns
  • Linear and open conflict assumptions different from values in some cultures
• Ethical Concerns
  • privacy rights of individuals
    • need for employees to provide info
  • management of power
    • could increase management power
  • individuals' self-esteem
    • could undermine it
  • consultants' role
    • should be detached from organization