ADMS 4495 Midterm Notes

Chapter 1:

A work team is an interdependent collection of individuals who share responsibility for specific outcomes for their organizations. A team is a group of people with respect to information, resources and skills who seek to combine efforts to achieve a common goal. It has 5 characteristics:

1. Shared Goal 2. Interdependence- members cannot achieve goals by themselves. To meet goals you must rely on other members. 3. Bounded- identifiable membership (know who’s on the team). 4. Stability- teams work together for a meaningful length of time. (Tenure). 5. Authority to manage own work and internal processes. Teams operate in larger social system context. (Larger organization)

A working group by contrast, consists of people who learn from one another and share ideas but are not interdependent in an important fashion and are not working towards a shared goal. Help others but maintain the goal of achieving independent goals.

4 Challenges proving importance of teams:

1. Customer Service- Transactional models of teamwork are characterized by discrete exchanges, are short term in nature and contain little interactions between customer and the vendor. In contrast relational models of teamwork occur over time , are more intense, and are built upon a relationship between the people involved. 2. Competition- Industry leaders often enjoy vast economies of scale and earn tremendous profits. Teams withing organizations need to work even harder to compete with industry leaders and even often to specialize more. 3. Information Age- In the knowledge era employees are knowledge workers and teams are knowledge integrators. Managers have a new role to identify key resources that will best implement the team’s objectives and then to facilitate the coordination’s of those resources for the company purposes. 4. Globalization- An increasingly global fast paced economy requires people with specialized expertise, yet the specialists within a company need to work together. As acquisitions, restructurings and outsourcing and other structural changes take place the need for coordination’s become more crucial.

Types of Teams:

1. Manager Led Teams: Most traditional, the manager acts as the team leader and is responsible for defining the goals, methods and functioning of the team. Team is responsible for only the execution of their assigned work. Manager is responsible for managing, monitoring, overseeing design, selecting members and interfacing with the organization. E.g. assembly teams, surgery teams. Has a full time higher-ranking supervisor. Provides the greatest amount of control, can be efficient, low start up costs. There are disadvantages such as diffusion of responsibilities and conformity to the leader, basically less autonomy and power. 2. Self-Managing Teams: A manager or leader determines the overall purpose or goal of the team but the team is at liberty to manage methods by which to achieve their goal. Increasingly common, improve productivity, quality, savings and employee morale as well as contribute to reductions in absenteeism and turnover. It builds commitment, increased autonomy and morale. The disadvantages are that the manager has less control over the processes and products, which makes it difficult to assess progress. Also can be time consuming. 3. Self-Directing Teams: Teams determine their own objectives and the methods by which to achieve them, Management has responsibility only for the team’s organizational context. Self-directing teams offer the most potential for innovation, enhance goal commitment and motivation and provide opportunity for organizational learning and change. However they are time consuming and have the greatest potential for conflict and may be very costly to build. Also it can be very difficult to monitor progress. They are most ideally suited for complex, ill-defined or ambiguous problems and next generation planning. 4. Self-Governing Teams and board of directors are usually responsible for executing a task, managing their own performance processes, designing the group and organization context. Have a wide altitude of authority and responsibility. President or chief usually replaced by self-governing teams. In some situations they are set up to investigate serious problems.

* Teams are not always the answer, in the wrong circumstances could lead to poor decisions, delay and confusion and in good circumstances it could lead to creativity, insight and cross fertilization. * Managers fault the wrong causes for team failure (misattribution error) * Managers fail to recognize their team-building responsibilities * Experimenting with failures leads to better teams * Conflict among team members is not always a bad thing * Strong leadership is not always necessary for strong teams * Good teams can still fail under the wrong circumstances * Retreats will not fix all conflicts between team members

Most common type of team is the management team, followed by cross-functional teams. Team size is usually between 5-6 members and 1-2 years.

Most Frustrating aspects of teamwork are: 1. Developing/Sustaining Motivation 2. Minimizing Confusion 3. Fostering Creativity/Innovation 4. Developing Clear Goals
Developing your team building skills:

1. Accurate Diagnosis of Team Problems: It is hard to define a single measure of team functioning because team effectiveness is hard to define. Many people make the mistake of looking for cases after they find effects, known as sampling on the dependent variable. To prevent or avoid it you could one of 2 things, the first is to identify a preexisting baseline or control group- that is, a comparison group (in this case unsuccessful teams)- and look for differences between the two or the second thing to do is an experiment in which you provide different information, education, communication and so on to one group (randomly assigned) but not the other and then look for differences. Unfortunately executives don’t have time or resources to do either. Another issue is hindsight bias (I knew it all along) fallacy. This is the tendency to believe that something seems obvious, even inevitable, after you learn about it when you have not predicted (or cannot predict) what will happen. This can result in overconfidence. It is best avoided by being open to change of mind once facts are known, read trying to learn to learn new possibilities. 2. Research Based Intervention: team and group related research is based on scientific theory. Group related research is a huge part of sociology an psychology. The interventions presented in this book have a key quality going for them. They are all theory based in empirical sound. This means that they are not based on naïve, intuitive perceptions; rather they have been scientifically examined. This is known as evidence based management. 3. Expert Learning: Effective managers make mistakes, but they don’t make the same mistakes twice. Expert learning involves the ability to continually learn from experience. One of the greatest fallacies about learning is that people reach a point where they have acquired all the knowledge they need, in contrast, great leaders are always learning. In this the model expert learning is used to refer to how managers can continually benefit, even from the most mundane experiences. Single loop learning is learning that is primarily one dimensional, for example a leader may believe that he has nothing to learn from a subordinate but that subordinate can learn from him. Therefore, the interactions the leader and the subordinate will be one directional. In contrast double loop processes, involves a reciprocal interchange between leasers and teams. This means that leaders not only coach and direct and instruct their teams but also teams help their leaders learn. Another aspect of learning is the use of example. Experiential and example based learning is more effective than didactic (lecture based) learning. An important key to whether knowledge is actually used or remains inert is what is called inert knowledge problem. The key to unlocking the pervasive inert knowledge problem lies in how the manager processes the information, and when managers link examples to concepts they learn better.

Chapter 2 – Performance and Productivity
- Teams could benefit from a model or set of guidelines that would tell them how to organize and how to deal with inevitable threats to their goal achievement
Descriptive-Prescriptive Model
1) Description
- The interpretation of events so that managers can come up with an accurate analysis of the situation

2) Prescription
- A recommendation on what to do to fix the situation
*Three essential things:
1) Perform effectively
2) Build and sustain motivation
3) Coordinate people
Pg. 22
Team context – the larger organizational setting within which the team does its work, the design of the team in terms of its internal function and the culture of the team
- Teams rely on their organization to provide resources, funding and individuals for membership
Pg. 23
Organizational Context – includes basic structure of the organization (lateral, hierarchical), the information system, the education system, and the reward system * - Organizational policy and material and physical resources that are required to accomplish group tasks * - Team needs a supportive organizational context – recognizes their existence; responds to their requests for information, resources, and action 
Team Design – the observable structure of the team * - Refers to the leadership style within the team, functional roles, communication patterns, composition of the team, and training of members * - Design of a team is a deliberate decision of choice made by managers, it includes leadership style, functional roles, communication patterns and composition of the team and training of members. Deliberate aspect of teamwork. * 
 -Team Culture – the unstated, implicit aspects of the team that are not discussed in a formal fashion and shape behavior. It includes the personality of the team.

* - Influences: member roles, norms and patterns of behaving and thinking * - Norm: set of rules that guides member’s behavior * - Goal Contagion: a form of norm setting in which people adopt a goal held by other; more likely 
between people who belong to the same group 
Pg. 24
Essential Conditions for Successful Team Performance * Essential Conditions for Successful Team performance: * 1) Bring adequate knowledge and skill to bear on the task * 2) Exert sufficient motivation and effort to accomplish the task at an acceptable level of 
performance * 3) Coordinate their activities and communication
Knowledge, Skill and Ability
- Teams must have knowledge, skill and ability (KSA’s) 5 Crucial Skills for Team Members
1) Conflict Resolution
- Recognize and encourage desirable team conflict, but discourage undesirable ones

2) Collaborative Problem Solving
- Recognize the obstacles to collaborative group problem solving and implement appropriate corrective actions

3) Communication
- Listen nonevaluatively, and appropriately use active listening techniques

4) Goal Setting and Performance Management
- Establish specific, challenging and accepted team goals

5) Planning and Task Coordination
- Coordinate and synchronize activities, information and task interdependencies between team members
Pg. 25
Team Member Skills: * - Effective team performance predictor is cognitive ability. * - Also requires interpersonal skills, decision-making skills, and problem-solving skills * - Because teams increase performance pressure and anxiety, the performance of well-intentioned team members may be hindered. 
 * -Choking Under Pressure :Occurs when a person’s performance declines despite incentives for optimal performance
Learning Curves and Expertise:
- The physical presence of other people is stimulating, and the greater the arousal acts as a motivator on behavior. The presence of other people enhances performance for well-learned behaviors (but hinders performance for less well-learned behaviors). * 1) Challenge – if someone is an expert * 2) Threat – if someone is not an expert
Pg. 26
Social Facilitation vs. Social Inhibition
Social Facilitation – the predictable enhancement in performance that occurs when people are in the presence of others
Social Inhibition – occurs when people are the center of attention and are concerned with discrepancies between their performance and st0061ndards of excellence * 1) Expertise is one way: expert are trained to focus on what matters most * 2) Practice and rehearsal is another strategy: it modifies the behavioral response hierarchy, so 
that the desired response becomes second nature
- Peer pressure obstructs performance
Pg. 27
Flow: Between Boredom and Choking
Flow – a psychological state in which a person is highly engaged in a task – that the person track of time, and the process of engaging the task is its own reinforcement. (Engagement is critical).
Stress versus Challenge * - Challenge is experienced when there is an opportunity for self-growth with available coping strategies for coping * - The same level of goal difficulty impaired performance and adaptation to change when people appraised the situation as a “threat” but it improved adaptation to change when people appraised the situation as a “challenge” 
 * Motivation and Effort * - Members must be motivated to use their knowledge and skills to achieve goals. * - Motivation comes from within a person and from external factors, people by nature a goal directed, but a poorly designed team or organizational environment can threaten team dedication and persistence. * - Group Potency: unable to rely on others and unable to affect the environment; pure cognitive ability (Significant predictor of actual performance)
 * Pg. 28 Motivation Gains
- Refer to circumstances that increase the effort expended by group members in a collective task. Gains in which the less capable member works harder (Kohler Effect) * - Kohler Effect: social comparison (when someone thinks that their teammate is more capable) and the feeling that one`s efforts is crucial to the group * - The weakest member of the group would tend to work harder than others when everyone is given feedback about a people’s performance in a timely challenge. 
 * Social Loafing * - People in groups often do not work as hard as they do when alone. Addition to new members of the team has diminishing on productivity. * - Demonstrated in many cultures: India, Japan and Taiwan 
Free Riders
- Free riders: People’s motivations often diminish in a team. Benefit from the efforts of others while contributing little or nothing themselves
Three Main Causes of Free Riding
1) Diffusion of responsibility (Contributions of each member on the team are less identifiable than if working individually) * - Deindividuation – a psychological state in which a person does not feel individual responsibility * - The person would less likely to perform or contribute * - “Bystander Effect”
2) A reduced sense of self-efficacy * - Dispensibility of Effort : Team member may feel they lack the ability to positively influence a team’s outcome as they may in a smaller group * - Social Striving effect – they work harder to achieve their goals when least capable member of the group feels particularly essential for group success.

3) “Sucker Aversion” (A concern whether someone will be left doing all of the work and getting little or no credit). * - Self-fulfilling prophecy: When people see others not contributing, it confirms their worst fears. * - Protestant Work Ethic (PWE): hard work leads to economic success 
Pg. 31
Suggestions for Enhancing Successful Team Performance
Positive Illusion Bias – unwarranted beliefs in one’s own superiority, can cause chaos in teams Reward Team Members for Performance – Incentives (symbolic rewards or financial rewards) * Suggestions for Enhancing Successful Team Performance: 1. Increase Identifiability: When each member’s contribution to a task is displayed where others can see it, people are less likely to loaf, than when only overall group performance is made available. 2. Promote Involvement: Social Loafing may be eliminated if the task is sufficiently involving, attractive, or intrinsically interesting. When tasks are highly specialized and routinized, monotony sets in. (Positive illusion bias is the unwarranted beliefs in ones own superiority, can cause confusion in teams). Social Loafing possible if tasks are unchallenging. 3. Reward Team Members for performance: Team members should recognize and reward contributions by individuals. Also employees like to feel respected (symbolic rewards) 4. Strengthen Team Cohesion – cohesive teams are less inclined to loaf 5. Increase Personal Responsibility – when teams set their own performance goals, they are less likely to loaf 6. Team Charters – At the outset of teamwork, members should develop objectives and practices; written and signed by members Coordination Strategies 7. Provide team with performance reviews and feedback: people often don’t realize that they are not doing their fair share. Regular performance from supervisor is needed to maintain contributions and productivity. Double loop communication (Team leader asks questions as well as feedback) 8. Maintain the right staffing level : The larger the team the less each member contributes. Coordination Strategies: Ability and motivation are essential and describable for effective teamwork but insufficient for effective team functioning. A team must coordinate the skills, efforts and actions of its member in order to effectively enact team strategy. Communication is a problem for the team especially for larger teams. (Biases have a role). Some steps to ensure coordination:
Use Single-Digit Teams – teams should be less than 10 members

Have an Agenda
Train Team Members Together – opportunity to coordinate their strategies; to build trust
Practice
Minimize Links in Communication (directly communicate)
Set Clear Standards – performance appraisals; people receive clear informative feedbacks
Performance Criteria:
Productivity – team productivity requires that the team have a clear goal and adapt accordingly as new information arrives, goals change, and organizational priorities shift
- Productivity is highly correlated with its goals, as well as the ability of the team to adapt, change and accommodate the goals in the face of new information, changing organizational priorities and the changing marketplace
Cohesion – to stick together; processes that keep members of a team

Learning: Teams should represent growth and development oppurtunities for the individual needs of the members.
Integration – Understand goals and work effectively towards them and integrate with other units in the organization. Teams are governed by the principle of equifinality – a team can reach the same outcome from various initial conditions and by a variety of means
Team Performance Equation:
AP=PP+S-T

AP = actual productivity

PP = potential productivity
S = Synergy

T = performance threats
1. The potential productivity of the team * - Task Demands: requirements imposed on the team by the task itself and the rules governing task performance. Determine both resources needed and how to combine resources. * - Resources: relevant abilities, skills and tools possessed by people attempting to perform the task * - Process: concerns the way teams use resources to meet task demands 
2) 2. Synergy: Everything that can and does go better in a team compared with individuals working independently
3. Performance Threats: Everything that can go wrong in a team (teams fall behind potential and there is considerable process loss or underperformance).

Chapter 3:

Types of team pay:

1. Incentive Pay: In terms of salary and pay, base pay is how companies determine an individuals base salary. This is an integration of internal equity (based on job evaluation) and external equity (based on market data). The second issue in pay is variable pay. As employees move up the organizational chart, the proportion of variable pay should increase- along with their amount of control over the situation. Many organizations have incentive based pay. Incentive systems combine individual performance and team performance to reflect the degree to which a job calls for individual work and teamwork. For example, a bonus pool may be created based on performance of the overall team. The bonus pool can be divided among the individuals who are members of the team based on how well the individuals performed. To ensure that team members do not compete in a destructive fashion, a 360-degree feedback method can be used. Another alternative is to have 2 reward systems operating in tandem. 1 provides bonuses to teams based on performance and the other rewards individuals based on performance. Hybrid rewards lead to higher levels of team performance than do individual and shared rewards, due to improvements in information allocation and reductions in social loafing (free riding). Incentives drawbacks include unintended behavior. The use of team based rewards, may create potential for motivational loss, resulting from perceptions of inequity when other team members are perceived as free riders, but rewards are nevertheless allocated based on equality. Moreover team rewards may not foster team cooperation, foster competition leading to possible inefficiency. 2. Recognition: companies are much better off ensuring that people have ample amounts of autonomy and that their individual efforts are hitched to a larger purpose. Making sure employees are happy and feel that they are appreciated builds loyalty and productivity. Leaders should not approach this passively; furthermore in companies with team environments where people’s identities are incorporated into teams, employees may feel a greater need for recognition. Reward accomplishments (formal appreciation). There infinite sources of nonmonetary recognition- plaques, trophies and small gifts. It is important to tie the recognition to team performance (loses effect if long time passes). Cash vs. noncash, (spot awards) can either be cash or noncash. Noncash awards are most common and are given out for a job well done and are usually nominal value. Cash awards can be far more substantial, although they are usually small bonuses. Introduced easily quickly and is inexpensive to implement. Some drawbacks are that employees concerned they won’t be recognized for own contributions, risky if based pay is reduced. 3. Profit Sharing: Many companies use profit sharing schemes, wherein a portion of the bottom line economic profits is given to employees. These internally distributed profits may be apportioned according to equality and equity. In the typical profit sharing plan, profit sharing bonuses are put into retirement plans. This makes it more difficult to clearly relate rewards to controllable performance. Thus have little impact on employee motivation and behavior. They serve as an important communication purpose by signaling to everyone that rewards are in balance across the organization. Second they inform and educate employees about the financial health of the organization. Finally they make labor costs of an organization variable, adjusting them to the organizations ability to pay. 4. Gain Sharing: It involves a measurement of productivity, combined with the calculation of a bonus, designed to offer to employees a mutual share of any increases in total organization productivity. In gain sharing plans, an organization uses a formula to share financial gains with all employees in a single plant or location. The organization establishes a historical period of performance and uses this to determine whether gains in performance have occurred. Typically only controllable costs are measured for computing gain. Unless a major change takes place it stays the same. Thus the organization’s performance is always compared with the time period before it started gain sharing plan. When an organization performance is better than base period it creates a bonus pool, and when met it pays about half of the bonus pool to employees and the company keeps the rest. Payments are usually made on a monthly basis, with same percentage as base pay per employee. Gain sharing enhances coordination and information sharing among teams, instigates attitude changes, raises performance standards and enhances idea generation and flexibility. They are a way of managing and a technology for organizational development. To successfully work it should be developed in collaboration with the people it will affect. It is important employees understand the formula and how to influence it. A company needs a participative management system because the plan requires employees to take ownership of the success of the company. Profit sharing plans are less effective in influencing employee motivation and changing culture than a gain-sharing plan.

Teams and pay for performance: 1. Parallel: Supplement regular organizational structure and perform problem solving and work improvement tasks. (gain sharing, recognition) 2. Production and Service: Responsible for producing a project or service and are self-contained. Identifiable work units for example assembly teams. (Team and individual bonuses) 3. Project: Often involve diverse group of knowledge workers, such as design engineers. (Bonuses based on project success and profit sharing) 4. Management: Composed of well-trained managers, often have stable membership, teams usually permanent, expected integration, leadership and direction to organization. (Profit sharing and team bonuses)

Team Performance Appraisal:
Individual performance appraisal in an evaluation of a person’s behaviors and accomplishments in terms of the persons work in the organization. They are a source of feedback, a basis for personal development and determination of pay. A truly empowered team should play a lead role in designing its own measurement system. What is measured? The major determinant of an employees pay is their seniority and the work they do. The major alternative is competency based pay. * Job based pay: determined by job evaluation system, which frequently takes a point factor approach to evaluating jobs. The point factor approach begins with a written job description that is scored in terms of duties. The point scores then are translated into salary levels. An advantage is that companies can assess what competition pay and compare. Another advantage of job evaluation system is that they allow for centralized control of an organization’s pay system. * Skilled Based Pay: A company must first identify the tasks that need to be performed in the organization, and then identify the skills needed to accomplish the tasks and develops tests or measures to determine whether a person has learned the skills. Pay may increase with more skills learnt. * Competency based pay: Employees prove they can use their skills. It is regarded as much more sensible and ultimately profitable approach to use in a team based organization. They promote flexibility in employees. It is expensive due to training and evaluation of each employee’s skills.

Who Does the Measuring?
Supervisor or some top level person. With the increasing use of teams, peer review is more popular. Known as the 360 degree or multirater feedback methods, the peer review procedure involves getting feedback about an employee from all sides: top (supervisors), bottom (subordinates), coworkers, suppliers and end users. Typically 5-10 people participate in the evaluation compared to the traditional review (one to one). Employees choose their reviewers, something they work with regularly and some their relationship with them can be improved. The reviewers then complete an online questionnaire and results are discussed along with their own views and that of their managers. Anonymity is the key to building a nonbiased feedback system, especially for peers and subordinates. A big disadvantage of the top down review is evaluation bias. A 2nd disadvantage of single source evaluation is that it is easy to dismiss the information. In theory the 360-degree process provides a multifaceted view of the team member. However, putting it into practice can be difficult, if the number of feedback sources is limited, raters are not guaranteed anonymity and may fear retaliation.

Developing a 360-Degree Program:
Companies should first develop the 360-degree system that will optimize effectiveness with its organization design. Companies should first use a pilot 360-degree program that is not tied to compensation and that is not public. In the beginning only employees sees all the feedback, gradually supervisors are brought in to the loop. Eventually it is important to tie employee compensation to the 360-degree evaluation. Companies must make sure they don’t cross the line of legal liability. Team diagnostic survey helps identify the likelihood that teams will perform well.

RATER BIAS:

1. Rater Bias: Peer assessment is a valid and reliable evaluation procedure. Teams supervisors and clients are also important sources of input. Raters are not perfect, they might be bias. 2. Inflation Bias: Candid performance and feedback are essential for team members because these allow them to adjust their behavior and motivation and to seek training. Raters frequently positively distort performance ratings when they anticipate giving feedback to ratees. Inflation appears to stem from 2 sources: empathic buffering and fear of conflict. People are generally reluctant to transmit bad news to an employee poorly performing. Another reason is that raters want to avoid interpersonal conflict particularly with someone they expect to respond defensively to criticism. 3. Extrinsic Incentives Bias: It states that people believe that others are more motivated than themselves by situational or extrinsic factors and less motivated by than themselves by dispositional or intrinsic factors. When managers fall prey to extrinsic incentive bias they may over look the importance of feedback, neglect opportunities to make jobs more interesting and underestimate the employees desire to participate in team and organizational decisions. Managers could substantially improve their ability to understand the motivation of others of they assume that others are as motivated as they are. 4. Homogeneity Bias: Generally, appraisers rate appraises who are similar to themselves more favorably than those who are different from them. This means that, in general, while male superiors tend to favor white male subordinates over females and minority supervisees. 5. Halo Bias: Once we know one positive or negative fact about someone, we tend to perceive other information we learn about that person in line with out initial perceptions. This has several serious implications, the most obvious is the fact that physically attractive people are evaluated more positively than are less attractive even when holding constant their skills and competencies. 6. Fundamental Attribution Error: We tend to perceive people’s behavior as reflecting their personality rather than temporary, situational factors. This can obviously be a good thing for someone who seems to be doing well, but it can be problematic for a person who seems to have low performance. 7. Communication Medium: Performance appraisers give poor performers substantially higher rating when they to give face-face feedback as opposed to anonymous written or taped recorded feedback. 8. Experience Effect: Experienced appraisers tend to render higher quality appraisals, and training and practice can reduce error ratings. 9. Reciprocity Bias: People feel a strong social obligation to return favors. Thus a potential flaw of the 360-degree feedback program is that they are subject to collusion. 10. Bandwagon Bias: This means that people will want to hold the same opinion of someone, as does the rest of the group. 11. Primacy and Recency Bias: People tend to overly affected by their first impression of someone (primacy) or their most recent interaction with this person (recency). Awareness is a first step to help reduce and prevent these biases, another step is to measure behavior and productivity as they are less susceptible to biases. 12. Conflict of Interest Bias: This can lead experts to give biased and corrupt advice. Simple disclosure of the conflict of interest by the rater is often suggested as a solution.

RATEE BIAS:

1. Ratee Bias: The 360-degree program can be compromised by the ratees themselves. 2. Egocentric Bias: Most people feel under recognized for the work they do and the value they bring to their company. The human cognitive system is primarily egocentric in nature. In short people give themselves greater credit than do others. Supervisors should present as many facts as possible to justify for the ratings. It is important to focus on behaviors rather than attitudes when assessing others, because it is more difficult to misinterpret objective information. 3. Intrinsic Interest: People are strongly motivated by intrinsic interests rather than extrinsic interest. Even with positive feedback, if not carefully administered, may undermine intrinsic interest. That is, employees may do something for purely intrinsic reasons, such as the joy of learning new things however, if a supervisor or a person of obvious importance praises the work and administers it with large extrinsic rewards, this may lead the employees to believe that they are doing the work for money. It is important to indicate what is being rewarded. 4. Social Comparison: Evaluations should be objective and based on defined standards. However, teams and leaders often make comparative rather than absolute judgments. Supervisors must anticipate that team members will talk and compare notes one way or another about the feedback they receive. Supervisors should be frank about feedback. 5. Fairness: People evaluate the quality of their organizational experiences by how fair they regard them to be. Salaries of CEO’s serve as a key referent for employees in determining whether their won situation is fair and influences their reactions to their own compensation, including how long they will stay at the organization. People care about fairness of procedures and processes. The fairness of the procedure is determined by the extent of say the employee has. Supervisors should actively involve employees in the performance review, because people who are invited to participate regard procedures and systems to be fairer than those who are not invited 6. Listening to Advice: People often under weigh advice they get from others. People over weigh advice for when they perform difficult tasks and under weigh advice when performing easy tasks. People often fall to victim to a curse of knowledge effect, such that once they receive advice or information, they find it difficult to take perspective of someone who doesn’t have that information. Awareness again is key. A second step is to recognize that many rate biases are driven by a need to maintain or enhance self-esteem, putting evaluations in positive light as opportunities for employees to grow. A third step is to involve the employees actively in evaluation procedure before they receive their results, for this reason early planning is good to identify the goals and make them clear. Finally to recognize that performance appraisals, in any form are stressful to all involved. 360-degree have the ability to break down the barriers of fear in the organization but requires a skillful and trained manager.

Guiding Principles fro structure of variable team based pay:

1. Goals should cover areas that team members can directly affect. Otherwise teams are disempowered. Compensation won’t motivate employees unless there is a direct line of sight between performance and results. 2. Balance the mix of individual and team based pay: A good rule of thumb is to balance this proportion in line with the amount of individual and team based work an employee is expected to do or the percentage of control and responsibility the individual and the team have. 3. Consult the team members who will be affected: The process by which an organization introduces a program is more important than the program itself. Can be achieved by understanding the business, the wants and needs of management and employees. 4. Avoid Organizational Myopia: Many programs fail not because they inherently flawed, but rather because they create problems with other teams, groups, unites and within the organization. 5. Determine the Eligibility (Who qualifies for the plan): every member of the team should be eligible for the plan, and the plan should indicate when someone becomes eligible or loses eligibility. 6. Determine Equity Method: There are 2 variations, same dollar amount and same percentage amount. 7. Quantify the Criteria Used to Determine Payout: 2 ways to measure team results. Financial and operational. Financial encompasses profit and loss or revenues. Operational measures are typically productivity based and are more firmly within the teams grasp as compared to financial. 8. Determine how target levels of performance are established and updated: Goals can be based either on past performances or projected performance. There are advantages such as that people can readily accept it. 9. Develop a Budget for the Plan: All plans should pay for themselves, with the exception of safety plans. This means that the improvements must be measurable. 10. Determine Timing of Measurements and Payments: Shorter measurement periods and faster payouts motivate employees more and particularly when pay is at risk are fairer. However, the disadvantages with a short turnaround system include administrative overhead and manipulation of results. 11. Commitment with those involved: It is important for companies to be completely straightforward about what counts and how things are going. 12. Plan for the Future: As teaming becomes more developed and the organization experiences shifts in culture or focus, a new mix of rewards needs to be defined to keep the organization in alignment.

Chapter 4 – Designing the Team (Tasks, people and processes) * 1) Managing the internal dynamics of the team itself – specifying the task, selecting the members and facilitating the team process * 2) Managing the external dynamics of the team – navigating the organizational environment and managing relationship with those whom the team is interdependent Building the Team: Manager must focus on 3 aspects: the work the team will do, the people who will do the work and all the procedures that the team will follow.
Basic factors of teamwork:
Tasks: (What work needs to be done?) it is usefyl to disnguish preplanning before actually performing the task and online planning during the task itself. Team aids such as team clipboards and team checklists enhanced performance more than individual clipboards.
Is the goal clearly defined?
Goals should be articulated in the form of a team charter (mission statement). (1) Clear and simple

(2) Specify ends (the why) but not means (the how)
High-performance orientation – reflects a desire to gain favorable judgments of performance or avoid negative judgments of competence
High-learning orientation – reflects the desire to understand something novel or to increase competence in a task
Teams with difficult goals and high-performance orientation are least able to adapt Teams with difficult goals and a high-learning orientation are most likely to adapt. Pg.76
 What is the Focus of the work the team will do?
Teams do 3 types of tasks: Tactical, problem solving and creative. * - Tactical team: Execute a well-defined plan (high degree of clarity and role definition) for example Crew – a group of expert specialists each of whom has specific role positions, perform brief 
tasks that are closely synchronized with each other, and repeat those events across different environmental conditions 
(drawbacks include lack of training, communication barriers) * Problem-solving teams * - Those that attempt to resolve problems, usually is ongoing process. To be effective each member must expect and believe that interactions among members will be truthful and of 
high integrity (drawback: Failure to stick to facts)
 * Creative teams * - Those in which the key objective is to create something, think out of the box and question assumptions. A process focus of creative teams is that of exploring possibilities and alternatives (Drawback: production blocking) * Roles and Responsibilities 
Strategic Core – certain team roles are most important for team performance, and the characteristic of the role holders in these “core” roles are more important than others for overall team performance 
 * Backing-up Behaviour – the discretionary provision of resources and task-related effort to another member of one’s team that is intended to help that team member obtain the goals as defined in its role 
(could lead to free riding) What is the Task Interdependence Among team Members: * Pooled interdependence – occurs when group members work independently and then combine their work (effective for groups) * Sequential interdependence – assembly line or division of labor; each member of the team has a particular skill or task to perform. Members are more interdependent. (Team members rely on others) * Reciprocal Interdependence – highest form of interdependence; every member is dependent on others at all level (team members rely on others) 
 * Egalitarian Values – develop highly interdependent task approaches and patterns of interactions * Meritocratic Values – develop low-interdependence task approaches
 (individuals are motivated to demonstrate their unique abilities) * Is there a correct solution that can be readily demonstrated and communicated to members: 0 Demonstrable Task – the team being judged
 1 Nondemonstrable Task – no single best answer exists for the consulting team 
How big should the team be? (Discuss indices used for performance) 2 How Big Should the team be: * - Should be fewer than 10 members * - As team size increases, more members will avoid the serious subjects and talk more leading to being less cohesive. Overstaffing bias: when team leaders are asked whether their teams could become too small or too large 87% believe that understaffing is possible, but only 62% believe overstaffing is possible. * Time Pressure, Good or Bad? 0 Capacity Problems – occur when there is not enough time to all of the required tasks
although tasks is easy. 1 Capability Problems – occur when the tasks is difficult, even though there is plenty of time to do it 2 Attentional Focus Model (AFM) – predicts how time pressure affects team performance. AFM model suggests that time pressure narrows group member’s attention to the most salient features of the tasks. As time pressure increases, the things that appear most central to completing the task become more salient and other factors are not considered 
 3 The People: Who is ideally suited to do the work? * Technical or Functional Expertise – team members must demonstrate competence to perform what they need to do for the team to accomplish its goals
Task-management skills – they need to coordinate the efforts of the team, set goals, and enact plans; involve planning the work, monitoring performance, dealing with disappointments and unknowns, and surmounting coordination problems
Interpersonal skills – members of teams are people first, with their own issues, problems, and agendas – and team member second, the people side of teams is always present and a powerful influence on productivity and give the ability to give constructive criticism, be objective, give recognition, learn from others.
Diversifying teams help to meet and exceed performance objectives.
Member initiated team selection: Based on group attributes and relationship attributes.
Diversification advantages:
Expanded talent pool – company does not tolerate or promote diversity has access to a smaller amount of corporate talent
Multiple viewpoints – diverse teams are more likely to generate creative solutions and solve problem more accurately than homogenous team (solving complex problems)
Better decision making – diverse decision-making teams make better decision than teams that lack diversity
Competitive advantage – key reason why diversity is so advantageous is that by sampling from a larger pool of potential team members, teams increase their competitive advantage.
Challenges of Diversity:
Surface-level diversity – based on social categories (physical and features that immediately apparent)
Deep-level diversity – based on attitudes, opinions, information, and values
Perceived versus actual diversity – team members perceives themselves to be diverse in terms of information, conflict increases
Fault Lines – may split a group into subgroups and provide an informal structure for intragroup conflict
Conflict
* - Race diversity are positively associated with emotional conflict * - Age diversity is negatively associated with emotional conflict * - Informational diversity positively influenced group performance 
Solo * Bias in performance reviews: As the task grows increasingly subjective positive bias becomes more pronounced. * Status * - Individuals experience social category. Solos are more visible in a group and are more likely to be isolated and experience role 
entrapment 
 * Creating Diverse Teams: * 
 Publicly Commit to Valuing Diversity – companies to publicly commit themselves to valuing diversity
Solicit Ideas and Best Practices from Employees – ask members to suggest ways to deal with conflict before it erupts
Educate Members on the Advantages of Diversity – diversity is in member’s best interests
(managers should explain the facts rather than stating advantages)
Diversify at All Levels – organizations must commit to and work toward diversity at the team level and the governing level
Process: How to Work together? 

Team Structure – refers to how tightly the group’s processes are articulated by team leaders and the organization and the extent to which they are closely adhered to by team members. Groups that are high in structure have specialized roles and routines and groups in low structure do not have set roles and routines 
 * Team Norms:
- Norms are shared expectations that guide behavior in groups (critical for organizational performance, makes it easy for everyone to respond)
Development and Enforcement
- People in new groups rely on their definition of the situation to retrieve an appropriate script. Script: a highly prescriptive sequence of behaviors that dictate appropriate behavior in any given situation.
Norm Violation: * - Team will usually correct the misbehavior * - Ostracism can have negative repercussions (excluded from certain social or professional activities).
 * Changing Norms:
- Teams are highly motivated to provide newcomers with the knowledge, ability and motivation they will need to play the role of a full member
Behavioral Integration:
- The extent to which the team’s collaborative behaviors is integrated, the quality of their information exchange, and their joint decision-making.
Prescriptive Model of Necessary Conditions for Effective Teamwork: * - A clear and elevating goal * - A results-driven structure that includes the following: * - Clear roles and accountabilities * - An effective communication system * - Monitoring of individual performance and providing feedback * - Fact-based judgment 0 - Competent Team Members 0 - Unified Commitment 0 - Principled Leadership 1 - Standards of Excellence

Chapter 5: Are we a Team? Group Entiativity: refers to the degree to which people perceive themselves (and others) to be a team or collective. Goal is to have people thinking as we instead of I. Group Identity: Is the extent to which people feel their group membership is an important part of who they are. Provides sense of belonging. Relational and Collective Identity: Relational Identity is based on important relationships to particular people. Collective identity is based on group membership. Common Identity and Common Bonds: The attachment people fell for their groups is rooted in one of 2 bonds: bonds are based on the group as s a whole (common identity) and bonds felt for particular group members (group bonds). Identity Fusion: Refers to blurring of the self other barrier in a group, a group membership is intensely personal. Fused people are more likely to endorse extreme behaviors on behalf of their group and are willing to die for a group more than a nonfused person. Group Serving Attributions: Group serving judgments offer a self-protective function for the team members, by enhancing the ego. Retroactive pessimism occurs when people lower their evaluations of a group’s chances for success after a failed competition. Group Potency and Collective Efficacy: Group potency is the collective belief of group members that the group can be effective. Collective efficacy refers to an individual’s beliefs that a team can perform successfully. Vicarious Affect: Or socially inducted affect refers to situations in which a person’s emotions are induced or caused by another person’s emotions. Behavioral Entertainment: Refers to the processes whereby one person’s behavior is adjusted or modified to coordinate or synchronize with another person’s behavior. (Usually is a positive effect). Emotional Intelligence in Teams: It is the ability to recognize emotions in others and ourselves and to use emotional knowledge in a productive fashion. (Positively linked to team performance) Leadership and Group Emotion: As emotional intelligence becomes recognized as a leadership skill, leaders are encouraged to both recognize emotions and manage them in their teams. Emotional Aperture is the ability to recognize diverse emotions in a team. Group Cohesion: Refers to emotional attraction among group members. Cohesion and Team Behavior: Members of cohesive teams sit closer together, focus more attention on one another, show signs of mutual affection and display coordinated patterns of behavior. Cohesive groups are easy to maintain. Cohesion amplifies norms favoring both high and low productivity. Building Cohesion in Groups: 1. Help Build team identity: Assembling teams where people spend time together to build cohesion. 2. Make it easy for the team to be closer together: Physical proximity and real or perceived similarity strengthen team cohesion. 3. Focus on similarities among team members: Team members feel more cohesive when they focus on their similarities rather than differences. 4. Put a positive spin on the teams performance: Teams are more cohesive when they succeed as to when failing. 5. Challenge the team: External pressures and rewards for team performance also increases team cohesion. Trust: Trust and respect are both important for teams, but are not the same thing. Respect is the level of esteem a person has for another, whereas trust is the willingness of a person to rely on another person in absence of monitoring. Autonomy is the amount of freedom and discretion that a person has in carrying out assigned tasks. Incentive based Trust: involves designing incentives to minimize breaches of trust. Trust based on Familiarity: As people become more familiar with another, they are more likely to trust one another. Trust Based on Similarity: Oftentimes, trust can develop based on commonalities, such as being alumni o the same school. Trust Based On Social Networks: Social embeddedness refers to the idea that transactions and opportunities take place as a result of social relationship that exist between organizational actors. Embedded ties promote cooperation. Implicit Trust: Sometimes, we put our trust in others even in the absence of any rational reason. Based upon highly superficial cues. Instant Attitudes: Near immediate, intense likes or dislikes for a novel object based on a first encounter with it. Mere Exposure (He grew on me): The more we see someone, the more we like him or her. Schmoozing (Lets have lunch sometime): Small talk might not appear to be relevant to accomplishing a work task. Mirroring: People involved in a face-face interaction tend to mirror one another in posture, facial expression, tone of voice and mannerisms. It helps people to develop rapport (relationship). Flattery can’t get you anywhere: Many people believe that for flattery to be effective in engendering trust, it must be perceived genuine. Face-Face Contact: We are more likely to trust other people in a face-face interaction than when communicating via another medium. Psychological Safety: This reflects the extent to which people feel that they an raise issues and questions without fear of being rebuffed. Team Development and Socialization: The average lifespan of a team in 24 months. Teams are constantly being reconfigured. Group Socialization: It is the process of how individuals enter into and then at some point in time leaves teams. When people work together in a team they begin a process of socialization. Introduction of a new member is a process of joint socialization. The Phases of Group Socialization: 3 critical things go during socialization. (Evaluation, commitment and role transition) Evaluation: Teams evaluate individual members, and individual members evaluate teams. Commitment: It is a person’s enduring adherence to the team and the team’s adherence to its members. Role Transition: A person moves though a progression of membership in the team, going from nonmember to quasi member to full member. People who join teams can engage in either Self-verification, which occurs when group members persuade others in the team to see them as they see themselves. Appraisal effects occur when groups persuade members to see themselves as the group sees them. Strategies for Integrating New members into teams: Upper Management and Leaders: Make it clear why the new member is joining. Existing Team Members: Explain what you regard to be the strengths and weaknesses of the team. New Members: understand the teams goals and processes. Old Timer’s Reaction to Newcomers: they are generally less accepting of temporary newcomers than permanent newcomers because they expect temporary newcomers to be different from the group. Newcomer Innovation: 3 factors determine the extent to which newcomers can bring change: First is their commitment to the team, second their belief that they can develop good ideas for solving team problems and thirdly their belief that they will be rewarded. Turnover and Reorganizations: One of the most frequently occurring but daunting challenges for teams is personnel turnover, defined as the entry of new members and/ or exit if old members. Time in Teams: A key issue in team design concerns how to optimally balance the amount of group work versus the amount of individual work. Teams given more hours to do the work are generally more productive. 3 theory methods: 1. Clock Time: Clock based time depicts a linear continuum of team development as infinitely divisible into objective, quantifiable units. 2. Development or Pattern Growths: Teams are viewed as qualitatively evolving over time as they move through various stages towards maturity. Stage 1 (Dependency and Inclusion), stage 2 (Counterdependecy and fight), stage 3 (trust and structure), stage 4 (work) and stage 5 (Termination). 3. Performance cycles or episodes: Cyclical theories of team functioning suggest that events unfold in a recurring fashion over time in cycles or episodes related to performance. Role Negotiation: Task related roles focus on getting the work done and accomplishing the task at hand, interpersonal roles focus on how the work gets done and satisfying the emotional needs of the team members. People engage in actions designed to take on that role, which are either accepted or rejected by members of the team. First there is no set of ideal roles for any particular teams (roles are unique to each team). Secondly, few people can simultaneously fulfill both the task and interpersonal needs of the team. Status Competition: It is the process by which people acquire the authority and legitimacy to be the taskmaster or the relationship coordinator of the team. Real status characteristics are qualities that are relevant to the task at hand. Pseudo status characteristics include factors such as sex, age and cultural background (highly visible). Status systems develop very quickly, often within minutes after most teams are formed. It is critical for team members not to overestimate their status in their group. Solo Status: When everyone shares a common social identity except one person, the one person who is different from the majority has solo status. It increases the team member’s visibility and performance pressure, which often results in stress. When solo regards the task to be threatening (the task demands exceed the person’s resources) and so the solo performance is hurt.

Chapter 6: Transactive memory systems (TMS), are the ways in which team encode, store, and retrieve critical information necessary for doing their work. Team Communication: Communication among members is subject to biases that afflict even the most rational of human beings. There are 3 points of possible error. First the sender may fail to send a message, second the message may be sent but is distorted or thirdly an accurate message is sent but it is distorted or not received by the recipient. Message Tuning: Refers to how senders tailor messages for specific recipients. Also senders capitalize on the knowledge that they believe the recipient already holds. For this reason members send shorter and less complete messages. Message Distortion: Message senders represent information that they believe will be favorably received the recipient and therefore, distort messages. Saying is Believing: (SIB) effect occurs when a speaker tunes a message to suit an audience and in the course of tuning the message the speakers subsequent memories and impressions about the topic change. Biased Interpretation: Recipients often hear what they want to hear when receiving messages, especially unclear ones. Perspective-Taking Failures: People are remarkably poor at taking the perspective of others. Curse of knowledge is when people who are privy to information and knowledge that they know others are not aware of still act as if others are aware of it, even though it would be impossible for the receiver to have this knowledge. Transparency Illusion: People believe their thoughts, attitudes and reason are much more transparent, that is obvious to others than is actually the case. Indirect Speech Acts: Are the ways in which people ask others to do things, but indirectly. Uneven Communication: Refers to the fact that in virtually any group. A handful of people do the majority of the talking. Absorptive Capacity: It is a person’s ability to transform new knowledge into useable knowledge. Experience community of practice is he extent to which a person is engaged with the given practice community. The Information Dependence Problem: By pooling different backgrounds, training and experience, team members have the potential to work in a more informed fashion than would be the case if the decision were relegated to any single person. The fact that team members are dependent on one another for information is the information dependence problem. The Common Information Effect: 3 possible distributions of information. The first is nonoverlapping case (each partner has unique information about the candidates). The second is distributed, partial overlap (each partner knows something about each candidate that others also know (common information) but also knows some unique information.) The thirds possibility is the fully shared case (each partner knows full information about each candidate.) The impact of information on the aggregate decision of the team is directly related to the number of members of the team who know the information prior to making group decisions and is known as the common information effect. Information that people have in common is not only more likely to be discussed, but it also gets discussed for a longer period of time. Hidden Profile: It is a superior decision alternative, but its superiority is hidden from group members because each member has only a portion of the information that supports this superior alternative. A hidden profile is a conclusion that is apparent only after team members have fully shared information. A group can benefit the organization by pooling individual members information so as to gain a complete picture of the qualifications of each candidate. Things that don’t work as Best Practices for Optimal Information Sharing: Increase the amount of discussion: Even when teams are explicitly told to spend more time discussing information, they still fall prey to common information effect. Separate Review and Discussions: Team members avoided stating initial preferences and were encouraged to review all relevant facts. However, the discussion primarily favored those facts initially shared by team members. Increase Information Load: If members are given additional information but the relative distribution of information remains the same, the common information effect still plagues the team. Groups perform better when they can reduce their cognitive load. Accountability: Refers to the extent to which people and teams feel responsible for their actions and decisions. When groups are made accountable for their process (rather than outcome), they are more likely to repeat unshared information and make better decisions. Pre-discussion Polling: This strategy can have extremely negative efforts on the quality of the discussion that follows if the initial preferences of the team members are based on insufficient information. Effective Interventions: They put the team leader in position of an information manager to defeat common information effect. Team leaders are more likely to repeat unshared information and ask questions. Redirect and Maintain the Focus of the Discussion to Unshared (unique) Information: The more teams repeat common information the less likely to uncover hidden profiles. Approach the Task as a Problem to be Solved, Not a Judgment to be Made: Leaders should deine the task as a problem to be solved with demonstrable evidence and explicitly state that they are not interested in personal opinion and judgment. Rank Rather than Choose: When teams are instructed to tank candidates o alternatives, they are more likely to make the best decision than when they are simply told to choose. Consider the Decision Alternatives One at a Time: Leaders should make sure their team discusses one alternative fully before turning to the next. Heighten Team Members Awareness of the Types of Information Likely to be possessed by Different Individuals: When team members are personally identified, the likelihood that unshared clues will be mentioned during discussion increases. Suspend Initial Judgment: To caution the team members against arriving at a judgment prior to the teams discussion. Build Trust and Familiarity among Team Members: Members who are familiar with one another are less likely to make poor decisions resulting from the common information effect than members of those teams who are unacquainted. The more team members perceive themselves to be cooperatively interdependent with other on their team, the more they share information, learn and are effective. Team Reflexibility: This is the process of discussing the group’s tasks and goals and the way in which those goals can be reached. It encourages information elaboration and enhances decision quality. Communicate Confidence: Teams whose members are encouraged to express confidence about their decisions and judgments perform more effectively and learn significantly more from their interaction than do teams whose ability to communicate confidence during interaction is reduced. Minimize Status Differences: As compared to equal status groups, mixed status groups made poor decision and made fewer references to the critical information. Collective Intelligence: (Team Mental Models) Mental models are mental representations of the world that allow people to understand, predict and solve problems in a given situation. Mental models can be models of a simple physical system, such as the trajectory of a thrown object, they can also represent a complex social system, such as an organization or financial system. A team mental model is common understanding that members of a group or team share about how something works. They are developed through role identification behaviors through which team members share information regarding their specialized knowledge, skills and abilities. There are 2 key considerations in terms of the mental models that members have about their actual work. Accuracy: The use of incorrect mental models can result in inefficient or undesirable outcome. Correspondence: Effective teams adapt to external demands and anticipate other member’s information needs because of shared or compatible knowledge structures or team mental models. Teams that cannot strategize overtly must rely on preexisting knowledge and expectations about how the team must perform to cope with tasks demands. The Team Mind (Transactive Memory Systems): A TMS is a shared system for attending, encoding, storing, processing and retrieving information. It is a combination of 2 things, knowledge possessed by particular team members and awareness of who knows what. A TMS is more beneficial to small groups that use quality as a performance measure, but more beneficial to large groups, groups in dynamic task environments, and groups in volatile knowledge environments that involve time as a critical performance measure. Tacit Coordination: It is the synchronization of members actions based on assumptions about what others on the team are likely to do. Knowing who is good at what improves the team’s performance in several ways. The TMS and Team Performance: TMS eliminates a lot of coordination loss that can plague team effectiveness. A key to the manager is to develop an accurate TMS. The straightforward way is to simply ask members of the team to indicate what knowledge base s the other members of the group possess. 3 types of learning were examined. Organizational experience (the number of times that kind of procedure has been performed), individual experience (the number of times a given person on a given team had performed the surgery) and team experience (the number of times any two people on a team had performed surgery all together). Developing A TMS in Teams: Training is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that groups quickly and accurately develop a TMS. As a guiding principle, there should be a high degree of correspondence between workers’ experiences during training and experiences on the job. People who work together on a team should train together. TMS ensures the right structure of information sharing and responsibility will develop. It may be especially important when team members will work together only for a single project or when the team interacts with several other teams across the organization. Example of Training in Work Groups: Training was organized in 2 ways, individually based training and group training in which groups of 3 trained together. A TMS and an emphasis on team training are most relevant to tactical teams as opposed to creative or problem solving teams. Recommendations For Team Development (through TMS): 1.Work Planning: Teams whose members will work together should plan their work. They should decide how work should be done. 2. Optimizing Human Resources: Teams should assess relevant areas of expertise among team members. Teams perform better when their members know who is good at what. 3.Monitor Stress and Pressure: If the stressor is regarded as a challenge (challenge stressor), this improves performance and transactive memory; hindrance stressors negatively affect performance (even when combined with a challenge stressor). 4.Teams That Will Work Together Should Train Together: Teams whose members work and train together perform better than teams whose members are equally skilled but not trained together. 5.Plan for Turnover: Turnover can be a disruptive factor in teams, largely because newcomers and old times are unfamiliar with one another. Strengthening team structure and assigning roles to members and prescribing work procedures can avert much of the damage. Team Learning: Learning from the Environment: Learn-What (activities that identify current best practices) and learn-how (activities that operationalize practices in a given setting). Learning From Newcomers and Rotators: Groups are more likely to adopt the routine of a rotator when they share a superordinate identity with that member. Team Longevity (Routinization Versus Innovations Trade-Offs): Teams whose members work together for longer periods are more likely to develop a TMS and will therefore be more productive. However the countervailing force of working together for long periods is routinization. That is because a TMS is basically a set of expectations; certain relationships may become entrenched over time. Behavioral Changes That Can Take Place for Teams Working Together for over 5 years: 1. Behavioral Stability: Project members interacting over a long time develop standard work patterns that are familiar and comfortable. Over time this behavior stability leads to isolation from the outside. 2. Selective Exposure: There is a tendency for group members to communicate only with people whose ideas agree with their own. It is related to homogeneity bias. Over time, project members learn to interact selectively to avoid messages and information that conflict with their established practices and disposition. 3. Group Homogeneity: Groups that are separated from the influence of others in the organization develop a homogeneous set of understandings about the group and its environment. 4. Role Differentiation: Groups that work and train together become increasingly specialized in project competencies and roles. This results in greater role differentiation, which in turn results in less interaction among group members because the roles and expectations held by each are so well entrenched. Consequently they lose access to much of the internal talent, and their ability to learn new ideas from one another is diminished. In terms of actual performance, as team longevity increases, certain social processes conspire to lower levels of project communication, which in turn decrease project performance. A certain amount of familiarity is necessary for teams to work together in a productive fashion. TMS can be helpful in tasks where coordination losses need to be reduced and tactical precision is key. Although routinized teams are desirable, overly routinized teams hinder communication and obstruct innovation.

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