Faculty Title: Lord Ashcroft International Business School

Effective Team and Performance Management

Department: HRM, Organisational Behaviour and Tourism

Module Code: MOD003554

Academic Year: 2012/13

Semester/Trimester: 2

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Exclusive summary 3

3. Company's Background 3

4. Main Body 4

Nature of the Teams 4 Why do we join them? 5 What are teams, groups? 5 Formation 5 Personality 6 Social exchange theory 7 Belbin 7 Team cohesion 8 Concertive Control 9 Performance 10 Emotional Intelligence 12 Conflict 14

5. Conclusion 15

6. Recommendations 15

The List of References 17

The List of Bibliography 20

1. Introduction

This report is designed to critically analyse positive and negative issues surrounding team dynamics and team formation that has occurred in the provided case study using appropriate theories and concepts such as team cohesion, structure, team norms/values and stages of group development. Furthermore, report will also evaluate the critical factors such as social loafing, team size, emotional intelligence and will summarise them introducing with the main ones which impacts effective team environment most. Moreover, recommendations will be proposed for change to occur in the team according to decision-making, leadership style and will explain how these recommendations could be implemented. Lastly, some relevant changes required in leadership and management styles will be identified as a result of chosen recommendations. At the end of report a conclusion will be drawn.

2. Exclusive summary

The aim of this report is to apply the appropriate theories and concepts to critically analyse how team dynamics and team formation has occurred in the provided case study. It also aims in demonstrating the key processes involved with team formation, demonstrated and evaluate effective skills when working in as part of the team. Also, evaluate critical factors impacting on the team’s performance such as team size, emotional intelligence, social loafing act. Understand and differentiate between leadership styles and management styles.

3. Company's Background

Electron is a small manufacturing company located in UK and established in 1997. It was originally a manufacturing division of a large telecommunications firm until Electrons management team purchased it. Electrons management team realized that in late 1990s it was struggling to stay in competitive and innovative marketplace. Decision was made to improve effectiveness and efficiency in production process with an emphasis on improving teamwork by employing new workers. Each team was given an objective to improve productivity within 2 months of their formation. The reward for achieving this improvement was a pay bonus to all team members of a successful team.

The manufacturing department consists of 8 self-managed teams. A self-managed team as defined by Bowditch and Buono (2005) is a small group of employees who has responsibility for the planning, organizing, scheduling and production of work process and outcomes under reduced or no supervision. Team members set goals, solve problems and asses performance, spending considerable time discussing the causes of the problems and suggesting possible solutions.

Each team has 10 members. Some members are on temporary contracts and others are full-time employees. However, from the case study, it appears that these teams have some kind of leadership. Leadership can be defined as guidance of others in their pursuits, often by organizing, directing, coordinating, supporting, and motivating their efforts. (Forsyth, 2010) In the case study, these leaders are familiar with the company for many years and they monitor new workers performance.

4. Main Body

Nature of the Teams

The nature and the environment in which teams used to operate in the past, now has changed. Changing nature of teams (dynamic composition, technology, distance, empowerment and delayering) was and always is part of their existence. In the past, there was a fairly strong alignment between what teams experienced, the topics that team researchers were studying especially on of the most influential research conducted by George Elton Mayo who studied workers’ productivity, satisfaction. Now we have entered a new era where and most teams operate in a more fluid, dynamic, and complex environment than it used to (Tannenbaum, Mathieu, Salas and Cohen, 2012) (Proven models, 2013) (The Free Library, 2003).

Why do we join them?

Organisations became more complex in many ways. As a result they are increasingly required to be more flexible, agile in order to be successful. Team work is seen as the most effective way of achieving this. This is the reason why it has become even more important that people could work together in coordinated ways because there is no one individual that has all the skills needed to fulfil all roles that a team can (Jelphs and Dickinson, 2008).

What are teams, groups?

Groups and teams can be formal and informal in some organisations flash teams are also very common. Watson and Gallagher (2005, pp.128) describes groups as “Organisations essentially consist of groups of people who work together. They may be formal groups or teams set up to achieve a defined purpose, or they may be informal groups set up to include people who have some affinity with one another”. In addition to this, it could be said that informal groups are more likely to satisfy the needs of their members whereas formal groups satisfy the f". So if a group shares one common goal and woks together to achieve it, a team is formed.

Formation

Group formation comes through combination of processes. It depends on the members itself: some people prefer group work and seek out membership in it. some prefer independence as there are many psychological factors involved in team work (Forsyth, 2010).

However, team formation is not as simple as it might firs look. Team can’t star work immediately as there is some basic human interaction that needs to be considered first. It is the view of Tuckman (1965) that there are 5 stages of team formation:

1. Forming - phase, the group members become oriented toward one another.

2. Storming - this stage creates phases, conflicts within the group as group is setting their goals and members creating their status. However conflict might not always be bad as sometimes it can evoke new ways of doing things.

3. Norming – standards, values such as attitude, cohesion are formed, that regulates behaviour and makes team more unite.

4. Performing – Team is concerned with achieving goals, performing.

5. adjourning – Team breaks up.

(Hardingham, 1995) (Forsyth, 2010) (Watson and Gallagher, 2005)

These Tuckman’s stages of formation are seen in the case study, however not all. First stage accoutred when Electron hired new workers and formed new teams by integrating new workers with old. Storming became present when conflicts started to arise between old and new members as new members started to oppose - “I refuse to sit on the assembly line”. It also appears that new members are stuck in this stage and are forced to perform - “you are part of the team and you go where you’re needed and you do it”.

Personality

Personality also plays very important role in team formation process. Putting people together with right personalities for example can help to prevent severe outcomes of conflict or improve performance. Researchers like Norman (1967), Smith (1967), Goldberg (1981) have studied many personality traits and pointed out five main factors each having a cluster of specific traits. These five factors extraversion/introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness are called Big Five theory of personality. These five factors provide a rich conceptual framework for identifying work behaviours in the relationships with personality (Jacek, 2012) (Forsyth, 2010).

There is some evidence of this theory in the case study which tells that these new members have reasonable personality in order to form an effective team. Some members shows openness – “I can prove to them that I will make a good Electron employee” however there are signs of neuroticism as their patience disappears and starts to protest.

Social exchange theory

This Theory assumes that people, as rational creatures, strive to minimize their troubles, their worries, and their losses and instead maximize their positive outcomes, their happiness, and their rewards. This theory argues that by obeying exchange “rules” over time relationships grow into loyalty, trust and thus starts to attract people into effective groups (Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005). By analysing this theory it turns out that there are no indications in the case study of any existence of this theory, because people are forced to do tasks, they don’t do it because they want to do them and also, old members are not showing much friendliness to the new ones.

Belbin

One of the greatest researchers of management psychology Dr Meredith Belbin (1993) identified 9 preferred team roles and in order for a team to be successful, those roles had to be balanced and well performed. These 9 team roles (implementer, co-ordinator, plant, shaper, monitor evaluator, resource investigator, completer finisher, specialist, team worker) allow identifying behaviour, strengths and weaknesses at the work place. By balancing these roles, it can be used to improve self-effectiveness, team performance create effective working relationships etc. (Macrosson and Hemphill, 2001) (Meredith, 2012).

Even though these Belbin’s roles are important concept to consider when forming groups, there are no indications that these teams were formed in relationship to this concept. This can be the reason why some members find it difficult to perform well.

Team cohesion

Cohesion is found to be the most important and hardly understood concept of group dynamics. Cohesion is what keeps group members from withdrawing from it unifies its members and creates high morale (Forsyth, 2010). Carron and Brawley (2000, pp.94) defined cohesion as “a dynamic process that is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs”.

So why cohesiveness is important? The Mullen et al. (1994) meta-analysis research showed that teams’ performance, effectiveness, decision quality were greater in teams with strong cohesion. Another research by Muller and Cooper (1994) found that this increase in group outcome can be related to commitment to the task rather than to pride or personal attraction.

There are also few types of Cohesion like social cohesion which relates to groupthink or task cohesion that relates to performance (Lisa, Offermann and Rhonda, 2012). Hence, a cohesive group is likely to outperform non-cohesive group especially when the task requires high levels of interaction and interdependence. However, cohesion is more likely to occur in smaller groups rather than larger. The reason is that when group size increases the number of possible relations among members increases as well and it becomes difficult to maintain strong, relationships with all group members (Forsyth, 2010).

Discussing the importance and occurrences of cohesion, it can be pointed out that Electron’s teams are likely to be not cohesive. First of all, the group size of ten members creates quite a few possible relationships, also competitiveness for permanent job place can be perceived among members – “if you notice that somebody’s not getting anything done, then we can bring that up at a meeting”, which is against cohesiveness.

Concertive Control

In order for teams to function properly they need some sort of control. James Barker (1993) discovered that self-managed teams develop a way to control themselves using Concertive Control. Baker described process as:

Firstly, team finds puts consensus over their values based on their company’s “vision statement”, then this value consensus is transformed into rules or norms and members start to place expectations among themselves to obey these norms. At this point authority over individuals is transferred from company’s hierarchy down to the team, with its socially created, informal rules. These rules and norms are easily understood by new members (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010). Another interesting thing to point out is that by applying this concept to self-managed teams Barker (1993) discovered that as it developed it transformed into control more powerful than and less identifiable than bureaucracy (Hawkins, 2012) (Wright and Barker, 2010)

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There is a strong presence of Concertive Control in the Electron. Members of the team have the authority to decide which new members should become full-time employees. Also, teams are dealing with new members by themselves and without any management from organisation. However, it appears that concertive control is too great, because it prevents Electron’s teams from becoming cohesive, or even going through Tuchman’s Theory of group formation as previously discussed.

Performance

There are many theories and aspect like skills or knowledge that relates to team performance. Some concepts like Social Facilitation discusses that people perform better in presence with others. An example would be an individual racing each other will perform better than racing against the clock. Other concepts like Social Loafing argues that people performance is better when working alone (Forsyth, 2010). Ringelmann effect is the best known example of Social Loafing. Throughout his research Ringelmann (1913) discovered that people don't mean to work hard in the team because others also are working on the same task. The result of his experiments are seen in figure 1. It shows that performance decreased as more members were added to the group.

[pic]

Figure 1

The Ringelmann effect is unique because it disobeys common stereotype and social psychological theory: “Common stereotype tells us that the sense of team participation leads to increased effort, that group morale and cohesiveness spur individual enthusiasm, that by pulling together groups can achieve any goal, that in unity there is strength” Bibb, Kipling and Stephen (1979, pp.823).

Katzenbach’s and smith’s (1993) performance curve in figure 2 shows how team performance is related to organisational change. As teams develops, becomes more open and unite their performance increases through stages from working group where there is no good connection between members to high performing team (Elrod and Tippett, 1988).

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[pic]

Figure 2

Also team performance can be influenced positively and negatively by different types of tasks. Forsyth (2010, pp.299-301) suggests that addictive or disjunctive can be performed well whereas conjunctive are opposite as it requires all members to achieve task objectives.

Belbin (1993) also gives a link between his roles and team performance. In his work he argues that well balanced team roles among team members allows increase performance as everyone is doing what they best can (Barbara, 1997).

The performance of Electron’s teams can be identified using several approaches discussed above. Firstly, there is strong indication of Social Facilitation. “If you’re a new person here, you’re going to be watched” – This clearly defines that new members are being watched by other members. However, there is also an example which indicates existence of Social Loafing where ‘Ronald’ notices a mistake by a new worker. It can be pointed out that there is lack of individual monitoring. Moreover, Electron’s team performance can be related to Katzenbach’s and smith’s (1993) performance curve pointing at potential team, because at this stage high norms and objectives arise as seen from the case study – “New workers were unfamiliar with the teams’ value consensus and they posed an immediate challenge to the power relationships the older employees had formed”.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence plays important role in group dynamics. As described by Elliot (2003, pp.23) EI is “the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth”. Famous EI researcher Goleman (1996) formed the Competency model (figure 3) based on EI that results in outstanding work [pic]

Figure 3

performance by learning for dimension abilities to control and identify people’s emotions. However this model also shows that in order to gain full potential of it, self-awareness and self-management are crucial (Elliott, 2003) (Cherniss and Goleman, 2001).

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[pic]

Figure 4

Druskart and Wolff (2001, pp.82-83) in accordance with EI suggests another concept of Team Effectiveness shown in the figure 4. Many studies have shown that teams can be more productive by reaching high levels of cooperation, participation and collaboration among its members. However this is achieved only if team can fulfil three conditions such as mutual trust among members, a sense of group identity and a sense of group efficacy. However, these conditions can be met only with certain degree of Emotional Intelligence in the team.

Looking at the case study, it describes that there are team meetings – “If you notice that somebody’s not getting anything done, then we can bring it up at a meeting, you know, ask them what the problem is, what’s causing them not to be able to get their work done”. This indicates exactly what Druskart and Wolff (2001) stated that in order to achieve EI within a group, individual emotions must be surfaced in front of the group by its members to asses emotional impact. As a result, it enables three conditions to be improved in order to achieve better performance within the team. However, this Team Effectiveness concept is not reaching any further stages, as group members are watching each other, which prevents them to trust each other.

Conflict

Conflict is inevitable. A group by its nature pulls people together with different motivations, outlooks or preferences. As these individuals interact with one another, their diverse interests and preferences can pull them in different directions. They start to compete against each other rather than work together. Sometimes the cause can be goals, ambiguities or personality in relevance with personality Big Five (Forsyth, 2010) (Phillips, 2012).

There are couple types of conflict like status, relationship or process conflict. Task conflicts arises because of time pressure, difficulty or lack of experience. Process conflict arises because people are punished or rewarded for their achievements, or concerned how they going to get to the goal (Forsyth, 2010).

The teams in the case study are experiencing conflict very clearly. First of all there is time pressure, 2 months to enhance performance, thus this evokes task conflict among members. Secondly, it can be noted that even though these team members were pulled together with the same goals, they are competing since the team is born, because not all of them will be chosen for the full-time contract. This could also be thought as positive outcome as they build their performance by competing nevertheless, it is more likely to result in other issues.

5. Conclusion

This report has covered some of the most important definitions, concepts, theories and models of Team Dynamics, discussed the nature of team environment and how it has changed in this era. Some basic questions about teams were answered, that helps to understand what are teams and groups or why people join them. Furthermore, we analysed provided case study and identified numerous positive and negative aspects of Electrons’ team dynamics. One of the biggest finding can be pointed out that Concertive Control prevents teams from further development.

Report also provided insight to Cohesion concept, its importance on group development and performance. However, Electron teams were found to be not cohesive. Personality importance on identifying work behaviours and Belbin team roles were also covered.

Furthermore, some of the most important performance models and theories suggested that teams within the case study, are not a high performing teams, instead, they are only potential teams and have many areas where to improve.

Moreover, the Emotional Intelligence showed that teams have some issues with their emotions. However, Electrons’ discussion meeting tend to be effective in maintaining certain level of EI. Lastly, using relevant conflict models we identified few types of conflict within team members and teams itself.

6. Recommendations

There are couple of aspect that can be changed or improved in Electron.

Firstly, Electron pays a lot of attention on Concertive Control. In fact, through analysis of the case study we found that in even has some negative effects on the teams and organisation as a whole, by holding teams at their particular development stages introduced by Tuckman. Possible solution could be, if Concertive Control would be reduced to reasonable levels. By doing so new members would have more time to fit in relevant norms and in so proceed with stages of team formation also improve EI and team performance. To do so some management could be introduced in managing new members.

Secondly, Electron’s teams appears to be covered with conflict as all of them are under time pressure and only selected ones will get opportunity to become full time employees. To reduce conflict, the time limit could be extended or even removed. Other possible solution could be to develop an agreement within team members on how they will cope with conflict if it occurs. By reducing conflict members could start to pay more time on the task rather than on ach others observation.

Moreover, decision making in Electron is team-based. As mentioned above some management concepts could be introduced in order to improve team performance. The present leaders of the teams are the older members of the company, and as seen from the case study they are not motivating their employees, nor are they making the teams to perform better. In addition to this some other leadership styles could be introduces such as Fiedler's Contingency Model. This model argues that there is no best way for a leadership, because its effectiveness depends on the situation and current leadership style.

In order for this Leadership style to be implemented firstly, current leadership would need to identify its style of leading, then relationships between the leader and team members has to be identified and lastly according to the relationships, current power on leader a new most effective leadership style needs to be determined (Mind tools, 2013). This would change present leadership situation implement new rules, reduce Concertitive Control and team performance.

The List of References

Phillips, C., 2012. Managing Team Conflict. [online] Available at:< http://www.chumans.com/human-systems-resources/managing-team-conflict.html> [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Proven models, 2013. Hawthorne effect.

The Free Library, 2003. Elton Mayo: the Hawthorne experiments. [online] Available at: [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Tannenbaum, S.I., Mathieu, J.E., Salas, E. and Cohen, D., 2012. Teams Are Changing: Are Research and Practice Evolving Fast Enough? Industrial and Organizational Psychology. [online] Available at: [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Cropanzano R. and Mitchell M.S., 2005. Social Exchange Theory:

An Interdisciplinary Review, Journal of Management. [online] Available at: [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Macrosson, W.D.K. and Hemphill, D.J., 2001. "Machiavellianism in Belbin team roles". Journal of Managerial Psychology, [e-journal] 16(5), pp.355-364. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Carron, A.V. and Brawley, L.R., 2000. Cohesion: Conceptual and Measurement Issues. Small Group Research, [e-journal] 31(1), pp.89-106. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Lisa, R., Offermann, L.R. and Rhonda, V.D., 2012. Too close for comfort? Distinguishing between team intimacy and team cohesion. Human Resource Management Review, [e-journal] 22(2), pp.116-127. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Barbara, S., 1997. Team roles and team performance: is there 'really' a link? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, [e-journal] 70(3), pp.248-258. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Bibb, L., Kipling, W. and Stephen, H., 1979. Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, [e-journal] 37(6), pp.822-832. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Henchy, T. and Glass, D.C., 1968. Evaluation apprehension and the social facilitation of dominant and subordinate responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, [e-journal] 10(4), pp.446–454. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Elrod, P.D. and Tippett, D.D., 1988. The “death valley” of change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, [e-journal] 15(3), pp.273–291. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Elliott, H.G.H., 2003. Emotional Intelligence-Based Leadership. The Graduate Management Review. [online] Available at:< http://www.business.otago.ac.nz/mgmt/publications/omgr/2003/03elliott.pdf> [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Druskart, V.U. and Wolff, D.B., 2001. Building the emotional intelligence of groups. Harvard business review, [e-journal] 79(3), pp.80-90, Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Medina, F.J, Munduate, L., Dorado, M.A., Martínez, I. and Guerra, J.M., 2005. Types of intragroup conflict and affective reactions. Journal of Managerial Psychology, [e-journal] 20(3/4), pp219-230. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Jacek, H., 2012. The contribution of the big five personality factors to sense of coherence. Personality and Individual Differences, [e-journal] 53(5), pp591-596. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Hawkins, B., 2012. Gendering the Eye of the Norm: Exploring Gendered Concertive Control Processes in Two Self-Managing Teams. Gender, Work & Organization, [e-journal] 20(1), pp113-126. Abstract only. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 25 April 2013].

Wright, B.W. and Barker, J.R., 2010. Assessing concertive control in the term environment. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, [online] Available at:< http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/096317900167065/pdf> [Accessed 25 April 2013]

Mind tools., 2013. Fiedler's Contingency Model. [online] Available at:< http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/fiedler.htm> [Accessed 25 April 2013]

The List of Bibliography

Watson, G. and Gallagher K., 2005. Managing for Results. CIPD.

Hardingham, A., 1995. Working in Teams. Institute for Personnel Development

Forsyth, R. D., 2010. Group dynamics. 5th ed. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.

Bowditch, J. L., and Buono, A. F., 2005. A Primer on Organizational Behaviour. 5th ed. John Wiley.

McShane, S.L. and Glinow, V., 2013. Organizational behaviour. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin

Ernst, C. and Martin, A., 2006. Critical Reflections: How Groups Learn from Success and Failure. Greensboro, N. C. Centre for Creative Leadership.

Cherniss, C. and Goleman, D., 2001. The emotionally intelligent workplace: how to select for, measure, and improve emotional intelligence in individuals, groups, and organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Jelphs, K. and Dickinson, H., 2008. Working in teams. Bristol: Policy

Buchanan, D.A. and Huczynski, A.A., 2010. Organizational Behaviour. 7th ed. Harlow : Financial Times Prentice Hall

Journals

Meredith, B.R., 2012. Roles at Work. 2nd ed. [e-book] Taylor and Francis. Available through: Anglia Ruskin University Library website [Accessed 5 June 2005].