Micro Topics

Task & Maintenance

Task what the team does to reach its goal
Maintenance (process) the team focuses its efforts on establishing common purpose and
cohesiveness.
Group cohesiveness is based on size, diversity.
Size
Size determines satisfaction generally speaking, the lower the group size the greater the
individuals satisfactions.
Size also determines performance. Additive and disjunctive tasks benefit from a greater size.
For conjunctive tasks, a smaller group size is better.
Process losses are performance difficulties that stem from the problems of motivating and
coordinating larger groups.
Diversity
More diverse groups have a more difficult time communicating effectively and becoming
cohesive. Possibly better when it comes to cognitive, creativity-demanding tasks.
Group Norms
Social norms are collective expectations that members of social units have regarding the
behaviour of each other. As such, they are codes of conduct that specify what individuals
ought and ought not to do and standards against which we evaluate the appropriateness of
behaviour.
How roles in the team apply are also important.
Consequences:
Greater conformity, stable membership, more participation in group activities and more
success.
Perceptions Links to Motivation:
Perception is the process of organising data and making sense of our environment. It is very
important in organisational settings because it reflects our decision making and choices.
It is therefore logical to see the connection between perception and motivation. If you
perceive things as favourable or something you want to do you will be motivated to do them
more.
Issues with perception with conflict;

Perception has a number of bias and issues caused by attribution errors, if you incorrectly
judge your team members in situations and ultimately this team has to work on a project, any
unfavourable or negative attribution would hinder team cohesiveness.

Certain bias that would affect motivation;
Contrast Bias: where if you compare your group to another you will either be more motivated
to work hard or less motivated depending on how well you perceived the other groups.

Dunning Kruger effect, the effect at which you misjudge others abilities as equal to yours as
you have weak confidence or if you feel that your abilities are superior to others when in fact
they are not.

Expectancy theory (vroom) where motivation is determined by the outcomes that people
expect to occur as a result of their work activities. I expected to do pretty well and in the end
we did alright. This is related to the self-fulfilling prophecies where if you expect something to
occur, it will more likely to occur. In this case if you perceive your team attitude as one which
lacks motivation you will more likely become a team that lacks the motivation to do well.
Different individuals will expect different outcomes and this will cause the difference in
motivation.
People will be motivated to perform in those work activities that they find attractive and that
they feel they can accomplish. If rewards are not attractive they cannot accomplish a goal that
is mutual to them.

Effective motivational force = expectancy that effort will lead to performance x belief that
performance will lead to a positive outcome x valence desirability of the individual to achieve
the expected outcome. So different people have different effective motivational forces and if
your team has lower effective motivational force your expectancy that effort will lead to
performance will decrease and your group overall effective motivational force will decrease.
Equity theory is that if we compare the effort we must put in for a job and the reward we get.
(an exchange relationship). Perceptually distort our own effort and reward, and we need a
sense of fairness in our group a sense of fairness needed to be created.
Compliance, Conformity, Values, Behaviours and Attitudes:
Compliance:
External coercion, involves punishment for non-compliance, is a result of rules/laws (formal
value system)

Conformity:
Internal acceptance, no external instruction is received, social facilitation (do it if everyone else
is doing it peer pressure)

Asch conformity experiment length of bars, follow
Milgram obedience experiment - Pressing electric switch on people asking questions
Stanford Prison experiment Acting out a prison scene, people actually fell into their roles

Values Based on underlying core beliefs about the world

System of values ranked from important to trivial and how strongly we hold them

Terminal values goals pursued over a long term, related to wider ambitions
Instrumental values the means of achieving terminal values, related to specific achievements

Values provide the normative basis for attitudes

Attitudes include 3 components Affective, cognitive and behavourial

Affective the emotional evaluation (good/bad, strong/weak)
Cognitive the basis on which you make your evaluation
Behavioural When we hold an attitude, we tend to behave in a certain way

Clash in values can lead to conflict
If sufficient people hold the same values for long period of time, they can develop a culture

Shared values=groups=culture

High/Low context cultures (High/Low connection cultures) Edward Hall

Geert Hofstede National Cultures