Questions for Review
10-1. How do you explain the growing popularity of teams in organizations?
Answer: Although teams are not always effective they have become popular.
Some of the reasons include:
a. Teams are a great way to use employee talents.
b. Teams are more flexible and responsive to changes in the environment.
Learning Objective: Analyze the continued popularity of teams in organizations
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
10-2. What is the difference between a group and a team?
Answer: A group may just be individuals that are together. A work group is a
group that interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help
each group member perform within his or her area of responsibility. Often there is
Learning Objective: Contrast groups and teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
10-3. What are the five types of team arrangements?
Answer:
Problem-Solving Teams: groups of 5 to 12 employees from the same
Self-Managed Work Teams: groups of 10 to 15 people who take on the
Cross-Functional Teams: employees from about the same hierarchical level,
Virtual Teams: teams that use computer technology to tie together physically
Multiteam Systems: collections of two or more interdependent teams that
Learning Objective: Contrast the five types of teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
10-4. What conditions or context factors determine whether teams are effective?
Answer: The key components of an effective team are in four general categories
including context, composition, work design, and process. Effective teams have a
common and meaningful purpose that provides direction, momentum, and
Learning Objective: Identify the characteristics of effective teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
10-5. How can organizations create team players?
Answer: Organizations can create team players through:
Selection: make team skills one of the interpersonal skills in the hiring
Training: individualistic people can learn.
Reward: rework the reward system to encourage cooperative efforts rather
Continue to recognize individual contributions while still emphasizing the
Learning Objective: Explain how organizations can create team players
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
10-6. When is work performed by individuals preferred over work performed by teams?
Answer: The complexity of the work can determine whether one or more people
individuals or team should be utilized are:
1. Is the work complex and is there a need for different perspectives: will it be
2. Does the work create a common purpose or set of goals for the group that is
3. Are members of the group involved in interdependent tasks?
Learning Objective: Decide when to use individuals instead of teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Experiential Exercise
Composing the “Perfect” Team
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Decide when to use individuals instead of teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Break into teams of four to five. Assume you work for a company that redesigns existing
products to improve them, from computer keyboards to bicycle helmets to toothbrushes.
As a result, creativity is a key factor in whether your company succeeds in developing a
product that is marketable.
You need to staff a new team of 5 individuals, and you have a pool of 20 to choose from.
For each person, you have information about the following characteristics: intelligence,
work experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience,
and extraversion. Your team is to answer the following questions.
10-7. If you could form your perfect team for this context, what would it look like? In other
words, what characteristics would you choose for each of the five members – a lot of
work experience or a little; high, moderate, or low conscientiousness; and so on? Why?
Answer: Responses to this question will vary by student.
10-8. How, if at all, would your choices change if the task required teams to make quick
decisions that were not necessarily the most creative? Why?
Answer: Again, responses to this question will vary by student.
10-9. Each member of your group should describe his or her ideal team member – one
hypothetical person you’d most like to work with for this context. (Use the same criteria
as in question 10-7.) As a group, compare your responses. Does every person’s ideal
member share the same characteristics, or are there differences? If you could, would you
compose a team entirely of your ideal individuals? Why or why not?
Answer: Responses to this question will vary depending on the particular
Teaching Notes
This exercise provides members of the class to work effectively in teams. Not all
members of each team will agree with the recommendations arrived at by the team. You
can use evidence of this dynamic as a discussion point on how teams deal with diversity
of opinion and conflict.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Ethical Dilemma
The Sum of the Team Is Less Than Its Members
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the characteristics of effective teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
Of the billions of tons of carbon let loose into the world’s atmosphere each year, China is
responsible for 21 percent, mostly due to its growth in manufacturing. And due to the
billions of tons of wastewater and sewage released into rivers and lakes by Chinese
chemical firms every year, 300 million of its citizens do not have clean drinking water.
Clearly, these ethical breaches represent the failure not of one individual but of scores of
teams: to be exact, top management teams in organizations throughout the country. Does
that mean the leaders of China’s companies are all unethical? Surely not.
To increase corporate social responsibility (CSR), we need to understand the team
dynamics that lead to unethical decision making. First, we examine the context. As a
major emerging country, China witnessed unprecedented growth in industry that has
brought opportunities for corporate profits, better salaries, and better access to services
for its citizens. Millions have been able to pull themselves and their families out of
poverty. Few would argue that providing jobs and services isn’t a highly ethical pursuit.
However, top management teams now face pressure to sustain growth at any cost. The
top management team of Rongping Chemical Company made the tragic decision to cut
costs and increase profits by dumping untreated chlorine into rivers, raising the level of
chromium-6—a tasteless, odorless compound that causes ulcers and cancers—to over 20
times national standards. Other organizations, like Luliang Chemical Company, have
done the same, endangering the health of the same citizens it helps with jobs and
opportunities.
Some observers have been shocked that top management teams in a country with
collectivist values, which stress a group-oriented outlook, would make decisions that
don’t consider everyone affected by them. One recent study indicated that the problem is
competing ethical principles: duty to others v. duty to society. As management teams
faced financial dissatisfaction about their firm’s performance, environmental ethics and
CSR actions decreased, suggesting the teams were feeling pressure from their
organization’s stakeholders and becoming less concerned about the environment. They
may also have rationalized that providing jobs was for the greater societal good and
believed that violating stakeholder expectations would cost them their own place on the
management team. However, the study found that on an individual level, when a person’s
sense of collectivist values increased, environmental ethics also increased, suggesting
that the top managers did favor CSR initiatives, but other concerns predominated in the
team settings. We may conclude that these teams are likely hindering the progress of
environmental awareness. When teams feel pressured to meet certain (sometimes narrow)
metrics, there may be more unethical team decisions than individual members would
make on their own.
Sources: “Eight Cases That Mattered,” ChinaDialogue,
https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/4429-Eight-cases-that-mattered, accessed June 22, 2015; “Facts about
Chromium,” Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/region7/pdf/national_beef
_leathersprime_tanning_chromiumVI_Fact_Sheet.pdf, accessed June 22, 2015; EJOLT Team at School of Geography and China
Centre, University of Oxford, “Heavy Metal Pollution in Quijing, Yunnan, China,” Environmental Justice Atlas, February 25, 2015; S.
Thau, R. Derfler-Rozin, M. Pitesa, M. S. Mitchell, and M. M. Pillutla, “Unethical for the Sake of the Group: Risk of Social Exclusion
and Pro-Group Unethical Behavior,” Journal of Applied Psychology 100, no. 1 (2015): 98–113; J. Steinberg, “Hinckley: No
Hollywood Ending for Erin Brockovich’s Tainted Town,” San Jose Mercury News, July 7, 2013,
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23649050/hinkley-no-hollywood-ending-erin-brockovichstainted-town; and X. Wang and M. N.
Young, “Does Collectivism Affect Environmental Ethics? A Multi-Level Study of Top Management Teams from Chemical Firms in
China,” Journal of Business Ethics 122, no. 3 (2014): 387–94.
Questions
10-10. Do you think you could be convinced to let your organization dump chemicals
such as chromium-6 into the water supply? Why or why not?
Answer: Responses to this question will vary depending on the opinions of
10-11. Why might top management teams be more likely to make unethical decisions
than their individual members would make?
Answer: The answer to this question will vary depending on the student’s ethical
10-12. The cases of Rongping and Luliang are far from isolated incidents. You may
remember the case of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which dumped chromium-6
into the water supply in Hinckley, California, as recounted in the movie Erin
Brockovich. That case resulted in a $333 million award, the largest settlement ever
in a direct-action lawsuit, to help the town’s 2,000 residents. In contrast, when
1,721 villagers brought suit against Rongping (more plaintiffs than ever in China,
to date), the court ordered the company to pay a total compensation of $105,000
for damage to the land. And the Chinese environmental group Friends of Nature
filed the country’s first-ever public-interest lawsuit, which shut down Rongping’s
plant in a village, but did not offer monetary restitution for the villagers. How
might these outcomes affect the ethical decisions of top management teams in the
future?
Answer: The answer to this question will vary depending on the student’s ethical
Case Incident 1
Tongue Tied in Teams
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the characteristics of effective teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Thirty-one year old Robert Murphy has the best intentions to participate in team
meetings, but when it’s “game time,” he chokes. An online marketing representative,
Robert cannot be criticized for lack of preparation. After being invited to a business
meeting with six of his coworkers and his supervisor, Robert began doing his research on
the meeting’s subject matter. He compiled notes, arranged them neatly, and walked into
the meeting room. As soon as the meeting began, “I just sat there like a lump, fixated on
the fact that I was quiet.” The entire meeting passed without Robert contributing a word.
Robert is certainly not the first person, nor is he the last, to fail to speak up during
meetings. While some employees may actually lack ability, the highly intelligent also
freeze. One study found that if we believe our peers are smarter, we experience anxiety
that temporarily blocks our ability to think effectively. In other words, worrying about
what the group thinks of you makes you dumber. The study also found the effect was
worse for women, perhaps because they are more socially attuned.
In other cases, failing to speak up may be attributed to personality. While the extraverted
tend to be assertive and assured in group settings, the more introverted among us prefer to
collect their thoughts before speaking—if they speak at all. But again, even those who are
extraverted can remain quiet, especially when they feel they cannot contribute.
You may be wondering whether it is important for everyone to speak up. Collaboration
(the word comes from “laboring together” in Latin) is at the heart of organizational
transformation, so yes, the more participation, the more likely the collaboration will
result in higher trust, increased productivity, and enhanced creativity. Furthermore,
collaboration works best when individuals know their ideas are taken seriously.
The message from research is clear: give free speech a try!
Sources: E. Bernstein, “Speaking Up Is Hard to Do: Researchers Explain Why,” The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2012, D1; M.
Kashtan, “Want Teamwork? Promote Free Speech,” The New York Times, April 13, 2014, 8; and H. Leroy et al., “Behavioral Integrity
for Safety, Priority of Safety, Psychological Safety, and Patient Safety: A Team-Level Study,” Journal of Applied Psychology
(November 2012): 1273–81.
Questions
10-13. Recall a time when you failed to speak up during a group meeting. What were
the reasons for your silence? Are they similar to or different from the reasons
discussed above here?
Answer: This item can be assigned as a Discussion Question in
10-14. Can you think of other strategies that can help the tongue-tied?
Answer: Again, responses to this question will vary by student.
10-15. Imagine you are leading a team meeting and you notice that a couple of team
members are not contributing. What specific steps might you take to try to
increase their contributions?
Answer: The answer to this question can vary depending on a student’s
perception of the priority of effectiveness techniques in application. For example,
the answer might begin with exercises and interviews to determine the new hire’s
Case Incident 2
Smart Teams and Dumb Teams
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the characteristics of effective teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Diverse and multicultural work environments; Reflective thinking
In this chapter, we’ve identified how some of the characteristics we use to describe
individuals also can describe teams. For example, individuals can be high in the trait of
openness, as can a team. Along the same lines, have you noticed that some teams seem to
be smart, while others seem, um, dumb? This characteristic has nothing to do with the
average IQ of the team members but instead reflects the functionality of the whole team.
Teams that are synergistic excel in logical analysis, brainstorming, coordination,
planning, and moral reasoning. And teams that are dumb? Think of long unproductive
meetings, social loafing, and interpersonal conflicts.
You might be remembering a few teams you’ve witnessed that are in the dumb category,
but we hope you can think of a few that excelled. Smart teams tend to be smart in
everything—for any task, they will find a workable solution. But what makes them
smart? Researchers in an MIT study grouped 697 subjects into teams of 2–5 members to
solve tasks, looking for the characteristics of smart teams (they weren’t all smart).
The findings were:
1. Smart teams did not allow individual members to dominate. Instead, there were more
equal contributions from members than in other teams.
2. Smart teams had more members who were able to read minds. Just kidding. But the
members were able to read complicated emotions by looking into the eyes of others.
There is a test for this ability called Reading the Mind in the Eyes.
3. Smart teams had more women. It’s not that smart teams had more gender equality;
these teams simply had more women. This result might be partly due to the fact that more
women scored higher in the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test.
The researchers recently replicated the study using 68 teams and again found that some
teams were smarter than others. This study added a new angle to the research: How
would teams working in person differ from teams working online? Surprisingly, there
was little difference: All smart teams had more equal member communication (and plenty
of it) and were good at emotion reading. When the online collaborators could not see
each other, they practiced Theory of Mind, remembering and reacting to the emotional
cues they were able to detect through any mode of communication. Theory of Mind is
related to emotional intelligence (EI), which we discussed in Chapter 4.
When we have the opportunity to hand-pick team members, we can look for those who
listen as much as they speak, express empathy, and remember what others tell them about
themselves. For teams to which we are assigned, we can seek these attributes in others
and help guide the team toward its best self. As for IQ? Here’s the good news: Recent
research indicates that our membership in a team actually makes us smarter
decision-makers as individuals!
Source: E. E. F. Bradford, I. Jentzsch, and J.-C. Gomez, “From Self to Cognition: Theory of Mind Mechanisms and Their Relation to
Executive Functioning,” Cognition 138 (2015): 21–34; B. Maciejovsky, M. Sutter, D. V. Budescu, et al., “Teams Make You Smarter:
How Exposure to Teams Improves Individual Decisions in Probability and Reasoning Tasks,” Management Science 59, no. 6 (2013):
1255–70; and A. Woolley, T. W. Malone, and C. Chabris, “Why Some Teams Are Smarter Than Others,” The New York Times, January
18, 2015, 5.
Questions
10-16. From your experiences in teams, do you agree with the researchers’ findings on
the characteristics of smart teams? Why or why not?
Answer: This answer will vary depending on the student’s beliefs and opinions.
10-17. On the highly functioning teams in which you’ve been a member, what other
characteristics might have contributed to success?
Answer: This answer will vary depending on the student’s experiences, beliefs
10-18. The authors who suggested that membership in a team makes us smarter found
that teams were more rational and quicker at finding solutions to difficult
probability problems and reasoning tasks than were individuals. However, after
participation in the study, team members were much better at decision making on
their own, even up to 5 weeks later. Do you think this spillover effect would
happen equally for people in smart teams and dumb teams? Why or why not?
Answer: This item can be assigned as a Discussion Question in
My Management Lab
Go to mymanagementlab.com for Auto-graded writing questions as well as the
following Assisted-graded writing questions:
10-19. Regarding Case Incident 1, do you think it’s necessary for everyone to speak up in
a team? Why or why not?
10-20. In reference to Case Incident 2, do you think you can read emotions from people’s
eyes enough to react well to them in teams? Why or why not? There are Reading
the Mind from the Eyes tests online if you want to test your skill.
10-21. MyManagementLab Only – comprehensive writing assignment for this chapter.
Instructor’s Choice
Curtailing Social Loafing
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Identify the characteristics of effective teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
First, have students read “Extrinsic and Intrinsic Origins of Perceived Social Loafing in
Organizations,” Academy of Management Journal 3 (1992), pp. 191–202.
The primary task of the exercise is to design a plan of action to prevent and discourage
social loafing. Review the chapter section on social loafing before beginning the design
of your plan. The plan should identify the problem in the example, the potential for
problems, corrective action, a time frame, and an assessment measure.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Exploring OB Topics on the Web
Learning Objective: Contrast the five types of teams
Learning Outcome: Describe best practices for utilizing groups and work teams in organizations
AACSB: Reflective thinking
1. Moving from a traditional hierarchical structure to teams requires thought and
planning. How teams will be applied within the organization and their goals can be one of
the most challenging aspects of the process. Go to
http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/tb-basic.htm to learn more about team
building.
2. What is the difference between a self-managed team and a self-directed team? Go
to http://ezinearticles.com/?
Difference-Between-Self-Managed-and-Self-Directed-Teams&id=1521183 to see a series
of links on team topics where you can find the answer to the above questions and many
other questions. Write a short reaction paper on one of the topics from this website.
3. Virtual teams require tools to support their effectiveness. For example, how do
they hold meetings? We often assume the technology is there (e.g., the telephone), but
most technology supports only one-on-one communication. When a meeting is held on
the phone, there must be technology to support all members being on the line at once.
Learn more about virtual team tools at http://www.objs.com/survey/groupwar.htm. Write
five facts you learned about groupware and collaboration support and bring them to class
for further discussion.
4. For a brief overview of the characteristics of effective teams, go to
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/06/07/five-ways-to-build-an-effective-team/.
After reviewing this list, think of a team or group you have worked with in the past. Do
not name names, but take each characteristic listed and apply your experience to it. For
example, characteristic number one is, “There is a clear unity of purpose.” Did your
group have that unity? Why or why not? How did you know—was there a mission
statement (or lack of one), were there goals (or no goals), etc.? Bring your completed
analysis to class for group discussion.
5. Read
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jmaureenhenderson/2013/11/25/want-to-be-a-team-pl
ayer-strike-this-one-word-from-your-vocabulary /. Do you agree? How does this
perspective compare to what we have learned in class? Write a paragraph or two
as to why you agree or disagree with this recommendation and what you would
change if necessary. Bring to class for further discussion.