CHAPTER 9
Foundations of Group Behavior
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
9-1. Distinguish between the different types of groups.
9-2. Describe the punctuated-equilibrium model of group development.
9-3. Show how role requirements change in different situations.
9-4. Demonstrate how norms exert influence on an individual’s behavior.
9-5. Show how status and size differences affect group performance.
9-6. Describe how issues of cohesiveness and diversity can be integrated for group
effectiveness.
9-7. Contrast the strengths and weaknesses of group decision making.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter.
Text Exercises
Myth or Science?: “Gossip and Exclusion Are Toxic for Groups”
An Ethical Choice: Using Peer Pressure as an Influence Tactic
Personal Inventory Assessment: Communicating Supportively
Career OBjectives: Can I Fudge the Numbers and Not Take the Blame?
Point/Counterpoint: People Are More Creative When They Work Alone
Questions for Review
Experiential Exercise: Surviving the Wild: Join a Group or Go it Alone?
Ethical Dilemma: Is Social Loafing Unethical?
Text Cases
Case Incident 1: The Calamities of Consensus
Case Incident 2: Intragroup Trust and Survival
Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s Choice
reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s Choice activities are
centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be
used in class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student’s part.
The course instructor may choose to use these at any time throughout the class—some may be
more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered
in the chapter.
Web Exercises
At the end of each chapter of this Instructor’s Manual, you will find suggested exercises and
ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the
Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and
make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity
or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
We can draw several implications from our discussion of groups. First, norms control behavior
by establishing standards of right and wrong. Second, status inequities create frustration and can
adversely influence productivity and willingness to remain with an organization. Third, the
impact of size on a group’s performance depends on the type of task. Fourth, cohesiveness may
influence a group’s level of productivity, depending on the group’s performance-related norms.
Fifth, diversity appears to have a mixed impact on group performance, with some studies
suggesting that diversity can help performance and others suggesting it can hurt it. Sixth, role
conflict is associated with job-induced tension and job dissatisfaction. Specific implications for
managers are below:
Recognize that groups can dramatically affect individual behavior in organizations, to
either positive or negative effect. Therefore, pay special attention to roles, norms, and
cohesion—to understand how these are operating within a group is to understand how the
group is likely to behave.
To decrease the possibility of deviant workplace activities, ensure that group norms do
not support antisocial behavior.
Pay attention to the status aspect of groups. Because lower-status people tend to
participate less in group discussions, groups with high status differences are likely to
inhibit input from lower-status members and reduce their potential.
Use larger groups for fact-finding activities and smaller groups for action-taking tasks.
With larger groups, provide measures of individual performance.
To increase employee satisfaction, make certain people perceive their job roles
accurately.
The chapter begins with a vignette describing the story of Courtland Kelley’s attempts to counter the effects of group
pressure provide us with a powerful example of the ways groups can (mis)behave. Even though Kelley resisted for
all the right ethical reasons, sometimes countering group pressure can mean costly consequences for the individual,
as he found.
Groups have their place—and their pitfalls. Some groups can exert a powerful positive influence, and others can be
tragically negative. The objectives of this chapter and Chapter 10 are to familiarize you with group and team
concepts, provide you with a foundation for understanding how groups and teams work, and show you how to create
effective working units. Let’s begin by defining a group.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Defining and Classifying Groups
A. Definition
1. A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who
have come together to achieve particular objectives.
2. Groups can be either formal or informal.
a. Formal groups—those defined by the organization’s structure, with designated
work assignments establishing tasks.
b. Informal groups—alliances that are neither formally structured nor
organizationally determined.
B. Social Identity
1. Our tendency to take personal pride or offense for the accomplishments of a group is
the territory of social identity theory.
2. Social identity theory proposes that people have emotional reactions to the failure or
success of their group because their self-esteem gets tied into the performance of the
group.
3. Social identities help us understand who we are and where we fit in with other people,
but they can have a negative side as well.
a. Social identities can even lead people to experience pleasure as a result of seeing
another group suffer.
b. We often see these feelings of schadenfreude in the joy fans experience when a
hated team loses.
c. Our social identities help us understand who we are and where we fit in with other
people, and research indicates they bring us better health and lower levels of
depression because we become less likely to attribute negative situations to
internal or insurmountable reasons.
i. Within our organizations and workgroups, we can develop many identities
through: (1) relational identification, when we connect with others because of
our roles, and (2) collective identification, when we connect with the
aggregate characteristics of our groups.
C. Ingroups and Outgroups
1. Ingroup favoritism occurs when we see members of our group as better than other
people, and people not in our group as all the same.
2. Recent research suggests that people with low openness and/or low agreeableness are
more susceptible to ingroup favoritism.
3. Whenever there is an ingroup, there is, by necessity, an outgroup, which is
sometimes everyone else, but is usually an identified group known by the ingroup’s
members.
4. When there are ingroups and outgroups, there is often animosity between them.
5. One of the most powerful sources of ingroup–outgroup feelings is the practice of
religion, even in the workplace.
a. One global study, for instance, found that when groups became heavily steeped in
religious rituals and discussions, they became especially discriminatory toward
outgroups and aggressive if the outgroups had more resources.
D. Social Identity Threat
1. Ingroups and outgroups pave the way for social identity threat, which is akin to
stereotype threat (see Chapter 6).
2. With social identity threat, individuals believe they will be personally negatively
evaluated due to their association with a devalued group, and they may lose
confidence and performance effectiveness.
II. Stages of Group Development
A. Temporary groups have their own unique sequencing of actions (or inaction):
1. Their first meeting sets the group’s direction.
2. This first phase of group activity is one of inertia.
3. A transition takes place at the end of this phase, which occurs exactly when the group
has used up half its allotted time.
4. A transition initiates major changes.
5. A second phase of inertia follows the transition.
6. The group’s last meeting is characterized by markedly accelerated activity. This
pattern, called the punctuated-equilibrium model, is shown in Exhibit 9-1.
III. Group Properties: Roles, Norms, Status, Size, and Cohesiveness
A. Introduction
1. Work groups are not unorganized mobs; they have properties that shape members’
behavior and help explain and predict individual behavior within the group, as well as
the performance of the group itself.
a. Some of these properties are roles, norms, status, size, cohesiveness, and
diversity.
B. Group Property 1: Roles
1. Introduction
a. All group members are actors, each playing a role.
b. We are required to play a number of diverse roles, both on and off our jobs.
2. Role perception: One’s view of how one is supposed to act in a given situation is a
role perception.
3. Role expectations: How others believe you should act in a given situation.
a. When role expectations are concentrated into generalized categories, we have role
stereotypes.
b. The psychological contract is an unwritten agreement that exists between
employees and their employer.
c. If role expectations as implied are not met, expect negative effects on employee
performance and satisfaction.
4. Role conflict: When an individual is confronted by divergent role expectations.
a. At the extreme, two or more role expectations are mutually contradictory.
b. Within organizations, most employees are simultaneously in occupations,
workgroups, divisions, and demographic groups, and these identities can conflict
when the expectations of one clash with the expectations of another.
c. During mergers and acquisitions, employees can be torn between their identities
as members of their original organization and of the new parent company.
i. Multinational organizations also have been shown to lead to dual
identification—with the local division and with the international organization.
5. Role Play and Assimilation
a. Zimbardo’s prison experiment
i. One of the most illuminating role and identity experiments was done a number
of years ago by Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his
associates. They created a “prison” in the basement of the Stanford
psychology building, hired at , a day, two dozen emotionally stable, physically
healthy, law-abiding students who scored “normal average” on extensive
personality tests, randomly assigned them the role of either “guard” or
“prisoner,” and established some basic rules.
ii. It took little time for the “prisoners” to accept the authority positions of the
“guards” and for the mock guards to adjust to their new authority roles.
Consistent with social identity theory, the guards came to see the prisoners as
a negative out-group, and their comments to researchers showed they had
developed stereotypes about the “typical” prisoner personality type. After the
guards crushed a rebellion attempt on the second day, the prisoners became
increasingly passive. Whatever the guards “dished out,” the prisoners took.
The prisoners actually began to believe and act as if they were inferior and
powerless, as the guards constantly reminded them. And every guard, at some
time during the simulation, engaged in abusive, authoritative behavior. One
said, “I was surprised at myself…I made them call each other names and clean
the toilets out with their bare hands. I practically considered the prisoners
cattle, and I kept thinking: ‘I have to watch out for them in case they try
something.’” Surprisingly, during the entire experiment—even after days of
abuse—not one prisoner said, “Stop this. I’m a student like you. This is just an
experiment!”
iii. The participants had learned stereotyped conceptions of guard and prisoner
roles from the mass media and their own personal experiences in power and
powerless relationships at home.
iv. This allowed them easily and rapidly to assume roles that were very different
from their inherent personalities.
C. Group Properties 2: Norms
1. Introduction
a. All groups have norms—acceptable standards of behavior that are shared by the
group’s members that tell members what they ought and ought not to do under
certain circumstances.
2. Norms and Emotions
a. A recent study found that, in a task group, individuals’ emotions influenced the
group’s emotions and vice versa.
b. Researchers have also found that norms dictated the experience of emotions for
the individuals and for the groups – in other words, people grew to interpret their
shared emotions in the same way.
3. Norms and Conformity
a. The impact that group pressures for conformity can have on an individual
member’s judgment was demonstrated in studies by Solomon Asch and others.
(Exhibit 9-2)
b. Do individuals conform to the pressures of all groups to which they belong?
c. Obviously not, because people belong to many groups, and their norms vary and
sometimes are contradictory.
d. People conform to their reference groups, in which a person is aware of other
members, defines himself or herself as a member or would like to be a member,
and feels group members are significant to him or her. The implication, then, is
that all groups do not impose equal conformity pressures on their members.
4. Norms and Behavior
a. Experiments conducted between 1924 and 1932 by Elton Mayo at Western
Electric at the company’s Hawthorne Works in Chicago.
b. The Hawthorne researchers began by examining the relationship between the
physical environment and productivity.
c. As a follow-up, the researchers began a second set of experiments in the relay
assembly test room at Western Electric.
d. In essence, workers in both the illumination and assembly-test-room experiments
were reacting to the increased attention they received.
e. A third study, in the bank wiring observation room, was introduced to ascertain
the effect of a sophisticated wage incentive plan.
f. Members were afraid that if they significantly increased their output, the unit
incentive rate would be cut, the expected daily output would be increased, layoffs
might occur, or slower workers would be reprimanded.
g. The norms the group established included a number of “don’ts”:
i. Don’t be a rate-buster, turning out too much work.
ii. Don’t be a chiseler, turning out too little work.
iii. Don’t squeal on any of your peers.
h. How did the group enforce these norms?
i. The methods included sarcasm, name-calling, ridicule, and even punches to
the upper arm of any member who violated the group’s norms.
ii. Members also ostracized individuals whose behavior was against the group’s
interest.
5. Positive Norms and Group Outcomes
a. One goal of every organization with corporate social responsibility (CSR)
initiatives is for its values to hold normative sway over employees. After all, if
employees aligned their thinking with positive norms, these norms would become
stronger and the probability of positive impact would grow exponentially.
b. We might expect the same outcomes from political correctness (PC) norms. But
what is the effect of strong positive norms on group outcomes?
c. The popular thinking is that to increase creativity in groups, for instance, norms
should be loosened. However, research on gender-diverse groups indicates that
strong PC norms increase group creativity.
d. Positive group norms may well beget positive outcomes, but only if other
factors are present, too.
i. As powerful as norms can be, though, not everyone is equally susceptible to
positive group norms.
ii. Individual personalities factor in, too, as well as the level of a person’s social
identity within the group.
6. Negative Norms and Group Outcomes
a. Deviant workplace behavior refers to a full range of antisocial actions by
organizational members that intentionally violate established norms, and that
result in negative consequences for the organization, its members, or both.
(Exhibit 9-3)
b. Few organizations will admit to creating or condoning conditions that encourage
and maintain deviant behaviors. Yet they exist.
i. For one, as we discussed before, a workgroup can become characterized by
positive or negative attributes.
ii. Second, employees have been reporting an increase in rudeness and disregard
toward others by bosses and coworkers in recent years.
(a) Workplace incivility, like many other deviant behaviors, has many
negative outcomes for the victims.
(i) Nearly half of employees who have suffered this incivility say it has
led them to think about changing jobs; 12 percent actually quit because
of it.
iii. Third, research suggests that a lack of sleep, which is often caused by
heightened work demands and which hinders a person’s ability to regulate
emotions and behaviors, can lead to deviant behavior.
c. Someone who ordinarily wouldn’t engage in deviant behavior might be more
likely to do so when working in a group.
7. Norms and Culture
a. Do people in collectivist cultures have different norms than people in individualist
cultures? Of course they do.
b. But did you know that our orientation may be changed, even after years of living
in one society.
IV. Group Property 3: Status, and Group Property 4: Size and Dynamics
A. Group Property 3: Status
1. Status is a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by
others.
2. What determines status?
a. Status characteristics theory – differences in status characteristics create status
hierarchies within groups.
i. Status is derived from one of three sources:
(a) The power a person wields over others.
(b) A person’s ability to contribute to group’s goals.
(c) Individual’s personal characteristics.
3. Status and norms
a. High-status members of groups often are given more freedom to deviate from
norms than other group members.
b. High-status people are also better able to resist conformity pressures.
4. Status and group interaction
a. High-status people tend to be assertive.
b. Status differences inhibit diversity of ideas & creativity.
c. Lower-status members tend to be less active.
5. Status inequity
a. When inequity is perceived, it creates disequilibrium that results in corrective
behavior.
b. Hierarchical groups can lead to resentment among those at the lower end of the
status continuum.
c. Large differences in status within groups are also associated with poorer
individual performance, lower health, and higher intentions to leave the group.
d. Groups generally agree within themselves on status criteria; hence, there is
usually high concurrence in group rankings of individuals.
e. Managers who occupy central positions in their social networks are typically seen
as higher in status by their subordinates, and this position translates into greater
influence over the group’s functioning.
f. Individuals can find themselves in conflicts when they move between groups
whose status criteria are different, or when they join groups whose members have
heterogeneous backgrounds.
g. When groups are heterogeneous or when heterogeneous groups must be
interdependent, status differences may initiate conflict as the group attempts to
reconcile the differing hierarchies.
6. Status and stigmatization
a. Studies have shown that people who are stigmatized against, can “infect” others
with their stigma.
i. This “stigma by association” effect can result in negative opinions and
evaluations of the person affiliated with the stigmatized individual, even if the
association is brief and purely coincidental.
B. Group Property 4: Size
1. The size of a group affects the group’s overall behavior, but the effect depends on the
dependent variables.
a. Large groups—a dozen or more members—are good for gaining diverse input.
b. Smaller groups—seven members—are better at doing something productive with
that input.
2. Social loafing is the tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working
collectively than when working individually.
3. Social loafing directly challenges the assumption that the productivity of the group as
a whole should at least equal the sum of the productivity of the individuals in it, no
matter what the group size.
a. Causes of social loafing
i. A belief that others in the group are not carrying their fair share.
b. Social loafing appears to have a Western bias.
i. It’s consistent with individualistic cultures, such as the United States and
Canada, that are dominated by self-interest.
c. Preventing social loafing
i. Set group goals, so the group has a common purpose to strive toward.
ii. Increase intergroup competition, which again focuses on the shared outcome.
iii. Engage in peer evaluation so each person evaluates each other person’s
contribution.
iv. Select members who have high motivation and prefer to work in groups.
v. If possible, base group rewards in part on each member’s unique
contributions.
V. Group Property 5: Cohesiveness, and Group Property 6: Diversity
A. Group Property 5: Cohesiveness (Exhibit 9-4)
1. Groups differ in their cohesiveness – the degree to which members are attracted to
each other and are motivated to stay in the group.
2. The relationship of cohesiveness and productivity depends on the
performance-related norms established by the group.
3. If performance-related norms are high, a cohesive group will be more productive.
4. How to encourage group cohesiveness:
a. Make the group smaller.
b. Encourage agreement with group goals.
c. Increase the time members spend together.
d. Increase the status of the group and the perceived difficulty of attaining
membership in the group.
e. Stimulate competition with other groups.
f. Give rewards to the group rather than to individual members.
g. Physically isolate the group.
B. Group Property 6: Diversity
1. The final property of groups we consider is diversity in the group’s membership, the
degree to which members of the group are similar to, or different from, one another.
2. A great deal of research is being done on how diversity influences group
performance.
3. However, culturally and demographically diverse groups may perform better over
time—if they can get over their initial conflicts.
a. Surface-level diversity—in observable characteristics such as national origin,
race, and gender—alerts people to possible deep-level diversity—in underlying
attitudes, values, and opinions.
4. The impact of diversity on groups is mixed.
a. It is difficult to be in a diverse group in the short term.
b. However, if members can weather their differences, over time, diversity may help
them be more open-minded and creative and to do better.
c. But even positive effects are unlikely to be especially strong. As one review
stated, “The business case (in terms of demonstrable financial results) for
diversity remains hard to support based on the extant research.”
5. One possible side effect in diverse teams—especially those that are diverse in terms
of surface level characteristics—is faultlines, or perceived divisions that split groups
into two or more subgroups based on individual differences such as sex, race, age,
work experience, and education.
a. Research on faultlines has shown that splits such as these are generally
detrimental to group functioning and performance.
b. Overall, although research on faultlines suggests that diversity in groups is a
potential double-edged sword, recent work indicates they can be strategically
employed to improve performance.
VI. Group Decision Making
A. Groups Versus the Individual
1. Strengths of group decision making
a. Groups generate more complete information and knowledge.
b. They offer increased diversity of views.
c. This opens up the opportunity for more approaches and alternatives to be
considered.
d. The evidence indicates that a group will almost always outperform even the best
individual.
e. Groups lead to increased acceptance of a solution.
2. Weaknesses of group decision making
a. It is time consuming.
b. There is a conformity pressure in groups.
c. One or a few members can dominate group discussion.
d. Group decisions suffer from ambiguous responsibility.
3. Effectiveness and efficiency
a. Whether groups are more effective than individuals depends on the criteria you
use.
b. In terms of accuracy, group decisions will tend to be more accurate.
c. On the average, groups make better-quality decisions than individuals.
d. If decision effectiveness is defined in terms of speed, individuals are superior.
e. If creativity is important, groups tend to be more effective than individuals.
f. If effectiveness means the degree of acceptance the final solution achieves, groups
are better.
g. In terms of efficiency, group decision making consumes more work hours than
having an individual tackle the same problem.
i. The exceptions tend to be instances in which, to achieve comparable
quantities of diverse input, the single decision maker must spend a great deal
of time reviewing files and talking to other people.
h. In deciding whether to use groups, then, managers must assess whether increases
in effectiveness are more than enough to offset the reductions in efficiency.
4. Summary
a. Groups offer an excellent vehicle for performing many of the steps in the
decision-making process.
b. They are a source of both breadth and depth of input for information gathering.
c. When the final solution is agreed upon, there are more people in a group decision
to support and implement it.
d. Group decisions consume time, create internal conflicts, and generate pressures
toward conformity.
B. Groupthink and Groupshift
1. Groupthink is related to norms.
a. It describes situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group
from critically appraising unusual, minority, or unpopular views.
2. Groupshift describes the way of discussing a given set of alternatives and arriving at
a solution.
a. With groupshift, group members tend to exaggerate the initial positions they hold.
3. Groupthink
a. Groupthink appears closely aligned with the conclusions Solomon Asch drew in
his experiments with a lone dissenter.
b. Individuals who hold a position different from that of the dominant majority are
under pressure to suppress, withhold, or modify their true feelings and beliefs.
i. As members of a group, we find it more pleasant to be in agreement—to be a
positive part of the group—than to be a disruptive force, even if disruption
would improve effectiveness.