Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Ethics Check: Social Loafing May Be Closer Than You Think
Three scenarios with common themes of individual behavior in teams are presented that will
provide fertile ground for student comments and discussion about their personal experience in
teams.
The “You Decide” questions probe students’ views of social loafing in a team environment:
Facts to Consider: Unproductive Meetings are Major Time Wasters
Statistics from a worldwide survey of workers’ views on meetings, productivity and
communication and their answers don’t speak very well for managers who hold lots of
meetings. Your Thoughts questions ask students to examine their personal experience with
meetings and their personal behavior.
A survey of some 38,000 workers around the world links low productivity with bad meetings,
poor communication, and unclear goals.
Hot Topic: Jeff Bezos Feeds Innovation with Two-Pizza Teams
Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is one of America’s top businesspeople and a technology
visionary. He’s also a great fan of teams. Bezos coined a simple rule when it comes to sizing the
firm’s product development teams: If two pizzas aren’t enough to feed a team, it’s too big.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Insight: Don’t Short Your Team Contributions
Positive team contributions are things that members do to help one another to succeed at their
tasks and to enjoy the experience of being on the team.
Scene—NBA basketball court: Scholars find that basketball teams win more games the longer
Quick Case: Removing the Headphones to Show Team Spirit
Sean has just started a new job on your team where everyone works in an open plan office. He’s
just out of college, acts happy and is really getting into his new responsibilities. A music lover,
he has been wearing headphones during the day while working on the computer at his work
station. But yesterday an older colleague came over and offered him this unsolicited advice.
“You should take off the headphones in the office,” she said, “it’s not the way we do things here.
People are starting to say that you aren’t a team player.”
Explore Yourself: More on Team Contributions
We need to be able to contribute as team members in many different ways so that our teams can
reach their performance potential. But experience proves time and time again that teams often
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
completing the other activities in the Exploring Management Skill-Building Portfolio.
Terms to Define
Accommodation
Consensus
Cross-functional team
Decentralized communication network
Decision making
Disruptive behaviors
Distributed leadership
Distributed team
Effective team
Emotional conflict
Norm
Performance norm
Project team
Quality circle
Restricted communication network
Self-managing team
Social loafing
Team process
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 14 14-16
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. __________occurs when a group of people is able to achieve more than its members could
by working individually.
2. One of the recommended strategies for dealing with a group member who engages in social
loafing is to __________.
3. An effective team is defined as one that achieves high levels of task performance, high
member satisfaction, and __________.
4. In the open-systems model of teams, the __________.is an important input factor.
(a) communication network
5. A basic rule of team dynamics might be stated this way: The greater the __________.in a
team, the greater the conformity to norms.
6. The team effectiveness equation states the -following: Team Effectiveness = Quality of
Inputs (__________.– Process Losses).
7. Members of a team become more motivated and better able to deal with conflict during the
__________.stage of team -development.
8. A team member who does a good job at summarizing discussion, offering new ideas, and
clarifying points made by others is providing leadership by contributing
__________.activities to the group process.
9. A team performing very creative and unstructured tasks is most likely to succeed using
__________.
10. One way for a manager to build positive norms within a team is to __________.
12. A __________.decision is one in which all -members agree on the course of action to be
taken.
13. Groupthink is most likely to occur in teams that are __________.
(a) large in size
14. When people are highly cooperative but not very assertive in a conflict situation, the
likelihood is that they will be using which conflict management style?
15. The interpersonal conflict management style with the greatest potential for true conflict
resolution is __________.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Short-Response Questions:
16. What are the major differences among a task force, an employee involvement group, and a
self-managing team?
In a task force, members are brought together to work on a specific assignment. The task
force usually disbands when the assignment is finished. In an employee involvement group,
17. How can a manager influence team performance by modifying group inputs?
18. How do cohesiveness and performance norms together influence team performance?
19. What are two symptoms of groupthink and two possible remedies for them?
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 14 14-19
Integration and Application Questions:
20. Valeria Martinez has just been appointed manager of a production team operating the 11 p.m.
to 7 a.m. shift in a large manufacturing firm. An experienced manager, Valeria is pleased that
the team members seem to really like and get along well with one another, but she notices
that they also appear to be restricting their task outputs to the minimum acceptable levels.
Question: How might Valeria improve this situation?
Valeria is faced with a highly cohesive group whose members conform to a negative or low-
performance norm. This is a difficult situation that is ideally resolved by changing the
Self-Assessment 14: Team Leader Skills
Instructions
Consider your experiences in groups and work teams. Ask: “What skills do I bring to team
leadership situations?” Then complete the following inventory by rating yourself on each item
using this scale.
1 = Almost never 2 = Seldom 3 = Sometimes 4 = Usually 5 = Almost always
_______ 1. I facilitate communications with and among team members between team meetings.
_______ 6. I organize and run effective and productive team meetings.
_______ 7. I demonstrate integrity and personal commitment.
_______ 8. I have excellent persuasive and influence skills.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 14 14-20
Scoring and Interpretation
Add your scores for the items listed next to each dimension below to get an indication of your
potential strengths and weaknesses on seven dimensions of team leadership. The higher the
score, the more confident you are on the particular skill and leadership capability. When
considering the score, ask yourself if others would rate you the same way.
1, 9 Building the team
2, 10 Developing people
Class Exercise 14: Understanding Team Dynamics
Preparation
Think about your course work team, a team you are involved with in another campus activity, or
any other team situation suggested by your instructor. Use this scale to indicate how often each
of the following statements accurately reflects your experience in the group.
1 = always 2 = frequently 3 = sometimes 4 = never
1. My ideas get a fair hearing.
3. Diverse opinions within the group are encouraged.
5. There is a lot of favoritism shown in the group.
7. The group sets high standards of performance excellence.
9. You can make mistakes and learn from them in this group.
Instructions
Form groups as assigned by your instructor. Ideally, this will be the group you have just rated. Have
all group members share their ratings, and then make one master rating for the group as a whole.
Circle the items for which there are the biggest differences of opinion. Discuss those items and try
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Chapter 14 14-21
to find out why they exist. In general, the better a group scores on this instrument, the higher its
creative potential. If everyone has rated the same group, make a list of the five most important
things members can do to improve its operations in the future. Nominate a spokesperson to
summarize the group discussion for the class as a whole.
Team Project 14: Superstars on the Team
During a period of reflection following a down cycle for his teams, Sasho Cirovski, head
coach of the University of Maryland’s men’s soccer, came to a realization. “I was recruiting
talent,” he said. “I wasn’t doing a very good job of recruiting leaders.” With a change of
strategy, his teams moved back to top-ranked national competition.
Question
What do you do with a “superstar” on your team?
Instructions
1. Everywhere you look—in entertainment, in sports, and in business—a lot of attention these
days goes to the superstars. What is the record of teams and groups with superstars? Do they
really outperform the rest?
2. What is the real impact of a superstar’s presence on a team or in the workplace? What do they
Practice Critical Thinking: Auto Racing: When the Driver Takes a Back Seat
In the world of competitive auto racing, the drivers are the sport’s rock stars. They’re courted by
sponsors, adored by fans, and made the subject of interview after interview by the racing press.
While it goes without saying that drivers are absolutely essential to earning a trophy, racing
Chapter 14 14-22
1. DISCUSSION Racing teams and their leaders make lots of decisions—from the pressures of
race day to the routines of everyday team management. When and in what situations are these
decisions made by authority rule, minority rule, majority rule, consensus, or unanimity? How do
these decision-making approaches fit certain times and situations but not others? Defend your
answer.
Student answers will vary. This can be given as class project where a different team takes a
different auto racing and/or teams and research their team approaches.
Decisions made by:
Authority rule: Although this is time efficient, the quality of the decision depends on whether the
authority figure has the necessary information. Because timing is everything in the race car
2. PROBLEM SOLVING Assume you have been retained as a team-building consultant by a
famous racing team pit crew whose performance fell badly during the prior season. Design and
explain a series of team-building activities you will use to engage team members to strengthen
their trust in each other and improve their individual and collective efforts.
Some team building exercises to instill/build trust:
• Have your employees take turns staring into each other’s eyes for 60 seconds. Not only
will they become better at maintaining eye contact, they should connect with one another
on some level.
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
• Assemble an obstacle course of sorts. Blindfold your employees and have them get into a
3. FURTHER RESEARCH Choose a racing team of interest to you. Research the team, its
personnel, and its performance in the most recent racing season. Try to answer this question:
What accounts for this team’s success or lack of success—driver talent, technology, teamwork,
ownership/leadership, or all four? List at least three lessons from your analysis of the racing team
that might be valuable and transferable to teams and organizations in any setting?
Additional Exercises for Chapter 14
Break the class into teams and have the teams to consider and develop responses to each of the
following questions:
1. Today online learning is growing at a very fast rate. What type of courses do you think