What are the basic concepts of groups?
Basic Group concepts Norms
These are a set of behaviour patterns expected of someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Individuals are expected to perform certain roles because of their position in the group. Roles tend to be oriented towards either task accomplishment or marinating group member satisfaction, both roles are important to the ability of the group to function effectively and efficiently.
A problem that arises is that of role conflict i.e. individuals play a number of different roles, adjusting their roles to the group to which they belong to and the tasks cause difficulty in understanding their role behaviour. They are confronted by different role expectations (from managers and what co-workers do in relation to a task).
Norms and Conformity
Norms – these are acceptable standards or expectations shared by group’s members. They dictate factors such as work output levels, abseentism, promptness and the amount of socialization allowed on the job.
Norms may include dress code, language, loyalty, effort level and performance.
Because individuals are want to be accepted by groups they belong, they are susceptible to conformity pressures. Conformity puts pressure on the individual’s judgment and attitudes towards group needs to avoid being different.
Conformity stifles creativity influencing members to clinch to attitudes that may be out of touch with organisational needs.
Status Systems Status
Status is a prestige grading, position, or rank within a group. Status is a significant motivator and has behavioural consequences when individual see a disparity between what they perceive their status to be and what others perceive it to be.
Status can be informally conferred by characteristics such as education, age, skill, or experience. Anything can have status value if others in the group evaluate it that way. Status can be formally conferred and its important for employees to believe that the organisation’s formal status system is congruent i.e. there is equity between the perceived ranking of an individual and the status symbols he/she is given by the organisation.
For example status incongruence would occur when a supervisor earns less than his/her subordinates.
Group size
Group size affects the group’s overall behaviour, small groups are faster at completing tasks that larger ones. However, in problem solving larger groups can get better results than smaller ones due to idea diversification.
Free Rider tendency/social loafing
This is a group phenomenon in which individual members reduce their individual efforts and contributions as the group increases in size.
Group think
This is where detrimental decisions are made despite evidence to the contrary – people seek unanimity and they are willing to realistically view alternatives. This normally happens in situations whereby group members are friendly, tightly knit and cohesive.
Group Cohesiveness
This is the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and a share the same group’s goals (a chain is only as strong as its weakest link). Groups which are less cohesive (a lot of internal disagreement and lack of cooperation and trust) are less effective in task execution that cohesive groups.
But some group may become too powerful such that poor decisions may be endorsed due to unanimous support.
