GROUP BEHAVIOR IN ORGANIZATIONS

Group Behavior in Organizations

Group Behavior in Organizations

Introduction

The purpose of this research essay is to understand the importance of group and group behaviours in organizations.

Importance of Group dynamics in business world

Many companies have embraced individual executive coaching and mentoring as key approaches to fuel their talent development initiatives. But these tools are not the only leadership development strategies available (Amabile 2006). Under certain business circumstances, they can even be imperfect solutions because they don't address the real-world, group dynamics that executives must contend with.

Group-based leadership development, however, requires leaders and potential future leaders to work in unison to:

Develop executive skill sets.

Provide one another with high-value constructive feedback.

Enhance interpersonal communication.

Break functional silos.

Tackle real-world challenges in real time.

A group-based design is ideal for tackling a range of real-world business challenges, such as:

Silo-busting. The existence of interdepartmental conflicts is an age-old, efficacy-blocking story in organizations large and small (Choi 2001). A group-based leadership development process is a great environment for addressing these issues because the working group can be populated with cross-functional peers.

Building team acumen. Since the development group is a de facto team, the setting offers a perfect workspace for developing and refining teaming competencies.

Goal-setting. When done right, a group-based design proves that two heads are definitely better than one, and that 10 are better than eight. The sheer number of high-impact, creative and operational improvement initiatives that can emerge from the process simply can't be found in the one-on-one format (Cartwright 2008).

Effectiveness of Groups or Individuals in Work Environment

Group work is more important in work environment. A common pitfall seen in business organizations is the confusion between a "group" and a "team." With "team" being a buzzword in today's business world, we often think that any work in which various people work together is, by definition, a team. This is a gross error. We have always worked as a group (Carron 2000). A restaurant, for example, is a group in which there is a general manager, cooks, waiters and waitresses, cleaning people, and so on. Each person performs specific tasks given to them by management, and each person is evaluated according to how well he has done the task at hand. They work as a group, but not as a team.

A team is also a collective, but as opposed to a group, decisions are shared, the rules are internally established, and the rewards (or punishments) are shared by all. Companies often actively push team-building since they force people to cooperate with one another, thus getting rid of the usual internal fighting that costs companies plenty. However, not all activities should be handled as teams, because one problem with the team concept is that it usually requires more time as decisions have to be reached as a consensus rather than by the unilateral moves of a manager.

To make teams more productive, you need to consider the purpose of the task at hand (Campbell 2003). Are you trying to repeat established processes in more efficient ways? In this case, ...