Chapter 13: Managing Work Groups and Teams: Reading
Chapter Introduction
Learning Outcomes
After studying this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Define and identify types of groups and teams in organizations, discuss reasons
people join groups and teams, and list the stages of group and team development.
2. Identify and discuss four essential characteristics of groups and teams.
3. Discuss interpersonal and intergroup conflict in organizations.
4. Describe how organizations manage conflict.
5. Describe the negotiation process.
Management in Action
Managing by Clowning Around
“It’s difficult to be creative in isolation.”
—Lyn Heward, former president of Cirque du Soleil’s Creative Content Division
Cirque du Soleil makes extensive use of teams to plan, design, and
execute its elaborate shows such as Varekai, shown here being
performed in Moscow.
ITAR-TASS Photo Agency/Alamy
Fourteen-year-old Guy Laliberté dropped out of high school in
Québec, Canada, because he wanted to see the world. “I decided
to go into street performing because it was a traveling job,” he
recalls, and although his skills were limited to playing the
accordion and telling stories, they were enough to get him to
London by the time he was 18. From there, he not only extended
his travels to Europe but also broadened his repertoire to
include fire breathing, juggling, magic, and stilt walking. “It was
just an adventure,” he admits, “and I was planning to go back to
school and have a regular life,” but his nearly decade-long
adventure had only deepened his passion for street performing.
When he returned to Canada, he joined a stilt-walking troupe,
and in 1984, when he was 23 years old, Laliberté partnered
with another high school dropout to form their own streetperformance company. Today, he still runs that company, and as
80 percent owner of Cirque du Soleil, he’s one of the richest
people in Canada.
Cirque du Soleil, which is French for circus of the sun (“The sun,”
explains Laliberté, “stands for energy and youth, which is what I
thought the circus should be about”), has completely
transformed the traditional three-ring spectacle with trapeze
artists, clowns, and lion tamers. Laliberté calls Cirque a
“transdiciplinary experience”—an amalgam of breathtaking
stunt work, dazzling stagecraft, surreal costumes, and pulsing
music. There are currently 20 different Cirque shows, each
developed around a distinctive theme and story arc, such as “the
urban experience in all its myriad forms” (Saltimbanco) and “a
tribute to the nomadic soul” (Varekai). Headquartered in
Montreal, Canada, the company now employs 5,000 people,
including more than 1,300 artists, and its shows have been seen
by 100 million spectators. Profits for 2012 were $250 million on
revenues of $1 billion.
The key to this success, according to Laliberté, is creativity: “I
believe that the profits will come from the quality of your
creative products,” he says. “Since the beginning, I’ve always
wanted to develop a self-feeding circle of creative productions:
The positive financial returns from one show would be used to
develop and create a new show, and so on.” He’s also convinced
that his job is to provide a working environment that fosters
collective creativity: “I believe in nurturing creativity and
offering a haven for creators, enabling them to develop their
ideas to the fullest. With more and more talented creators being
drawn to Cirque in an environment that fulfills them, these
[conditions] are ideal to continue developing great new shows.”
Lyn Heward, former president of Cirque’s Creative Content
Division, calls the company’s process of training and integrating
talented people “creative transformation.” “Everyone,” she says,
“when they come to Cirque as an employee, even an accountant,
comes there because it’s a creative and admired company, and
they want to be able to contribute something creatively.” From
her experience at Cirque, Heward drew up a nine-point guide to
“creative transformation,” and at the heart of her list is a
commitment to the value of teamwork. In fact, the fifth item on
her list says, “Practice teamwork. True creativity requires
stimulation and collaboration. It’s difficult to be creative in
isolation.” Item 6 picks up the same theme: “Keep creativity
fresh with hard-working bosses who constantly encourage and
receive employees’ ideas and feedback and accept that there are
often different ways of getting the same end result.”
“No matter what your product,” Heward argues, “whether it’s
computers, cars, or anything else, your results [depend on]
having a passionate strong team of people.” In any workplace,
she explains, “our most natural resource is the people we work
with—the people we build our product with. Unless there’s a
strong commitment to teambuilding, passionate leadership, and
creativity, even at Cirque it would not happen.” Heward is
willing to admit that “incredible freedom is a problem for most
people because it requires us to think differently,” but she’s also
confident that getting people committed to teamwork is the best
way to get them to develop their creativity. Take Igor Jijikine, a
Russian-born acrobat-actor who helped train performers
for Mystère, Cirque’s permanent show at Las Vegas’s Treasure
Island Hotel and Casino. “[T]he really challenging thing,” he
says,
is to change the mentality of the performers I work with. Many of our performers
are former competitive gymnasts. Gymnastics is essentially an individual sport.
Gymnasts never have to think creatively or be a part of a true team. They got here
by being strong individuals. So, right from the start, we really challenge ourselves
to erase the lines between athletics and artistry, between individuals and the group.
We need to transform an individual into a team player everyone else can count on,
literally with their lives.
Finally, Heward acknowledges that you can’t imbue employees
with the Cirque du Soleil culture and “then tell them to go work
in their cubicles.” The space in which they work, she says, “has
to reflect [Cirque’s] values and vision.” All Cirque du Soleil
productions are created and developed by teams working at the
Montreal facility, which the company calls “the Studio” and
describes as “a full-fledged creation, innovation, and training
laboratory.” In addition to administrative space—“eight floors
of uniquely designed office spaces and relaxation areas
conducive to inspiration”—the complex boasts acrobatic, dance,
and theatrical studios, and the effect of the whole, says Heward,
is that of “a fantastical playground.” Creativity, she explains,
is fostered in work groups where people first get to know each other and then learn
to trust one another. And in this playground, we recognize that a good idea can
emerge from anywhere in the organization or from within a team. We make our
shows from this collective creativity.
Cirque CEO Daniel Lamarre has a succinct way of explaining the
company’s success: “We let the creative people run it.” As for
Laliberté, he, too, is content to trust his creative people—an
instinct, he says, that he learned in his days as a street
performer: “In the street, you have to develop that instinct of
trusting people and reading people because that instinct is your
lifesaver.” He lists himself as “Artistic Guide” in production
notes and tries “not to be too involved in the beginning and
during the process,” the better to keep his perspective “fresh”
and to “be able to give constructive recommendation on the
final production.” He also wants to do the same thing that he
wanted to do when he was 14: “I still want to travel, I still want
to entertain, and I most certainly still want to have fun.”
This chapter is about the processes that lead to and follow from
successes like those enjoyed by Cirque de Soleil. More
important, it’s also about the processes leading to and following
successful group and team dynamics. In Chapter 12, we
established the interpersonal nature of organizations. We
extend that discussion here by first introducing basic concepts
of group and team dynamics. Subsequent sections explain the
characteristics of groups and teams in organizations. We then
describe interpersonal and intergroup conflict and discuss how
conflict can be managed. We conclude with a brief discussion of
negotiation.
13-1Groups and Teams in Organizations
Groups are a ubiquitous part of organizational life. They are the
basis for much of the work that gets done, and they evolve both
inside and outside the normal structural boundaries of the
organization. We define a group as two or more people who
interact regularly to accomplish a common purpose or goal.
The purpose of a group or team may range from preparing a
new advertising campaign, to informally sharing information, to
making important decisions, to fulfilling social needs.
13-1aTypes
of Groups and Teams
In general, three basic kinds of groups are found in organizations—
functional groups, informal or interest groups, and task groups and
teams. These are illustrated in Figure 13.1.
Figure 13.1Types of Groups in Organizations
Every organization has many different types of groups. In this
hypothetical organization, a functional group is shown within the purple
area, a cross-functional team within the yellow area, and an informal
group within the green area.
© Cengage Learning
Functional Groups
A functional group is a permanent group created by the organization to
accomplish a number of organizational purposes with an unspecified
time horizon. The advertising department at Starbucks, the
management department at Iowa State University, and the nursing staff
at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The advertising department at
Starbucks, for example, seeks to plan effective advertising campaigns,
increase sales, run in-store promotions, and develop a unique identity
for the company. It is assumed that the functional group will remain in
existence after it attains its current objectives—those objectives will be
replaced by new ones.
Informal or Interest Groups
An informal or interest group is created by its own members for
purposes that may or may not be relevant to organizational goals. It also
has an unspecified time horizon. A group of employees who lunch
together every day may be discussing productivity, money embezzling,
or local politics and sports. As long as the group members enjoy eating
together, they will probably continue to do so. When lunches cease to be
pleasant, they will seek other company or a different activity.
Informal groups can be a powerful force that managers cannot ignore.
One writer described how a group of employees at a furniture
factory subverted their boss’s efforts to increase production. They
tacitly agreed to produce a reasonable amount of work but not to work
too hard. One man kept a stockpile of completed work hidden as a
backup in case he got too far behind. In another example, autoworkers
described how they left out gaskets and seals and put soft-drink bottles
inside doors. Of course, informal groups can also be a positive force,
such as when people work together to help out a colleague who has
suffered a personal tragedy. For example, during and in the aftermath of
Hurricane Sandy, the superstorm that devastated the northeast United
States in 2012, literally dozens of incidents were reported portraying
how informal groups emerged to help those in distress.
In recent years, the Internet has served as a platform for the emergence
of more and different kinds of informal or interest groups. As one
example, Google includes a wide array of interest groups that bring
together people with common interests. And increasingly, workers who
lose their jobs as a result of layoffs are banding together electronically
to offer moral support to one another and to facilitate networking as
they all look for new jobs. The “At Your Service” feature illustrates
other new types of groups.
At Your Service
Using Customer-Created Groups for Competitive Advantage
Some organizations creatively use customer-created groups to function
more effectively. These people are gathered to watch a street
performance in Los Angeles. Performers will gauge the audience
response to their early performances and then tailor their later
performances to best match what the audience wants.
David Livingston/Getty Images
Today’s customers know a great deal and are not reluctant to tell organizations what they
know. In fact, many now expect not only to participate in the shopping and buying
experience in ways the organization does not expect and for which in many cases is
unprepared, but customers also expect to participate in the creation of the experience itself
as part of the organization’s creative team. Service organizations have long asked
customers their opinions to learn what customers want from them. Many use focus groups
to solicit information about the services they provide or should provide in the future.
Today’s well-informed, web-enabled customers want and expect far greater involvement in
their buying experience and find ways to get it. Two current trends are examples of this.
The first trend is customer management of a networked team, which is increasingly found
in health care. The availability of the Internet and the interest of people in their own health
mean that many patients arrive at their doctor’s office not only with a lot of information
about their ailment but also with an ability to identify and assemble their own support
group of doctors, family and friends, and health-care professionals. These people want to
be actively engaged in managing their own health care and they enter the doctor’s office
expecting to involve members of their existing wellness group. They help integrate their
primary care physician with any referred specialists and freely add in other specialists they
learn about via chat rooms, public rankings of doctors, and disease-specific websites. While
the historic model in health care had the family physician assembling a treatment and care
team, the modern model is a proactive patient who assembles and actively manages a
group of health-care providers.
The second example of customer groups collaborating with an organization can be seen in
the phenomena of crowdsourcing. Although the practice of asking a crowd for help is as old
as the wanted posters on post office walls, the web has expanded this concept greatly
because it can connect people anywhere in the world who want to be involved. Many
newer business models are built on their ability to provide platforms for participation.
Many people use crowdsourced Wikipedia as their only encyclopedia and the customer
recommendations provided by Amazon, TripAdvisor, OpenTable, and Yelp as their guide
for what to read and where to go, eat, or shop.
In the simplest form of crowdsourcing, a group is assembled, usually online, to solve a
problem or engineer a solution. One classic illustration is described by Tapscott and
Williams in their book Wikinomics. They write of a struggling Canadian gold mining firm,
Goldcorp, that decided to release all its proprietary geological data about its property to the
public and offered a $575,000 prize for anyone who could develop a better way to locate
gold on that property. The winning team from Australia gave them an answer that enabled
them to increase their production of gold from just over 50,000 ounces annually at a cost of
$360 an ounce to over a half million ounces annually at a cost of only $59 an ounce.
Successful examples of crowdsourcing like this one have generated much interest among
others seeking solutions to problems that traditional methods don’t seem to solve well. By
building a web platform and posing a problem in a way that will interest potential
participants, a crowd can be attracted. For example, Threadless uses its website to engage
anyone wishing to participate in creating new shirt designs. The U.S. Department of
Defense offers people an opportunity to help test its software, the Library of Congress
asked Flickr users to help identify people in its photo collection, and Walmart asks
customers to vote on which new products it should stock.
In all these cases, the organization is creating a nonemployee group that it must manage
sometimes without even knowing who the members are. The company generally pays little
or nothing for participation. The individuals participating often interact with each other to
argue the merits of proposed solutions. IKEA manages a website where it not only solicits
new ideas for its stores but also where customers can share solutions to each other’s
problems. Organizations using crowdsourcing must provide a problem in a manner that
can be comprehended by potential participants, an interactive web platform that can be
found by those knowledgeable and interested in the topic, and some process for identifying
success and recognition of contribution when the problem is resolved. The point is that
organizations increasingly must manage groups that they don’t employ or groups of people
who they don’t even know. These groups are often customers involved in product
innovation or their own health care but can also be computer gamers testing software or
suggesting new code or anyone with an expertise and willingness to participate in the
problem the organization wishes to solve. Crowd management will require learning new
skills beyond those used for managing employees.
Task Groups
A task group is a group created by the organization to accomplish a
relatively narrow range of purposes within a stated or implied time
horizon. Most committees and task forces are task groups. The
organization specifies group membership and assigns a relatively
narrow set of goals, such as developing a new product or evaluating a
proposed grievance procedure. The time horizon for accomplishing
these purposes is either specified (a committee may be asked to make a
recommendation within 30 days) or implied (the project team will
disband when the new product is developed).
Teams are a special form of task group that have become increasingly
popular. In the sense used here, a team is a group of workers that
functions as a unit, often with little or no supervision, to carry out workrelated tasks, functions, and activities. Table 13.1 lists and defines some
of the various types of teams that are being used today. Earlier forms of
teams included autonomous work groups and quality circles. Today,
teams are also sometimes called self-managed teams, cross-functional
teams, or high-performance teams. Many firms today are routinely using
teams to carry out most of their daily operations. Further, virtual
teams—teams composed of people from remote work sites who work
together online—are also becoming more and more common.
Table 13.1
Types of Teams
Problemsolving team
Most popular type of team; comprises knowledge
workers who gather to solve a specific problem and
then disband.
Management
team
Consists mainly of managers from various functions like
sales and production; coordinates work among other
teams.
Work team
An increasingly popular type of team; work teams are
responsible for the daily work of the organization; when
empowered, they are self-managed teams.
Virtual team
A new type of work team that interacts digitally;
members enter and leave the network as needed and
may take turns serving as leader.
Quality circle
Declining in popularity; quality circles, comprising
workers and supervisors who meet intermittently to
discuss workplace problems.
Source: From Fortune, September 5, 1994. © 1994 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Organizations create teams for a variety of reasons. For one thing, they
give more responsibility for task performance to the workers who are
actually performing the tasks. They also empower workers by giving
them greater authority and decision-making freedom. In addition, they
allow the organization to capitalize on the knowledge and motivation of
their workers. Finally, they enable the organization to shed its
bureaucracy and promote flexibility and responsiveness. Ford used
teams to design its newest Mustang and Focus models. Similarly,
General Motors used a team to develop its newest model of the
Chevrolet Corvette.
When an organization decides to use teams, it is essentially
implementing a major form of organization change, as discussed
in Chapter 7. Thus, it is important to follow a logical and systematic
approach to planning and implementing teams in an existing
organization design. It is also important to recognize that resistance
may be encountered. This resistance is most likely from first-line
managers, who will be giving up much of their authority to the team.
Many organizations find that they must change the whole management
philosophy of such managers to move away from being a supervisor and
toward being a coach or facilitator.
After teams are in place, managers should continue to monitor their
contributions and how effectively they are functioning. In the best
circumstances, teams will become very cohesive groups with high
performance norms. To achieve this state, the manager can use any or
all of the techniques described later in this chapter for enhancing
cohesiveness. If implemented properly, and with the support of the
workers themselves, performance norms will likely be relatively high. In
other words, if the change is properly implemented, the team
participants will understand the value and potential of teams and the
rewards they may expect to get as a result of their contributions. On the
other hand, poorly designed and implemented teams will do a less
effective job and may detract from organizational effectiveness.
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13-1bWhy
People Join Groups and Teams
People join groups and teams for a variety of reasons. They join
functional groups simply by virtue of joining organizations. People
accept employment to earn money or practice their chosen professions.
Once inside the organization, they are assigned to jobs and roles, and
thus become members of functional groups. People in existing
functional groups are told, are asked, or volunteer to serve on
committees, task forces, and teams. People join informal or interest
groups for a variety of reasons, most of which are quite complex.
Indeed, the need to be a team player has grown so strong today that
many organizations will actively resist hiring someone who does not
want to work with others.
Interpersonal Attraction
One reason people choose to form informal or interest groups is that
they are attracted to one another. Many different factors contribute to
interpersonal attraction. When people see a lot of each other, pure
proximity increases the likelihood that interpersonal attraction will
develop. Attraction is increased when people have similar attitudes,
personalities, or economic standings.
Group Activities
Individuals may also be motivated to join a group because the activities
of the group appeal to them. Jogging, playing bridge or fantasy football,
bowling, discussing poetry, playing war games, or flying model
airplanes are all activities that some people enjoy. It is more enjoyable
to participate in many of them as a member of a group, and most require
more than one person. Many large firms such as Exxon Mobil and Apple
have a football, softball, or bowling league. A person may join a bowling
team, not because of any particular attraction to other group members,
but simply because being a member of the group allows that person to
participate in a pleasant activity. Of course, if the group’s level of
interpersonal attraction is very low, a person may choose to forgo the
activity rather than join the team.
People sometime join groups in order to engage in certain activities.
These young men, for instance, are playing flag football in a city park.
They may or may not have known each other before their game, and
may or may not keep in contact with one another after the game. But
for the moment, they are enjoying a group activity—a game that could
not be played without others.
Jupiter images/Stone/Getty Images
Group Goals
The goals of a group may also motivate people to join. The Sierra Club,
which is dedicated to environmental conservation, is a good example of
this kind of interest group. Various fund-raising groups are another
illustration. Members may or may not be personally attracted to the
other fund-raisers, and they probably do not enjoy the activity of
knocking on doors asking for money, but they join the group because
they subscribe to its goal. Workers join unions such as the United Auto
Workers because they support their goals.
Need Satisfaction
Still another reason for joining a group is to satisfy the need for
affiliation. New residents in a community may join the Newcomers Club
partially as a way to meet new people and partially just to be around
other people. Likewise, newly divorced people often join support groups
as a way to have companionship. This need also plays a role in why
some people use Facebook and other social media venues.
Instrumental Benefits
A final reason people join groups is that membership is sometimes seen
as instrumental in providing other benefits to the individual. For
example, it is fairly common for college students entering their senior
year to join several professional clubs or associations because listing
such memberships on a résumé is thought to enhance the chances of
getting a good job. Similarly, a manager might join a certain racquet club
not because she is attracted to its members (although she might be) and
not because of the opportunity to play tennis (although she may enjoy
it). The club’s goals are not relevant, and her affiliation needs may be
satisfied in other ways. However, she may feel that being a member of
this club will lead to important and useful business contacts. The
racquet club membership is instrumental in establishing those contacts.
Membership in civic groups such as the Junior League and Rotary may
be solicited for similar reasons.
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13-1cStages
of Group and Team Development
Imagine the differences between a collection of five people who
have just been brought together to form a group or team and a
group or team that has functioned like a well-oiled machine for
years. Members of a new group or team are unfamiliar with how
they will function together and are tentative in their
interactions. In a group or team with considerable experience,
members are familiar with one another’s strengths and
weaknesses and are more secure in their roles in the group. The
former group or team is generally considered to be immature,
whereas the latter is considered mature. To progress from the
immature phase to the mature phase, a group or team must go
through certain stages of development, as shown in Figure 13.2.
Figure 13.2Stages of Group Development
As groups mature, they tend to evolve through four distinct stages of
development. Managers must understand that group members need
time to become acquainted, accept one another, develop a group
structure, and become comfortable with their roles in the group before
they can begin to work directly to accomplish goals.
© Cengage Learning
The first stage of development is called forming. The members
of the group or team get acquainted and begin to test which
interpersonal behaviors are acceptable and which are
unacceptable to the other members. The members are very
dependent on others at this point to provide cues about what is
acceptable. The basic ground rules for the group or team are
established, and a tentative group structure may emerge. At
Reebok, for example, a merchandising team was created to
handle its sportswear business. The team leader and his
members were barely acquainted and had to spend a few weeks
getting to know one another.
The second stage of development, often slow to emerge,
is storming. During this stage, there may be a general lack of
unity and uneven interaction patterns. At the same time, some
members of the group or team may begin to exert themselves to
become recognized as the group leader or at least to play a
major role in shaping the group’s agenda. In Reebok’s team,
some members advocated a rapid expansion into the
marketplace; others argued for a slower entry. The first faction
won, with disastrous results. Because of the rush, product
quality was poor and deliveries were late. As a result, the team
leader was fired and a new manager placed in charge.
The third stage of development, called norming, usually begins
with a burst of activity. During this stage, each person begins to
recognize and accept her or his role and to understand the roles
of others. Members also begin to accept one another and to
develop a sense of unity. There may also be temporary
regressions to the previous stage. For example, the group or
team might begin to accept one particular member as the
leader. If this person later violates important norms or
otherwise jeopardizes his or her claim to leadership, conflict
might reemerge as the group rejects this leader and searches for
another. Reebok’s new leader transferred several people away
from the team and set up a new system and structure for
managing things. The remaining employees accepted his new
approach and settled into doing their jobs.
Performing, the final stage of group or team development, is also
slow to develop. At this stage, the team really begins to focus on
the problem at hand. The members enact the roles they have
accepted, interaction occurs, and the efforts of the group are
directed toward goal attainment. The basic structure of the
group or team is no longer an issue but has become a
mechanism for accomplishing the purpose of the group.
Reebok’s sportswear business is now growing consistently and
has successfully avoided the problems that plagued it at first.
13-2Characteristics of Groups and Teams
As groups and teams mature and pass through the four basic
stages of development, they begin to take on four important
characteristics—a role structure, norms, cohesiveness, and
informal leadership.
13-2aRole
Structures
Each individual in a team has a part, or role, to play in helping
the group reach its goals. Some people are leaders, some do the
work, some interface with other teams, and so on. Indeed, a
person may take on a task specialist role (concentrating on
getting the group’s task accomplished) or a socioemotional
role (providing social and emotional support to others on the
team). A few people, usually the leaders, perform both roles; a
few others may do neither. The group’s role structure is the set
of defined roles and interrelationships among those roles that
the group or team members define and accept. Each of us
belongs to many groups and therefore plays multiple roles—in
work groups, classes, families, and social organizations.
Role structures emerge as a result of role episodes, as shown
in Figure 13.3. The process begins with the expected role—what
other members of the team expect the individual to do. The
expected role gets translated into the sent role—the messages
and cues that team members use to communicate the expected
role to the individual. The perceived role is what the individual
perceives the sent role to mean. Finally, the enacted role is what
the individual actually does in the role. The enacted role, in turn,
influences future expectations of the team. Of course, role
episodes seldom unfold this easily. When major disruptions
occur, individuals may experience role ambiguity, conflict, or
overload.
Figure 13.3The Development of a Role
Roles and role structures within a group generally evolve through a
series of role episodes. The first two stages of role development are
group processes, as the group members let individuals know what is
expected of them. The other two parts are individual processes, as the
new group members perceive and enact their roles.
© Cengage Learning
Role Ambiguity
Role ambiguity arises when the sent role is unclear. If your
instructor tells you to write a term paper but refuses to provide
more information, you will probably experience role ambiguity.
You do not know what the topic is, how long the paper should
be, what format to use, or when the paper is due. In work
settings, role ambiguity can stem from poor job descriptions,
vague instructions from a supervisor, or unclear cues from
coworkers. The result is likely to be a subordinate who does not
know what to do. Role ambiguity can be a significant problem
for both the individual who must contend with it and the
organization that expects the employee to perform.
Role Conflict
Role conflict occurs when the messages and cues composing
the sent role are clear but contradictory or mutually exclusive.
One common form is interrole conflict—conflict between
roles. For example, if a person’s boss says that one must work
overtime and on weekends to get ahead, and the same person’s
coworkers say that you can succeed without working nights and
weekends, conflict may result. In a matrix organization,
interrole conflict often arises between the roles one plays in
different teams as well as between team roles and one’s
permanent role in a functional group.
Intrarole conflict may occur when the person gets conflicting
demands from different sources within the context of the same
role. A manager’s boss may tell the manager that she needs to
put more pressure on subordinates to follow new work rules. At
the same time, her subordinates may indicate that they expect
her to get the rules changed. Thus, the cues are in conflict, and
the manager may be unsure about which course to
follow. Intrasender conflict occurs when a single source sends
clear but contradictory messages. This might arise if the boss
says one morning that there can be no more overtime for the
next month but after lunch tells someone to work late that same
evening. Person–role conflict results from a discrepancy
between the role requirements and the individual’s personal
values, attitudes, and needs. If a person is told to do something
unethical or illegal, or if the work is distasteful (for example,
firing a close friend), person–role conflict is likely. Role conflict
of all varieties is of particular concern to managers. Research
has shown that conflict may occur in a variety of situations and
lead to a variety of adverse consequences, including stress, poor
performance, and rapid turnover.
Role Overload
A final consequence of a weak role structure is role overload,
which occurs when expectations for the role exceed the
individual’s capabilities. When a manager gives an employee
several major assignments at once, while increasing the
person’s regular workload, the employee will probably
experience role overload. Role overload may also result when
an individual takes on too many roles at one time. For example,
a person trying to work extra hard at a job, run for election to
the school board, serve on a committee in church, coach Little
League baseball, maintain an active exercise program, and be a
contributing member to her or his family will probably
encounter role overload.
In a functional group or team, the manager can take steps to
avoid role ambiguity, conflict, and overload. Having clear and
reasonable expectations and sending clear and straightforward
cues go a long way toward eliminating role ambiguity.
Consistent expectations that take into account the employee’s
other roles and personal value system may minimize role
conflict. Role overload can be avoided simply by recognizing the
individual’s capabilities and limits. In friendship and interest
groups, role structures are likely to be less formal; hence, the
possibility of role ambiguity, conflict, or overload may not be so
great. However, if one or more of these problems does occur,
they may be difficult to handle. Because roles in friendship and
interest groups are less likely to be partially defined by a formal
authority structure or written job descriptions, the individual
cannot turn to those sources to clarify a role. The “Sustainability
Matters” feature highlights how more and more research is
being conducted by teams of researchers from different
disciplines, each of whom adopts a specific role in the research
project.
Sustainability Matters
Measuring Carbon Footprints
The carbon footprint team is a diverse group of scientists working
together to learn more about sustainability. More and more often,
important scientific discoveries are being made by teams rather than by
individuals working alone.
Thomas Tolstrup/Iconica/Getty Images
If you’re one of the world’s 700 million richest people, you’re probably a “high
emitter” living a “carbon-intensive” lifestyle (at least statistically speaking). In
plain English, because your lifestyle probably includes air travel, the use of a car,
and a house to heat and cool, you’re probably responsible for releasing more
than your share of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere. “We estimate
that … half the world’s emissions come from just 700 million people,” explains
Shoibal Chakravarty, lead author of a recent study conducted by researchers at
Princeton University. “It’s mischievous,” admits coauthor Robert Socolow, “but
it’s meant to be a logjam-breaking concept,” and the proposals for
cutting emissions offered by the Princeton team have been widely praised for
the fairness that they inject into a debate that’s been stalemated for nearly 20
years.
The research team’s report lists six coauthors. Shoibal Chakravarty, a physicist
specializing in emissions, is a research associate at the Princeton Environmental
Institute (PEI), an interdisciplinary center for environmental research and
education. Also associated with PEI is Massimo Tavoni, an economist who studies
international policies on climate change. Stephen Pacala, who’s the director of
PEI, is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who focuses on the
interactions of climate and the global biosphere. Robert Socolow, a professor of
mechanical and aerospace engineering, studies global carbon management.
Ananth Chikkatur, of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, is a physicist who specializes in energy policy and technology innovation.
Heleen de Coninck, a chemist, works on international climate policy and
technology at the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands.
Needless to say, the carbon footprint team was a diverse group in terms of
academic discipline (not to mention nationality). Its innovative approach to the
problem of emissions—one which shows that it’s possible to cut emissions and
reduce poverty at the same time—resulted from an approach to high-level
scientific problem solving that’s typically
called interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research. The global footprint study,
says Pacala, “represents a collaboration among young people from disparate
disciplines—physics, economics, political science …. The team,” he stresses,
“worked together to formulate a novel approach to a long-standing and
intractable problem,” and its interdisciplinary approach to that problem reflects
the prevailing model for the study of today’s most complex and daunting issues,
such as AIDS, terrorism, and global climate change.
To determine the extent to which team-based research has supplanted individual
research among academics, a group at Northwestern University examined nearly
20 million papers published over a period of five decades. They found that
teams increasingly dominate solo authors in the production of knowledge. Research
is increasingly done in teams across virtually all fields. Teams typically produce
more highly cited research than individuals do, and this advantage is increasing
over time. Teams now also produce the exceptionally high-impact research …
The shift from the individual to the team-based model of research has been most
significant in the sciences, where there’s been, says the Northwestern study, “a
substantial shift toward collective research.” One reason for the shift, suggest the
authors, may be “the increasing capital intensity of research” in laboratory
sciences, where the growth of collaboration has been particularly striking. The
increasing tendency toward specialization may be another reason. As knowledge
grows in a discipline, scientists tend to devote themselves to specialty areas, the
discipline itself becomes fragmented into “finer divisions of labor,” and studies of
larger issues in the discipline thus require greater collaboration.
What about collaboration that extends beyond the confines of academia? As it
happens, Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, in addition to working on the
carbon footprint team, are codirectors of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), a
partnership among Princeton, Ford, and BP, the world’s third-largest oil
company. BP picks up 75 percent of the tab for research that has as its goal,
according to CMI’s mission statement, “a compelling and sustainable solution of
the carbon and climate change problem.” CMI seeks “a novel synergy across
fundamental science, technological development, and business principles that
accelerates the pace of discovery,” and collaboration is essential to its work
because it crosses the borders between scientific, technological, and business
interests. CMI is divided into research groups, including the Capture Group,
which works on technologies for capturing emissions from fossil fuels, and the
Storage Group, which investigates the potential risks of injecting underground.
Working through CMI, BP has been able to launch a CCS trial at a gasdevelopment facility in Algeria.
References: Douglas Fischer, “Solving the Climate Dilemma One Billion Emitters at a
Time,” Daily Climate, http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/green-living/the-daily-green,
accessed on January 1, 2014; Kitta McPherson, “New Princeton Method May Help Allocate
Carbon Emissions Responsibility among Nations,” News at Princeton, July 6,
2009, www.princeton.edu, accessed on January 1, 2014; Shoibal Chakravarty et al., “Sharing
Global Emission Reductions among One Billion High Emitters,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 (July 2009), www.pnas.org, accessed on January 1, 2014;
Stefan Wuchty et al., “The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of
Knowledge,” Sciencexpress, www.kellogg.northwestern.edu, accessed on January 1, 2014; and
Carbon Mitigation Initiative, “About the Carbon Mitigation Initiative,” Princeton University,
February 24, 2011, http://cmi.princeton.edu, accessed on January 1, 2014.
13-2bBehavioral
Norms
Norms are standards of behavior that the group or team
accepts and expects of its members. Most committees, for
example, develop norms governing their discussions. A person
who talks too much is perceived as doing so to make a good
impression or to get his or her own way. Other members may
not talk much to this person, may not sit nearby, may glare at
the person, and may otherwise “punish” the individual for
violating the norm. Norms, then, define the boundaries between
acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Some groups develop
norms that limit the upper bounds of behavior to “make life
easier” for the group—for example, do not make more than two
comments in a committee discussion or do not produce any
more than you have to. In general, these norms are
counterproductive. Other groups may develop norms that limit
the lower bounds of behavior—for example, do not come to
meetings unless you have read the reports to be discussed or
have produced as much as you can. These norms tend to reflect
motivation, commitment, and high performance. Managers can
sometimes use norms for the betterment of the organization.
For example, Kodak successfully used group norms to reduce
injuries in some of its plants.
Norm Generalization
The norms of one group cannot always be generalized to
another group. Some academic departments, for example, have
a norm that suggests that faculty members dress up on teaching
days. People who fail to observe this norm are “punished” by
sarcastic remarks or even formal reprimands. In other
departments, the norm may be casual clothes, and the person
unfortunate enough to wear dress clothes may be punished just
as vehemently. Even within the same work area, similar groups
or teams can develop different norms. One team may strive
always to produce above its assigned quota; another may
maintain productivity just below its quota. The norm of one
team may be to be friendly and cordial to its supervisor; that of
another team may be to remain aloof and distant. Some
differences are due primarily to the composition of the teams.
Norm Variation
In some cases, norm variation also can occur within a group or
team. A common norm is that the least senior member of a
group is expected to perform unpleasant or trivial tasks for the
rest of the group. These tasks might be to wait on customers
who are known to be small tippers (in a restaurant), to deal
with complaining customers (in a department store), or to
handle the low-commission line of merchandise (in a sales
department). Another example is when certain individuals,
especially informal leaders, may violate some norms. If the team
is going to meet at 8 a.m., anyone arriving late will be chastised
for holding things up. Occasionally, however, the informal
leader may arrive a few minutes late. As long as this does not
happen too often, the group probably will not do anything about
it.
Norm Conformity
Four sets of factors contribute to norm conformity. First, factors
associated with the group are important. For example, some
groups or teams may exert more pressure for conformity than
others. Second, the initial stimulus that prompts behavior can
affect conformity. The more ambiguous the stimulus (for
example, news that the team is going to be transferred to a new
unit), the more pressure there is to conform. Third, individual
traits determine the individual’s propensity to conform (for
example, more intelligent people are often less susceptible to
pressure to conform). Finally, situational factors, such as team
size and unanimity, influence conformity. As an individual
learns the group’s norms, he can do several different things. The
most obvious is to adopt the norms. For example, the new male
professor who notices that all the other men in the department
dress up to teach can also start wearing a suit. A variation is to
try to obey the “spirit” of the norm while retaining individuality.
The professor may recognize that the norm is actually to wear a
tie; thus, he might succeed by wearing a tie with his sport shirt,
jeans, and sneakers.
The individual may also ignore the norm. When a person does
not conform, several things can happen. At first, the group may
increase its communication with the deviant individual to try to
bring her back in line. If this does not work, communication may
decline. Over time, the group may begin to exclude the
individual from its activities and, in effect, ostracize the person.
Finally, we need to briefly consider another aspect of norm
conformity—socialization. Socialization is generalized norm
conformity that occurs as a person makes the transition from
being an outsider to being an insider. A newcomer to an
organization, for example, gradually begins to learn about such
norms as dress, working hours, and interpersonal relations. As
the newcomer adopts these norms, she is being socialized into
the organizational culture. Some organizations, such as Texas
Instruments, work to actively manage the socialization process;
others leave it to happenstance.
13-2cCohesiveness
A third important team characteristic is
cohesiveness. Cohesiveness is the extent to which members are
loyal and committed to the group. In a highly cohesive team, the
members work well together, support and trust one another,
and are generally effective at achieving their chosen goals. In
contrast, a team that lacks cohesiveness is not very coordinated,
its members do not necessarily support one another fully, and it
may have a difficult time reaching goals. Of particular interest
are the factors that increase and reduce cohesiveness and the
consequences of team cohesiveness. These are listed in Table
13.2.
Table 13.2
Factors That Influence Group Cohesiveness
Factors That Increase
Cohesiveness
Factors That Reduce
Cohesiveness
Intergroup competition
Group size
Personal attraction
Disagreement on goals
Favorable evaluation
Intragroup competition
Agreement on goals
Domination
Interaction
Unpleasant experiences
© Cengage Learning
Several different factors can influence the cohesiveness of a
group. For example, a manager can establish intergroup
competition, assign compatible members to the group, create
opportunities for success, establish acceptable goals, and foster
interaction to increase cohesiveness. Other factors can be used
to decrease cohesiveness.
Factors That Increase Cohesiveness
Five factors can increase the level of cohesiveness in a group or
team. One of the strongest is intergroup competition. When two
or more groups are in direct competition (for example, three
sales groups competing for top sales honors or two football
teams competing for a conference championship), each group is
likely to become more cohesive. Second, just as personal
attraction plays a role in causing a group to form, so, too, does
attraction seem to enhance cohesiveness. Third, favorable
evaluation of the entire group by outsiders can increase
cohesiveness. Thus, a group’s winning a sales contest or a
conference title or receiving recognition and praise from a
superior tends to increase cohesiveness.
Similarly, if all the members of the group or team agree on their
goals, cohesiveness is likely to increase. And the more
frequently members of the group interact with one another, the
more likely the group is to become cohesive. A manager who
wants to foster a high level of cohesiveness in a team might do
well to establish some form of intergroup competition, assign
members to the group who are likely to be attracted to one
another, provide opportunities for success, establish goals that
all members are likely to accept, and allow ample opportunities
for interaction.
Factors That Reduce Cohesiveness
There are also five factors that are known to reduce team
cohesiveness. First of all, cohesiveness tends to decline as a
group increases in size. Second, when members of a team
disagree on what the goals of the group should be, cohesiveness
may decrease. For example, when some members believe the
group should maximize output and others think output should
be restricted, cohesiveness declines. Third, intragroup
competition reduces cohesiveness. When members are
competing among themselves, they focus more on their own
actions and behaviors than on those of the group.
Fourth, domination by one or more persons in the group or
team may cause overall cohesiveness to decline. Other members
may feel that they are not being given an opportunity to interact
and contribute, and they may become less attracted to the group
as a consequence. Finally, unpleasant experiences that result
from group membership may reduce cohesiveness. A sales
group that comes in last in a sales contest, an athletic team that
sustains a long losing streak, and a work group reprimanded for
poor-quality work may all become less cohesive as a result of
their unpleasant experiences.
Consequences of Cohesiveness
In general, as teams become more cohesive, their members tend
to interact more frequently, conform more to norms, and
become more satisfied with the team. Cohesiveness may also
influence team performance. However, performance is also
influenced by the team’s performance norms. Figure 13.4 shows
how cohesiveness and performance norms interact to help
shape team performance.
Figure 13.4The Interaction Between Cohesiveness and
Performance Norms
Group cohesiveness and performance norms interact to determine group
performance. From the manager’s perspective, high cohesiveness
combined with high performance norms comprise the best situation, and
high cohesiveness combined with low performance norms create the
worst situation. Managers who can influence the level of cohesiveness
and performance norms can greatly improve the effectiveness of a work
group.
© Cengage Learning
When both cohesiveness and performance norms are high, high
performance should result because the team wants to perform
at a high level (norms) and its members are working together
toward that end (cohesiveness). When norms are high and
cohesiveness is low, performance will be moderate. Although
the team wants to perform at a high level, its members are not
necessarily working well together. When norms are low,
performance will be low, regardless of whether group
cohesiveness is high or low. The least desirable situation occurs
when low performance norms are combined with high
cohesiveness. In this case, all team members embrace the
standard of restricting performance (owing to the low
performance norm), and the group is united in its efforts to
maintain that standard (owing to the high cohesiveness). If
cohesiveness were low, the manager might be able to raise
performance norms by establishing high goals and rewarding
goal attainment or by bringing in new group members who are
high performers. But a highly cohesive group is likely to resist
these interventions.
13-2dFormal
and Informal Leadership
Most functional groups and teams have a formal leader—that is,
one appointed by the organization or chosen or elected by the
members of the group. Because friendship and interest groups
are formed by the members themselves, however, any formal
leader must be elected or designated by the members. Although
some groups do designate such a leader (a softball team may
elect a captain, for example), many do not. Moreover, even when
a formal leader is designated, the group or team may also look
to others for leadership. An informal leader is a person who
engages in leadership activities but whose right to do so has not
been formally recognized. The formal and the informal leader in
any group or team may be the same person, or they may be
different people. We noted earlier the distinction between the
task specialist and socioemotional roles within groups. An
informal leader is likely to be a person capable of carrying out
both roles effectively. If the formal leader can fulfill one role but
not the other, an informal leader often emerges to supplement
the formal leader’s functions. If the formal leader can fill neither
role, one or more informal leaders may emerge to carry out
both sets of functions.
Is informal leadership desirable? In many cases, informal
leaders are quite powerful because they draw from referent or
expert power. When they are working in the best interests of
the organization, they can be a tremendous asset. Notable
athletes like Peyton Manning and Abby Wambach are examples
of informal leaders. However, when informal leaders work
counter to the goals of the organization, they can cause
significant difficulties. Such leaders may lower performance
norms, instigate walkouts or wildcat strikes, or otherwise
disrupt the organization.
13-3Interpersonal and Intergroup Conflict
Of course, when people work together in an organization, things
do not always go smoothly. Indeed, conflict is an inevitable
element of interpersonal relationships in organizations. In this
section, we look at how conflict affects overall performance. We
also explore the causes of conflict between individuals, between
groups, and between an organization and its environment.
13-3aThe
Nature of Conflict
Conflict is a disagreement among two or more individuals,
groups, or organizations. This disagreement may be relatively
superficial or very strong. It may be short-lived or exist for
months or even years, and it may be work related or personal.
Conflict may manifest itself in a variety of ways. People may
compete with one another, glare at one another, shout, or
withdraw. Groups may band together to protect popular
members or oust unpopular members. Organizations may seek
legal remedies.
Most people assume that conflict is something to be avoided
because it connotes antagonism, hostility, unpleasantness, and
dissension. Indeed, managers and management theorists have
traditionally viewed conflict as a problem to be avoided. In
recent years, however, we have come to recognize that,
although conflict can be a major problem, certain kinds of
conflict may also be beneficial. For example, when two
members of a site selection committee disagree over the best
location for a new plant, each may be forced to more thoroughly
study and defend his or her preferred alternative. As a result of
more systematic analysis and discussion, the committee may
make a better decision and be better prepared to justify it to
others than if everyone had agreed from the outset and
accepted an alternative that was perhaps less well analyzed.
As long as conflict is handled in a cordial and constructive
manner, it is probably serving a useful purpose in the
organization. On the other hand, when working relationships
are disrupted and the conflict has reached destructive levels, it
has likely become dysfunctional and needs to be addressed.
We discuss ways of dealing with such conflict later in this
chapter.
Figure 13.5 depicts the general relationship between conflict
and performance for a group or an organization. If there is
absolutely no conflict in the group or organization, its members
may become complacent and apathetic. As a result, group or
organizational performance and innovation may begin to suffer.
A moderate level of conflict among group or organizational
members, on the other hand, can spark motivation, creativity,
innovation, and initiative and raise performance. Too much
conflict, though, can produce such undesirable results as
hostility and lack of cooperation, which lower performance. The
key for managers is to find and maintain the optimal amount of
conflict that fosters performance. Of course, what constitutes
optimal conflict varies with both the situation and the people
involved.
Figure 13.5The Nature of Organizational Conflict
Either too much or too little conflict can be dysfunctional for an
organization. In either case, performance may be low. However, an
optimal level of conflict that sparks motivation, creativity, innovation,
and initiative can result in higher levels of performance.
© Cengage Learning
13-3bCauses
of Conflict
Conflict may arise in both interpersonal and intergroup
relationships. Occasionally, conflict between individuals and
groups may be caused by particular organizational strategies
and practices. A third arena for conflict is between an
organization and its environment.
Interpersonal Conflict
Conflict between two or more individuals is almost certain to
occur in any organization, given the great variety in perceptions,
goals, attitudes, and so forth among its members. Bill Gates,
founder of Microsoft, and Kazuhiko Nishi, a former business
associate from Japan, once ended a lucrative long-term business
relationship because of interpersonal conflict. Nishi accused
Gates of becoming too political, while Gates charged that Nishi
became too unpredictable and erratic in his behavior.
A frequent source of interpersonal conflict in organizations is
what many people call a personality clash—when two people
distrust each other’s motives, dislike each other, or for some
other reason simply cannot get along. Conflict may also arise
between people who have different beliefs or perceptions about
some aspect of their work or their organization. For example,
one manager might want the organization to require that all
employees use Microsoft Office software, to promote
standardization. Another manager might believe that a variety
of software packages should be allowed, in order to
accommodate individuality. Similarly, a male manager may
disagree with his female colleague over whether the
organization is guilty of discriminating against women in
promotion decisions. Conflict can also result from excess
competitiveness among individuals. Two people vying for the
same job, for example, may resort to political behavior in an
effort to gain an advantage. If either competitor sees the other’s
behavior as inappropriate, accusations are likely to result. Even
after the “winner” of the job is determined, such conflict may
continue to undermine interpersonal relationships, especially if
the reasons given in selecting one candidate are ambiguous or
open to alternative explanations. Acer CEO and President
Gianfranco Lanci resigned due to several months of unresolved
conflict with the company’s board of directors. Lanci and the
board had differing views on organizational growth, customer
value creation, brand position enhancement, and resource
allocation. Lanci pushed strongly for a move into the mobile
segment to compete with Apple’s iPad, while the board wanted
to maintain its core PC business.
Intergroup Conflict
Conflict between two or more organizational groups is also
quite common. For example, the members of a firm’s marketing
group may disagree with the production group over product
quality and delivery schedules. Two sales groups may disagree
over how to meet sales goals, and two groups of managers may
have different ideas about how best to allocate organizational
resources.
Many intergroup conflicts arise more from organizational
causes than from interpersonal causes. In Chapter 6, we
described three forms of group interdependence—pooled,
sequential, and reciprocal. Just as increased interdependence
makes coordination more difficult, it increases the potential for
conflict. For example, recall that in sequential interdependence,
work is passed from one unit to another. Intergroup conflict
may arise if the first group turns out too much work (the second
group will fall behind), too little work (the second group will not
meet its own goals), or poor-quality work.
At one J. C. Penney department store, conflict arose between
stockroom employees and sales associates. The sales associates
claimed that the stockroom employees were slow in delivering
merchandise to the sales floor where it could be priced and
shelved. The stockroom employees, in turn, claimed that the
sales associates were not giving them enough lead time to get
the merchandise delivered and failed to understand that they
had additional duties besides carrying merchandise to the sales
floor.
Just like people, different departments often have different
goals. Further, these goals may often be incompatible. A
marketing goal of maximizing sales, achieved partially by
offering many products in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, colors,
and models, probably conflicts with a production goal of
minimizing costs, achieved partially by long production runs of
a few items. Reebok recently confronted this very situation. One
group of managers wanted to introduce a new sportswear line
as quickly as possible, but other managers wanted to expand
more deliberately and cautiously. Because the two groups were
not able to reconcile their differences effectively, conflict arose
between the two factions, which led to quality problems and
delivery delays that plagued the firm for months.
Competition for scarce resources can also lead to intergroup
conflict. Most organizations—especially universities, hospitals,
government agencies, and businesses in depressed industries—
have limited resources. In one New England town, for example,
the public works department and the library battled over funds
from a federal construction grant. The Buick, Pontiac, GMC, and
Chevrolet divisions of General Motors frequently fought over
the right to manufacture various new products developed by
the company. This infighting was identified as one of many
factors that led to GM’s recent problems. As part of the solution,
the Pontiac brand was eventually discontinued.
Conflict Between Organization and Environment
Conflict that arises between one organization and another is
called interorganizational conflict. A moderate amount of
interorganizational conflict resulting from business competition
is expected, of course, but sometimes conflict becomes more
extreme. For example, the owners of Jordache Enterprises, Inc.,
and Guess?, Inc., battled in court for years over ownership of the
Guess? label, allegations of design theft, and several other
issues. Similarly, General Motors and Volkswagen went to
court to resolve a bitter conflict that spanned more than four
years. It all started when a key GM executive, Jose Ignacio Lopez
de Arriortua, left for a position at Volkswagen. GM claimed that
he took with him key secrets that could benefit its German
competitor. After the messy departure, dozens of charges and
countercharges were made by the two firms, and only a court
settlement was able to put the conflict to an end.
Conflict can also arise between an organization and other
elements of its environment. For example, an organization may
conflict with a consumer group over claims it makes about its
products. McDonald’s faced this problem a few years ago when
it published nutritional information about its products that
omitted details about fat content. A manufacturer might conflict
with a governmental agency such as the federal Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). For example, the
firm’s management may believe it is in compliance with OSHA
regulations, whereas officials from the agency believe that the
firm is not in compliance. Or a firm might conflict with a
supplier over the quality of raw materials. The firm may think
the supplier is providing inferior materials, while the supplier
thinks the materials are adequate.
13-4Managing Conflict in Organizations
How do managers cope with all this potential conflict?
Fortunately, as Table 13.3 shows, there are ways to stimulate
conflict for constructive ends, to control conflict before it gets
out of hand, and to resolve it if it does. We now look at ways of
managing conflict.
Table 13.3
Methods for Managing Conflict
Conflict is a powerful force in organizations, and it has both negative and positive
consequences. Thus managers can draw on several different techniques to
stimulate, control, or resolve and eliminate conflict, depending on their unique
circumstances.
Stimulating Conflict
Increase competition among individuals and teams.
Hire outsiders to shake things up.
Change established procedures.
Controlling Conflict
Expand resource base.
Enhance coordination of interdependence.
Set superordinate goals.
Match personalities and work habits of employees.
Resolving and Eliminating Conflict
Avoid conflict.
Convince conflicting parties to compromise.
Bring conflicting parties together to confront and negotiate conflict.
© Cengage Learning
Conflict is a powerful force in organizations, and it has both
negative and positive consequences. Thus, managers can draw
on several different techniques to stimulate, control, or resolve
and eliminate conflict, depending on their unique
circumstances.
13-4aStimulating
Conflict
In some situations, an organization may stimulate conflict by
placing individual employees or groups in competitive
situations. Managers can establish sales contests, incentive
plans, bonuses, or other competitive stimuli to spark
competition. As long as the ground rules are equitable and all
participants perceive the contest as fair, the conflict created by
the competition is likely to be constructive because each
participant will work hard to win (thereby enhancing some
aspect of organizational performance).
Another useful method for stimulating conflict is to bring in one
or more outsiders who will shake things up and present a new
perspective on organizational practices. Outsiders may be new
employees, current employees assigned to an existing work
group, or consultants or advisors hired on a temporary basis. Of
course, this action can also provoke resentment from insiders
who feel they were qualified for the position. The Beecham
Group, a British company, once hired an executive from the
United States for its CEO position, expressly to change how the
company did business. His arrival brought with it new ways of
doing things and a new enthusiasm for competitiveness.
Unfortunately, some valued employees also chose to leave
Beecham because they resented some of the changes that were
made.
Changing established procedures, especially procedures that
have outlived their usefulness, can also stimulate conflict. Such
actions cause people to reassess how they perform their jobs
and whether they perform them correctly. For example, one
university president announced that all vacant staff positions
could be filled only after written justification had received his
approval. Conflict arose between the president and the
department heads, who felt they were required to do more
paperwork than was necessary. Most requests were approved,
but because department heads now had to think through their
staffing needs, a few unnecessary positions were appropriately
eliminated.
13-4bControlling
Conflict
One method of controlling conflict is to expand the resource
base. Suppose a top manager receives two budget requests for
$300,000 each. If she has only $500,000 to distribute, the stage
is set for conflict because each group will believe its proposal is
worth funding and will be unhappy if it is not fully funded. If
both proposals are indeed worthwhile, it may be possible for
the manager to come up with the extra $100,000 from some
other source and thereby avoid difficulty.
As noted earlier, pooled, sequential, and reciprocal
interdependence can all result in conflict. If managers use an
appropriate technique for enhancing coordination, they can
reduce the probability that conflict will arise. Techniques for
coordination (described in Chapter 6) include making use of the
managerial hierarchy, relying on rules and procedures, enlisting
liaison people, forming task forces, and integrating
departments. At the J. C. Penney store mentioned earlier, the
conflict was addressed by providing salespeople with clearer
forms on which to specify the merchandise they needed and in
what sequence. If one coordination technique does not have the
desired effect, a manager might shift to another one.
Competing goals can also be a source of conflict among
individuals and groups. Managers can sometimes focus
employee attention on higher-level, or superordinate, goals as a
way of eliminating lower-level conflict. When labor unions such
as the United Auto Workers make wage concessions to ensure
survival of the automobile industry, they are responding to a
superordinate goal. Their immediate goal may be higher wages
for members, but they realize that, without the automobile
industry, their members would not even have jobs.
Finally, managers should try to match the personalities and
work habits of employees so as to avoid conflict between
individuals. For instance, two valuable subordinates, one a chain
smoker and the other a vehement antismoker, probably should
not be required to work together in an enclosed space. If conflict
does arise between incompatible individuals, a manager might
seek an equitable transfer for one or both of them to other units.
13-4cResolving
and Eliminating Conflict
Despite everyone’s best intentions, conflict sometimes flares up.
If it is disrupting the workplace, creating too much hostility and
tension, or otherwise harming the organization, attempts must
be made to resolve it. Some managers who are uncomfortable
dealing with conflict choose to avoid the conflict and hope it will
go away. Avoidance may sometimes be effective in the short run
for some kinds of interpersonal disagreements, but it does little
to resolve long-run or chronic conflicts. Even more unadvisable,
though, is “smoothing”—minimizing the conflict and telling
everyone that things will “get better.” Often, though, avoiding
conflict may only make it worse as people continue to brood
over it.
Compromise is striking a middle-range position between two
extremes. This approach can work if it is used with care, but in
most compromise situations, someone wins and someone loses.
Budget problems are one of the few areas amenable to
compromise because of their objective nature. Assume, for
example, that additional resources are not available to the
manager mentioned earlier. She has $500,000 to divide, and
each of two groups claims to need $300,000. If the manager
believes that both projects warrant funding, she can allocate
$200,000 to each. The fact that the two groups have at least
been treated equally may minimize the potential conflict.
The confrontational approach to conflict resolution—also
called interpersonal problem solving—consists of bringing the
parties together to confront the conflict. The parties discuss the
nature of their conflict and attempt to reach an agreement or a
solution. Confrontation requires a reasonable degree of
maturity on the part of the participants, and the manager must
structure the situation carefully. If handled well, this approach
can be an effective means of resolving conflict. In recent years,
many organizations have experimented with a technique
called alternative dispute resolution, using a team of employees
to arbitrate conflict in this way. Negotiation, a closely related
method, is discussed in our final section of this chapter.
Regardless of the approach, organizations and their managers
should realize that conflict must be addressed if it is to serve
constructive purposes and be prevented from bringing about
destructive consequences. Conflict is inevitable in organizations,
but its negative effects can be constrained with proper
attention. For example, Union Carbide sent 200 of its managers
to a three-day workshop on conflict management. The managers
engaged in a variety of exercises and discussions to learn with
whom they were most likely to come in conflict and how they
should try to resolve it. As a result, managers at the firm later
reported that hostility and resentment in the organization had
been greatly diminished and that people in the firm reported
more pleasant working relationships.
13-5Negotiation
Negotiation is the process in which two or more parties
(people or groups) reach agreement on an issue even though
they have different preferences regarding that issue. In a sense,
then, negotiation is also a form of conflict resolution. In its
simplest form, the parties involved may be two individuals who
are trying to decide who will pay for lunch. A little more
complexity is involved when two people, such as anemployee
and a manager, sit down to decide on personal performance
goals for the next year against which the employee’s
performance will be measured. Even more complex are the
negotiations that take place between labor unions and the
management of a company or between two companies as they
negotiate the terms of a joint venture. The key issues in such
negotiations are that at least two parties are involved, their
preferences are different, and they need to reach agreement.
Interest in negotiation has grown steadily in recent years. Four
primary approaches to negotiation have dominated its study:
individual differences, situational characteristics, game theory,
and cognitive approaches.
Negotiations can take a variety of forms and deal with many different
issues. For instance, people negotiate over salary, contract terms, job
assignments, and a variety of other business activities. These
representatives from different organizations have just reached an
agreement to co-sponsor an advertising campaign and are “sealing the
deal” with a symbolic handshake.
© Andrey_Popov/ Shutterstock.com
Early psychological approaches concentrated on the personality
traits of the negotiators. Traits investigated have included
demographic characteristics and personality variables.
Demographic characteristics have included age, gender, and
race, among others. Personality variables have included risk
taking, locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity, self-esteem,
authoritarianism, and Machiavellianism. The assumption of this
type of research was that the key to successful negotiation was
selecting the right person to do the negotiating, one who had the
appropriate demographic characteristics or personality. This
assumption seemed to make sense because negotiation is such a
personal and interactive process. However, the research rarely
showed the positive results expected because situational
variables negated the effects of the individual differences.
Situational characteristics are the context within which
negotiation takes place. They include such things as the types of
communication between negotiators, the potential outcomes of
the negotiation, the relative power of the parties (both
positional and personal), the time frame available for
negotiation, the number of people representing each side, and
the presence of other parties. Some of this research has
contributed to our understanding of the negotiation process.
However, the shortcomings of the situational approach are
similar to those of the individual characteristics approach. Many
situational characteristics are external to the negotiators and
beyond their control. Often the negotiators cannot change their
relative power positions or the setting within which the
negotiation occurs. So, although we have learned a lot from
research on the situational issues, we still need to learn much
more about the process.
Game theory was developed by economists using mathematical
models to predict the outcome of negotiation situations (as
illustrated in the Academy Award–winning movie A Beautiful
Mind). It requires that every alternative and outcome be
analyzed with probabilities and numerical outcomes reflecting
the preferences of negotiating parties for each outcome. In
addition, the order in which different parties can make choices
and every possible move are predicted, along with associated
preferences for outcomes. The outcomes of this approach are
exactly what negotiators want: a predictive model of how
negotiation should be conducted. One major drawback is that it
requires the ability to describe all possible options and
outcomes for every possible move in every situation before the
negotiation starts. This is often very tedious, if possible at all.
Another problem is that this theory assumes that negotiators
are rational at all times. However, it is unlikely that negotiators
will in fact always act rationally. Therefore, this approach,
although elegant in its prescriptions, is usually unworkable in a
real negotiation situation.
The fourth approach is the cognitive approach, which
recognizes that negotiators often depart from perfect rationality
during negotiation; it tries to predict how and when negotiators
will make these departures. Howard Raiffa’s decision analytic
approach focuses on providing advice to negotiators actively
involved in negotiation. Bazerman and Neale have added to
Raiffa’s work by specifying eight ways in which negotiators
systematically deviate from rationality. The types of
deviations they describe include escalating commitment to a
previously selected course of action, overrelying on readily
available information, assuming that the negotiations can
produce fixed-sum outcomes, and anchoring negotiation in
irrelevant information. These cognitive approaches have
advanced the study of negotiation a long way beyond the early
individual and situational approaches. Negotiators can use them
to attempt to predict in advance how the negotiation might take
place.
Discussion Topic
Our final discussion board topic remains with the concepts of "teams" and "teamwork" discussed
in Chapter 13 ' "Managing Work Groups and Teams." Olympic gold medalist and motivational
speaker, Jim Craig, goalie for the 1980 U.S. "Miracle on Ice" hockey team (MEMBERS OF
GREAT TEAMS MANAGE THROUGH EGO AND CONFLICT-Jim Craig Channel 30), uses
this video clip below from the Disney movie "Miracle" to teach and describe the trait that
"Members of Great Teams Manage Through Ego and Conflict."
On the 1980 U.S. men's hockey team, the tension and rivalry between the players from Boston
and Minnesota was very heated. If Coach Brooks and the players did not work through the ego
and conflict, the team would have lost early in the competition. This clip from "Miracle" shows
that tension and rivalry when during one of the practices Jack OCallahan of Boston University
seeks to settle an old score with Rob McClanahan from Minnesota. And here we see Herb
Brooks establishing his leadership abilities by telling his players that they will need to manage
their ego and conflict if they're going to win.
YouTube video courtesy of Gold Medal Strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA03y3SpJ6Q
Now that you've watched this video, please answer the following questions:
1. What are the causes of conflict within and among teams?
2. From your professional and/or personal experiences, what techniques did you use to reduce
conflict?
Please keep in mind that when answering these questions, be sure to support your position with
the concepts discussed in Chapter 14. You will notice a dramatic decrease in credit for this
discussion board if you cannot support your opinion.
Please response the two discussion.
Discussion 1
A conflict “…is a disagreement among two or more individuals, groups or organizations” (Pg.
409). There are numerous causes of conflict within and among teams. One of them being a
personality clash. A personality clash occurs “…when two people distrust each other’s motives,
dislike each other, or for some other reason simply cannot get along” (Pg. 410). It is very
common for interpersonal conflicts to occur “…given the great variety in perceptions, goals,
attitudes, and so forth among its members” (Pg. 410). Another conflict that can arise is
intergroup conflict. Conflict between two or more organizational groups is also quite common
because the groups may disagree on how to reach specific goals and have different ideas.
Sometimes, at work, my co-workers and I have to compromise on something. A comprise
“…is striking a middle-range position between two extremes” (Pg. 414). For instance, typically
on Tuesdays we are overstaffed. There are 4 EVA’s present when there are only 3 units. In order
for us to constantly be doing something, we get together, and we talk about who is going to
tackle what. We assign 3 EVA’s their own floor and have the 4th person float. The individuals
assigned to their own unit do the basics such as, put away the laundry, answer call lights, pass
out clothing protectors, etc. The person who floats will help transport residents, wipe down
wheelchairs, etc. All of us had to compromise because if we did not, we all would not have equal
amount of work to do during our shift.
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Discussion 2
There can be many different causes of conflict within or among teams, I think the most popular
cause of conflict is interpersonal conflict which can then lead to intergroup conflict because
you'll have coworkers taking sides and it will create more conflict. There can also be role
conflict, and interorganizational conflict. From my personal experience the techniques that I have
found/seen to work to reduce conflict is compromising which is striking a middle-range position
between two extremes. Interpersonal problem solving works really well too. My boss has done
this when two people are arguing/not getting along at work. He brings both people together to
confront and work the conflict out. This usually works well.
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