Group Property 1: Roles

•Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Using the same
metaphor, all group members are actors, each playing a role. By this term, we mean a set of expected
behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Our understanding
of role behavior would be dramatically simplified if each of us could choose one role and play it regularly
and consistently. Instead, we are required to play a number of diverse roles, both on and off our jobs. As
we’ll see, one of the tasks in understanding behavior is grasping the role a person is currently playing.
• Many of these roles are compatible; some create conflicts. How does Bill’s religious commitment
influence his managerial decisions regarding layoffs, expense account padding, and provision of accurate
information to government agencies? A recent offer of promotion requires Bill to relocate, yet his family
wants to stay in Phoenix. Can the role demands of his job be reconciled with the demands of his
husband and father roles?

Role Perception
•Our view of how we’re supposed to act in a given situation is a role perception. We get role
perceptions from stimuli all around us—for example, friends, books, films, television, as when we form
an impression of the work of doctors from watching Grey’s Anatomy. Of course, the primary reason
apprenticeship programs exist in many trades and professions is to allow beginners to watch an expert
so they can learn to act as they should.

Role Expectations
•are the way others believe you should act in a given context. The role of a U.S. federal judge is viewed
as having propriety and dignity, while a football coach is seen as aggressive, dynamic, and inspiring to his
players. HBOR 1013: Human Behavior in Organization| 8 In the workplace, we look at role expectations
through the perspective of the psychological contract: an unwritten agreement that exists between
employees and employer. This agreement sets out mutual expectations: what management expects
from workers and vice versa. Management is expected to treat employees justly, provide acceptable
working conditions, clearly communicate what is a fair day’s work, and give feedback on how well an
employee is doing. Employees are expected to respond by demonstrating a good attitude, following
directions, and showing loyalty to the organization. What happens if management is derelict in keeping
its part of the bargain?We can expect negative effects on employee performance and satisfaction. One
study among restaurant managers found that psychological contact violations were related to greater
intentions to quit the job, while another study of a variety of different industries found they were
associated with lower levels of productivity, higher levels of theft, and greater work withdrawal.

Role Conflict
When compliance with one role requirement may make it difficult to comply with another, the result is
role conflict. At the extreme, two or more role expectations are mutually contradictory.
Bill Patterson had to deal with role conflicts, such as his attempt to reconcile the expectations placed on
him as a husband and father with those placed on him as an executive with EMM Industries. Bill’s wife
and children want to remain in Phoenix, while EMM expects its employees to be responsive to the
company’s needs and requirements. Although it might be in Bill’s financial and career interests to accept
a relocation, the conflict comes down to choosing between family and career role expectations. Most
employees are simultaneously in occupations, work groups, divisions, and demographic groups, and
these different identities can come into conflict when the expectations of one clash with the
expectations of another.

Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment

One of the most illuminating role and identity experiments was done a number of years ago by Stanford
University psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his associates. They created a “prison” in the basement of
the Stanford psychology building; hired at $15 a day two dozen emotionally stable, physically healthy,
lawabiding students who scored “normal average” on extensive personality tests; randomly assigned
them the role of either “guard” or “prisoner”; and established some basic rules.
It took the “prisoners” little time to accept the authority positions of the “guards” or for the mock
guards to adjust to their new authority roles. Consistent with social identity theory, the guards came to
see the prisoners as a negative outgroup, and their comments to researchers showed they had
developed stereotypes about the “typical” prisoner personality type.

What can we conclude from this prison simulation?

Like the rest of us, the participants had learned stereotyped conceptions of guard and prisoner roles
from the mass media and their own personal experiences in power and powerlessness relationships
gained at home (parent–child), in school (teacher–student), and in other situations. This background
allowed them easily and rapidly to assume roles very different from their inherent personalities and,
with no prior personality pathology or training in the parts they were playing, execute extreme forms of
behavior consistent with those roles.

LEARNING CONTENT

Lesson Proper:

Continuation of Group Properties

Did you ever notice that golfers don’t speak while their partners are putting on the green
or that employees don’t criticize their bosses in public? Why not? The answer is norms.

Group Property 2: Norms

Norms – acceptable standards of behavior shared by their members that express what they ought and
ought not to do under certain circumstances. When agreed to and accepted by the group, norms
influence members’ behavior with a minimum of external controls.

Norms can cover virtually any aspect of group behavior. Probably the most common is a
performance norm, providing explicit cues about how hard members should work, what the level of
output should be, how to get the job done, what level of tardiness is appropriate, and the like. These
norms are extremely powerful and are capable of significantly modifying a performance prediction
based solely on ability and level of personal motivation.

Other norms include appearance

norms (dress codes, unspoken rules
about when to look busy), social
arrangement norms (with whom to eat
lunch, whether to form friendships on
and off the job), and resource allocation
norms (assignment of difficult jobs,
distribution of resources like pay or
equipment).

Full-scale appreciation of the influence of norms on worker behavior did not occur until the
early 1930s, following studies undertaken between 1924 and 1932 at the Western Electric Company’s
Hawthorne Works in Chicago.

The norms the group established included a number of “don’ts.” Don’t be a rate-buster, turning
out too much work. Don’t be a chiseler, turning out too little work. Don’t squeal on any of your peers.
How did the group enforce these norms? The methods included sarcasm, name-calling, ridicule, and
even punches to the upper arm of any member who violated the group’s norms. Members also
ostracized individuals whose behavior was against the group’s interest.
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Do individuals conform to the pressures of all the groups to which they belong? Obviously not, because
people belong to many groups, and their norms vary and sometimes are contradictory. So what do
people do? They conform to the important groups to which they belong or hope to belong. These
important groups are reference groups, in which a person is aware of other members, defines himself or
herself as a member or would like to be a member, and feels group members are significant to him or
her. The implication, then, is that all groups do not impose equal conformity pressures on their
members.

Like norms in general, individual employees’ antisocial actions are shaped by the group context
within which they work. Evidence demonstrates deviant workplace behavior is likely to flourish where
it’s supported by group norms. Workers who socialize either at or outside work with people who are
frequently absent from work are more likely to be absent themselves. What this means for managers is
that when deviant workplace norms surface, employee cooperation, commitment, and motivation are
likely to suffer.

Group Property 3: Status

Even the smallest group will develop roles, rights, and rituals to differentiate its members.
Status is a significant motivator and has major
behavioral consequences when individuals perceive
a disparity between what they believe their status is
and what others perceive it to be.
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tus —a socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others—permeates every society.

Group Property 4: Size

What Determines Status? According to status characteristics theory, status tends
to derive from one of three sources:

 Smaller groups are faster at completing tasks than larger ones, and individuals perform better in
smaller groups.
  In problem solving, large groups consistently get better marks than their smaller counterparts.
 Groups with a dozen or more members are good for gaining diverse input.
 If the goal is fact-finding, larger groups should be more effective.
One of the most important findings
about the size of a group concerns social
loafing, the tendency for individuals to
expend less effort when working
collectively than alone. It directly challenges
the assumption that the productivity of the
group as a whole should at least equal the
sum of the productivity of the individuals in
it.

What causes social loafing? It may

be a belief that others in the group are not
carrying their fair share. If you see others as lazy or inept, you can reestablish equity by reducing your
effort. Another explanation is the dispersion of responsibility. Because group results cannot be attributed
to any single person, the relationship between an individual’s input and the group’s output is clouded.
Individuals may then be tempted to become free riders and coast on the group’s efforts. The implications
for OB are significant. When managers use collective work situations to enhance morale and teamwork,
they must also be able to identify individual efforts. Otherwise, they must weigh the potential losses in
productivity from using groups against the possible gains in worker satisfaction. There are several ways
to prevent social loafing:

Group Property 5: Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness—the degree to which members are attracted to each other and motivated to stay in the group.
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or the group’s small size facilitates high interaction, or external threats have brought members close
together.

Cohesiveness affects group productivity. Studies consistently show

that the relationship between cohesiveness and productivity
depends on the group’s performance-related norms. If norms for
quality, output, and cooperation with outsiders, for instance, are
high, a cohesive group will be more productive than will a less
cohesive group. But if cohesiveness is high and performance norms
are low, productivity will be low. If cohesiveness is low and
performance norms are high, productivity increases, but less than in the high-cohesiveness/ high-norms
situation. When cohesiveness and performance-related norms are both low, productivity tends to fall
into the low-to-moderate range. What can you do to encourage group cohesiveness?

Group Property 6: Diversity

Diversity—the degree to which members of the group are similar to, or different from, one another.

Diversity appears to increase group conflict, especially in the early stages of a group’s tenure,
which often lowers group morale and raises dropout rates. Surface-level diversity—in observable
characteristics such as national origin, race, and gender—alerts people to possible deep-level diversity—
in underlying attitudes, values, and opinions.
 The impact of diversity on groups
is mixed. It is difficult to be in a diverse
group in the short term. However, if
members can weather their differences,
over time diversity may help them be
more open-minded and creative and to
do better. But even positive effects are
unlikely to be especially strong. As one
review stated, “The business case (in
terms of demonstrable financial results)
for diversity remains hard to support
based on the extant research.”
 Group Decision Making

The belief—characterized by juries—that two heads are better than one has long been accepted
as a basic component of the U.S. legal system and those of many other countries. Today, many decisions
in organizations are made by groups, teams, or committees.

Groups versus the Individual

Decision-making groups may be widely used

in organizations, but are group decisions preferable
to those made by an individual alone? The answer
depends on a number of factors. Let’s begin by
looking at the strengths and weaknesses of group
decision making.
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fi But we cannot consider effectiveness without also assessing efficiency. With few exceptions,
group decision making consumes more work hours than an individual tackling the same problem alone.
The exceptions tend to be the instances in which, to achieve comparable quantities of diverse input, the
single decision maker must spend a great deal of time reviewing files and talking to other people. In
deciding whether to use groups, then, managers must assess whether increases in effectiveness are
more than enough to offset the reductions in efficiency.

Groupthink and Groupshift

Two by-products of group decision making have the potential to affect a group’s ability to
appraise alternatives objectively and arrive at high-quality solutions.

It relates to norms.

unusual, minority, or unpopular views.

Symptoms of groupthink:
1. Groupthink

It describes situations in which group pressures for conformity deter the group from critically appraising

1. Group members rationalize any resistance to the assumptions they’ve made. No matter how strongly
the evidence may contradict their basic assumptions, they behave so as to reinforce them.
2. Members apply direct pressures on those who momentarily express doubts about any of the group’s
shared views, or who question the validity of arguments supporting the alternative favored by the
majority.
3. Members who have doubts or differing points of view seek to avoid deviating from what appears to be
group consensus by keeping silent about misgivings and even minimizing to themselves the importance
of their doubts.
4. There is an illusion of unanimity. If someone doesn’t speak, it’s assumed he or she is in full accord.
Abstention becomes a “yes” vote.
What can managers do to minimize groupthink?
 they can monitor group size
  encourage group leaders to play an impartial role
 managers should appoint one group member to play the role of devil’s advocate, overtly challenging
the majority position and offering divergent perspectives
 to use exercises that stimulate active discussion of diverse alternatives without threatening the group
or intensifying identity protection

Groupshift or Group Polarization

It describes the way group members tend to exaggerate the initial positions they hold when discussing a
given set of alternatives and arriving at a solution.
Viewed as a special case of groupthink. The group’s decision reflects the dominant decision-making
norm that develops during discussion.
Findings on groupshift are used by:
 Recognizing that group decisions exaggerate the initial position of the individual members
 that the shift has been shown more often to be toward greater risk
 that which way a group will shift is a function of the members’ pre-discussion inclinations

Group Decision-Making Techniques

Each of the four group-decision techniques has its own set of strengths and weaknesses. The
choice depends on what criteria you want to emphasize and the cost–benefit trade-off.

“Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups”.

—Friedrich Nietzsche