Group Formation

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Table of Contents
Introduction
The Hawthorne studies
Bank Wiring Observation Room experiments (1931 1932)
Scope for a workers appropriation of the results of the Hawthorne Studies?
Group formation
Homans's external system
Homans's internal system
A workers understanding of Homans's systems?
Group development stages
Implications of group development stages for workers
Introduction
Management aims to integrate individual workers into effective
teams, and this has become an important part of contemporary
management practice in many prominent organisations.

Diane Coutu is quoted as saying that even in Americas tradition

of individual agency, teams are considered key to success.[1]

This is why in many job interviews, the capacity to act as part of

a team is considered a key skillset.

Kozlowski and Bell argue that organisations are in fact networks

of interconnected teams as opposed to a collection of individuals.
[2] The organisation of the workforce into teams by management
is then linked to the promotion of the goals of the organisation
(in other words the goals of senior management).

Common objections to team work have been noted by David

Knights and Darren McCabe and compiled into three points:[3]

Disliking the intrusion team work has into their personal lives,
causing them to distrust management
Not understanding the components of team work
Disliking the move away from individual work
Researchers such as Johnson and Johnson refer to groups in
which people feel themselves to be part of a coherent unit as
psychological groups.[4] Social psychologists study group
dynamics which comprises of how groups communicate and
coordinate their activities, how they influence each other, what
roles they play in the group, which members lead and which
follow, how they balance a focus on the task with social issues
and how they resolve conflicts.[5]

There is a key difference between an aggregate of individuals and

a group. Trade unions are not immune to this either; although
they might conceive of themselves as a group, if all members do
not interact with each other and are not aware of each other then
they are only an aggregate and not a group.[5]

In practice a psychological group cannot contain more than

approximately 12 people, above that number the opportunity for
frequent interaction between members (and hence group
awareness) is greatly reduced.[5]

The Hawthorne studies

These were a set of experiments carried out in the 1920s and
1930s. They formed the basis of the Human Relations School of
Management, which became the basis of Organisational
Behaviour. In fact the first professor of Organisational Behaviour,
teaching at Harvard Business school, worked on the Hawthorne
Studies.[5]

For a more comprehensive account read the Wikipedia page on

the Hawthorne Effect. In this article only key outcomes of the
research relevant to labour will be selected and expanded upon.

Amongst other things, the Relay Assembly Test Room

experiments (1927-1933) established a preliminary outcome that
suggested the existence of the Hawthorne effect. This refers to
the tendency of people being observed to behave differently from
how they otherwise would, and the tendency for the group to
which workers belonged to affect workers attitude toward and
achievement of increased output. As a result of this the
researchers in charge of the Hawthorne studies decided to
interview 20,000 of the plants workforce. From these interviews
they found there to be many informal, gang-like groups within
the formal working groups. These groups had their own leaders
and sidekicks who controlled production output.[5]

Bank Wiring Observation Room experiments

(1931 1932)
(Part of the Hawthorne studies).

These experiments are the most relevant to labour in the

Hawthorne studies. There were two important results, one was
that within the three formal groups, there were two informal
groups with their membership crossing the boundaries of the
three formal groups. The second finding was that these groups
developed informal rules of behaviour along with mechanisms to
enforce them.

Roethlisberger and Dickson, two of the researchers, found that

the informal agreements within the group were that you should
not turn out too much work, you should not turn out two little
work, you should not inform a supervisor of anything that might
get another worker into trouble, and that you should not attempt
to maintain social distance or act officiously.[6]

Between themselves, members of the informal groups agreed

upon and enforced the rate at which work would be turned out.
In other words, they themselves decided what a fair days output
would be. To enforce it, they used ridicule, physically striking a
co-worker on the upper arm, or total exclusion from the group of
those that broke the rules.[6]

In this case, the social bonds between workers were more

powerful than the controls and incentives of management.
Roethlisberger and Dickson wrote:

The social organization of the bankwiremen performed a twofold

function (1) to protect the group from internal indiscretions and
(2) to protect it from outside interference nearly all the
activities of this group can be looked upon as methods of
controlling the behaviour of its members.[6]
Scope for a workers appropriation of the results
of the Hawthorne Studies?
Informal groups like those in the Bank Wiring Observation Room
have been shown to exercise powerful control over the tempo of
work, and the attitudes of workers.

Tom Peters, an American writer on business management

practices, is quoted as saying in 1987 that the modest-sized,
task-oriented, semi-autonomous, mainly self-managing team
should be the basic organisation building block.[7] This was an
important successor to Elton Mayos 1945 book The Social
Problems of an Industrial Civilization which placed informal
groupings at the centre of managerial strategy, encouraging
managers to act more like gardeners than engineers, building on
the relationships that emerged naturally and using their skills to
integrate individuals into groups rather than micro-managing.
Eventually Mayos work was followed in the 1990s by team-based
organisational models.

If certain strands of management science so openly acknowledge

the existence of a culture of self-management and autonomy as
a crucial building block to an effective work culture, it stands to
reason that it can be leveraged to the benefit of the workers
themselves, whose interest lies contrary to the management goal
of driving down wages and increasing productivity. Whether this
is in conjunction with trade union intervention or on its own,
utilising the way in which informal groups can set the tempo of
work could prove a useful tool in the struggle for higher wages
and better working conditions.

For the pro-worker individual or grouping, group self-organisation

is the means by which to generalise practices that limit the
access of management to control of the workforce, and instead
place this control in the hands of the workers themselves, with
work dictated not from above but from below. If pro-worker
individuals are able to view the workplaces informal dynamics
and identify who the leaders and sidekicks are (as seen by
social scientists in the Relay Assembly Test Room experiments
1927-1933), they would be arming themselves with the same
tools managers use to tap into self-organisation for the
organisations, and not necessarily the workers, benefit.

Group formation
George Homans, an American sociologist, developed in 1951 a
theory of how groups come to be formed.[8] Homans proposed
that groups exist within an environment which affects it
physically, technologically and socially.[5] His argument was that
management create the group's environment through their
design of the physical workspace, their purchase of equipment
and choices in job design and their choice of strategy, structure
and culture. [5]

Homans developed the idea of an external and internal system.

The external system refers to three required elements; required
activities, required interactions and required sentiments.

Homans's external system

The external system describes formal organisation. From a
workers' perspective there are certain 'givens' of their jobs,
which meet the expectations of their managers. These are
requirements that require individuals to perform certain
activities, have certain interactions with others and have certain
sentiments toward their work.[5]

Organizational Behaviour, by David Buchanan and Andrzej

Huczynski, refers to a supermarket example to describe the
external system:

The physical/technological/social environment is represented by

the design and positioning of the checkout stations, the choice of
scanning equipment, and the company's 'the customer is always
right' policy. The supermarket management wants its checkout
operators to scan customers' purchases (activities); greet them,
offer to pack their bags, and say goodbye to them
(interactions). They are also expected to have positive attitudes
and feelings towards their customers and their employer
(sentiments).
They further it by describing the ins-and-outs of how these
elements relate to each other.

Each of these three elements reinforces each other. The more

activities employees share, the more frequent will be their
interactions, and the stronger will be their shared activities and
sentiments (how much the other persons are liked or disliked).
The greater the numbers of interactions between persons, the
more will be their shared activities and the stronger their
sentiments towards each other. The stronger the sentiments
people have for one another, the greater will be the number of
their shared activities and interactions. Persons in a group
interact with one another, not just because of spatial or
geographical proximity (called propinquity), but also to
accomplish goals such as cooperation and problem-solving.

Homans's internal system

Homans's internal system is different, in that it relates not to the
formal groups of the external system, but to the informal groups
such as those seen in the Bank Wiring Observation Room
experiments.

Homans defined another set of group members' activities,

interactions and sentiments emerging from the
physical/technological/social environment. He termed these
emergent activities, emergent interactions and emergent
sentiments, collectively making up the internal system, a
definitive theory of informal groups within the organisation.
These can occur irrespective of management, an example is that
if a job is repetitive (referring to the technological context),
operators might see how quickly they can perform it (emergent
activity), to give their work more challenge. If employees are in
close proximity to one another (physical context), they might
engage in conversation (emergent interaction) despite company
rules possibly forbidding it. Group members might start to see
customers as annoying and develop anti-customer feelings
(emergent sentiment).[5]

A workers understanding of Homans's systems?

Organizational Behaviour, by David Buchanan and Andrzej
Huczynski, describes the internal and external system as
interrelated. A change in one will apparently lead to a change in
the other. This is in essence a dialectical relationship, and the
book goes on to describe a similar relationship between the
physical environment and the internal system (informal groups)
and external system (formal groups).

Homans's systems are essentially useful sociological guides to

how groups relate to the dynamics of the workplace and how
individual interactions form into group relationships. They are a
useful aid to anyone, not just managers, seeking to understand
how informal groups emerge, and how they can be built into
formal groups given the context of the workplace concerned.

Group development stages

Bruce Tuckman and Mary Ann Jensen claimed in 1965 (later
refined in 1977) that groups pass through five discrete stages.
These are:

Forming refers to the stage in which the individual is discovering

how they fit into the group, discovering other peoples attitudes,
and establishing ground rules. Members are dependent on a
leader to provide them with ground rules and an action plan, and
on tasks seek orientation on what they have to achieve.

Storming refers to the stage in which conflict occurs and

members bargain with each other to find out what they and the
group want out of each other. Group members reveal their own
goals, likely provoking hostility if differences in goals exist. Early
relationships formed in the Forming stage may be destroyed or
disrupted. The key matter arising in this stage of group formation
is how should the group organise itself to tackle its tasks.

Norming refers to the stage in which the group develops ways

to work more closely and develop a sense of comradeship. This is
when it is settled on who does what and how it will be done.
Norms of behaviour are established, roles are allocated, a
framework is created in which members can relate to one
another, and a way of tackling expectations and individual failure
is created. It is in this stage that a real sense of group identity
and togetherness is created.

Performing refers to the stage in which the group has an

effective structure and is primarily focused on accomplishing its
objectives. Not all groups arrive at this stage, many getting stuck
in an earlier, less effective stage. By now interdependence has
become a norm, with members happy to work alone, in sub-
groups or as part of the whole group. Collaboration and friendly
competition may even occur.

Adjourning refers to the stage in which the group disbands, and

individuals may reflect on how well or badly the group
functioned.

These stages don't necessarily occur in sequence, and progress

through them over time is not necessarily bound to occur.
Furthermore, a group may pass through one stage several times,
or become stuck on one stage. It has been found that groups
tend to cycle back and forth between the different stages.[9]
Read about it in more detail on Wikipedia.

Knowledge of group development is enhanced by studying the

emergence of group norms.

Implications of group development stages for

workers
For the pro-worker individual or group, the forming, storming,
norming, performing and adjourning stages of group formation
hold implications for the adoption of a pro-worker agenda. Pro-
worker individuals need to be active throughout the stages
ensuring that values of solidarity are adopted by the group, while
at the same time ensuring that the group can pass through the
stages successfully. Work and wage labour will not be overcome
simply through the impeding of group activity. Rather, what can
be done is facilitating the group's social control over work output
and group solidarity. Norming is the most important stage,
because it is through this that group ties are solidified and the
individual is subsumed in the group environment.