The loneliness in the crowd:

Groups and teams

 Content
• Groups and Teams
• Exclusion
• Popularity
• Gossip
 Groups and Teams
• Group: Two or more people who interact with
each other to accomplish certain goals or
meet certain needs.
• Team: A group whose members work
intensely with each other to achieve a specific,
common goal or objective.
• All teams are groups but not all groups are
teams.
Work Teams are:
• Two or more individuals
• Who interact
• Have one or more common goals
• Exist to perform task-relevant functions
• Exhibit work interdependencies (goals,
workflow, outcomes) and differentiated roles
• Embedded in an organizational system
Types of Teams
• Problem-solving team: employees from the same
department to solve a specific problem (5-12
employees).
• Self-managed team: take on responsibilities of
their former supervisors (10-15 employees).
• Cross-functional team: employees from the same
hierarchical level, but from different work
areas to accomplish a task.
• Virtual team: use computer technology to tie
together physically dispersed members in
order to achieve a common goal.
 Why People Join Groups
• Security • Affiliation
• Status • Power
• Self-esteem • Goal achievement
 Social Identity Theory
• Social identity (e.g., a Chinese, a student of
SHUFE……).
• People have emotional reactions to the failure or
success of their group because their self-esteem
is tied into the group.
• Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing): a self-
serving cognition whereby an individual
associates themselves with known successful
others such that the winner's success becomes
the individual's own accomplishment.
 The Downside
• Schadenfreude at the loss of a rival team
• Ingroup favoritism: we tend to see members of
our ingroup as better than other people and
people not in our group as all the same.
 Barriers to Teamwork
• Violations of fairness
• Increased workload concerns
• Uncertain manager support
• Unclear role definitions
• Lack of team member social support
• Dis-trust
• Different cultural values
• Low tolerance for change
• Free riding (social loafing)
 Assumptions
• Everyone wants something without any cost
(however, they cannot acquire outcomes they
desire without bearing any cost).
• Therefore, “People, acting rationally, try to
minimize their costs relative to the benefits they
receive”.

Rational Behavior in Groups: The Free-riding Tendency Robert Albanese, David

D. Van Fleet, Texau A&M University.
 Definition of Free Riding
• Free riding is a choice individuals sometimes
make to avoid cooperating in pursuit of rewards
to be shared by the members of a group,
organization, or society, while expecting to derive
personal benefit from those rewards, acquired
through others' efforts.

Studies of individualism-collectivism: Effects on cooperation in groups, John A

Wagner III, Michigan State University
 Factors Influence Free Riding
• Work Group Size
As a group increases in size, individual anonymity
also increases. This increase in anonymity makes
it more difficult to assess each individual’s
contributions. It appears that as group size
increases, it becomes more difficult for
individuals to encourage, as well as monitor, one
another.
Jones, G. R. 1984. Task visibility, free riding, and shirking: Explaining the effect of structure
and technology on employee behavior. Academy of Management Review, 9: 684–695.
• Costs of organization
The greater the number of potential group
members, the less likely an individual or set of
individuals will feel that the costs of organizing a
group are justified by the benefits to be received.
It would not be rational for an individual to bear
these costs because the individual will receive the
same relative share of the public good as will
those who bear no costs of organization.
Albanese, R. & Van Fleet, D. D. 1985. Rational behavior in groups: The free-riding
tendency. Academy of Management Review, 10: 244-255.
• Task visibility (An individual’s belief that a supervisor is aware
of one’s effort)
When tasks are not highly visible by others,
individuals may perceive no benefit from exerting
high effort and no punishment from exerting low
effort.

Kidwell, R. E., & Bennett, N. 1993. Employee propensity to withhold effort: A conceptual
model to intersect three avenues of research. Academy of Management Review, 18: 429–456.
• Distributive Justice (Fairness in the distribution of
rewards/compensation)
Individuals reduce their effort when they feel that
they are not receiving an equitable amount of
resources and/or rewards from the organization
relative to their inputs.

Tyler, T. R. 1994. Psychological models of the justice motive: Antecedents of distributive

and procedural justice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67: 850–863.
• Procedural Justice (Fairness of the allocation of rewards,
procedural justice captures perceptions of fairness in the
procedures or policies used to make personnel decisions, such as
determining the system for distributing rewards )
Individuals’ perceptions of the fairness of
procedures may influence performance-to-
outcome expectancies and thus influence the level
of effort expended on task behaviors.

Karau, S. j., & Williams, K. D. 1993. Social loafing: A meta-analytic review and theoretical
integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65:681-706.
• Group Cohesiveness (The degree to which members are
attracted to one another and desire to “stick” together)
If members do not like each other and do not feel
that they are close-knit, they may be inclined to
engage in social loafing.

Mudrack, P. E. 1989. Group cohesiveness and productivity: A closer look. Human Relations,
42: 771–785.
• Perceived Coworker Loafing (The extent to which group
members feel that one or more coworkers engage in social loafing)
Employees typically observe the behavior of
others, and this tends to influence their own
behavior. It follows that individuals who suspect
others of social loafing will be more likely to
engage in social loafing themselves.

Comer, D. R. 1995. A model of social loafing in real work groups. Human Relations, 48:
647–667.
 Consequences of Free Riding
• Free riding actually leads to reductions of
individual effort, joint performance may be
depressed and shared rewards may not be
acquired.

Studies of individualism-collectivism: effects on cooperation in groups, John A Wagner III,

Michigan State University.
Three Ways to Reduce Social Loafing
 Group Size
(What is an appropriate size for a group?)
• Advantage of small groups
– Interact more with each other and easier to
coordinate their efforts
– More motivated, satisfied, and committed
– Easier to share information
– Better able to see the importance of their
personal contributions
• Advantages of large groups
– More resources at their disposal to achieve
group goals
– Enables managers to obtain division of labor
advantages
• Disadvantages of large groups
– Problem of communication and coordination
– Lower level of motivation
– Members might not think their efforts are
really needed
 Two Types of Group Diversity
• Surface level—Demographics
– Age, gender, education, race/ethnicity ,
nationality, marital status, occupation,
experience, cultural background, etc…
• Deep level—values & beliefs
– personality, values, attitudes, beliefs,
knowledge, abilities …
• Group diversity is a double-edged sword.
– People with different backgrounds or experience
may bring new ideas and creative solutions to the
group.
– However, diversity often leads to conflicts.
(1) Task conflict (a perception of disagreements among
group members about the content of their decisions,
viewpoints, ideas)
(2) Relational conflict (a perception of interpersonal
incompatibility and typically includes tension,
annoyance, and hatred among group members)
Task Conflict vs. Relationship Conflict
• Task conflict is generally related to positive
outcomes, such as group decision quality,
affective acceptance of group decisions.
• Relationship conflict is detrimental to decision
quality and affective commitment to the
group.
Task conflict is highly correlated with relationship
conflict. So how to tackle the dilemma?
Task conflict and relationship conflict in top management teams: The pivotal role of
intragroup trust”. Journal of Applied Psychology, 2000 (Simons & Peterson, 2000)

• The two conflicts: positive correlations.

• Why?: Misattribution (personal attack).
• Proposing trust as a buffering factor.
✓ Accept disagreements at face value.
✓ Less likely to misinterpret task conflict behaviors
by inferring hidden agendas or personal attacks.
 Stages of Team Development
• Forming: group members get to know each
other and reach common understanding.
• Storming: group members experience conflict
because some members do not wish to submit
to demands of other group members.
• Norming: close ties and consensus begin to
develop between group members.
 Stages of Team Development
• Performing: a fully functional group structure
allows the group to focus on performing the
task at hand.
• Adjourning: the group prepares to disband and
is no longer concerned with high levels of
performance.
 Group Cohesiveness
• Forces of task commitment and mutual social
attraction that bond members to the team.
• Task commitment consistently associated with
team effectiveness.
• Three major consequences
– Level of participation
– Level of conformity to group norms
– Emphasis on group goal accomplishment
Antecedents of Team Cohesiveness
Member
Similarity

External Team
Challenges Size
Increasing
Team
Team Cohesiveness Member
Success Interaction

Somewhat
Difficult Entry
Characteristics of Effective Teams
 Exclusion within Groups
• Who are more likely to be excluded in groups?
• Expelling selfish members in groups
• People who contribute little to a group will be
tolerated if they use little of the subsequent group
payoff and not tolerated if they use much of the
payoff.
 Popularity Contest at Work
• People have powerful needs for social approval.
• Popularity: being generally accepted by one’s
peers.
• Popularity and interpersonal liking: liking is at the
dyadic level, popularity is at group level; liking is
self-referenced, popularity is other referenced.
Scott, B. A. & Judge, T. A. The Popularity Contest at Work: Who Wins, Why, and
What Do They Receive? Journal of Applied Psychology, 2009, 94: 20-33.
 Popular Narcissists
• Are narcissists welcomed by group members?
• Mixed findings on the relationship between
narcissism and popularity.
 Pro-Social Gossip
• Gossips: communicating negatively about an
absent third party in an evaluative manner.
• Gossip is typically viewed as trivial or anti-social.
• Key argument: gossip helps solve the problem of
cooperation.
• Good gossip: any act of gossip that serves a goal
other than the selfish personal ends of the
gossiper.
 Pro-Social Gossip
• Gossip may be one social process by which group
members share reputational information to
promote cooperation.
• Participants behaved more generously if they knew
that their interaction partners had reported a high
propensity to gossip (Beersma & van Kleef, 2011).
• People who are selfish, manipulative, and
uncooperative are more likely to be the targets of
gossip (Keltner et al., 2008).
 What Motivates Pro-Social Gossip?
• Pro-social concerns, preferences for cooperation
and fairness and an aversion to social exploitation
motivate pro-social gossip.
• Selfish and exploitative behavior contradicts
individuals’ prosocial preferences, which in turn
cause them to experience negative affect, such as
frustration and annoyance.
• Negative affect relief.