Work Group
Work group is a group where members work in a formal environment with a similar specific purpose. Work group is a formal group as they have to follow the organisational rules and regulations and they are officially designated and formally emerged as the part of the organisation. Regard on decision making they depend on the group leader for example, manager. Because within these formal work groups, people are assigned positions for example, supervisor or manager (Wood et.al. 2004, p. 263-264).
A work group context can be defined as a situation where group members perceive the presence of encouraging work conditions that enhance their attitudes about the workplace; these can include helping behaviour, group cohesiveness, peer leadership, and cooperation in completing work requirements (Vardi and Weitz, 2004).
Work group also follow the five stage model. According to five stages model work group form a group with employees, they have a leader, who divide their tasks and according to the authority structure, rules and regulations and at the same time with the leader’s direction they has to complete their task to achieve the goal.
Functional and Dysfunctional behaviours
For effective group work, students’ competent in both the content and process are most important. On the one hand, content is important as it refers to being able to successfully apply one's content knowledge so that the group can solve a problem or create a group product. On the contrary process, refers to being able to successfully execute skills such as building trust, coordination and conflict resolution. These two things are considered important for decision making in study group (Hanham, J. 2008).
Research has shown that when independent self is active, people are likely to give greater weight to personal goals than goals of the in-group (Oyserman, Coon & Kemmelmeier, 2002). A prime goal for those with an independent mind-frame is to be autonomous, distinct and separate from others. Conversely, when the interdependent self is active, an individual is likely to subsume, or at least equate, her or his personal goals with those of the in-group (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). When interdependent self is salient, a key goal is to facilitate and strengthen strong cooperative relationships with fellow in-group members. One of the consequences of this is that when interdependent self is active, an individual is likely to be acutely aware of, and sensitive to, the needs of others in the in-group (Cross et al., 2000; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
http://www.iier.org.au/iier18/hanham.html
In a work group people faces two types of conflict while making the decision: interpersonal cognitive conflict which can be define as the degree of disagreement over the interpretation of a common stimulus and goal conflict which means the degree of competition for payoffs (Cosier, R. A. & Rose, G. L. 1977).
Cognitive conflict is important for high quality decisions; even it appears to be an impediment to consensus and affective acceptance. According to some researcher, cognitive conflict is multidimensional. One dimension of conflict enhances decision quality. On the other hand another dimension attenuates consensus and affective acceptance (Pinkley, 1990; Pondy, 1969; Rahim, 1983).
Cognitive conflict contributes to decision quality because of the synthesis which emerges from the contesting of the diverse perspectives is generally superior to the individual perspectives themselves (Mason &Mitroff, 1981). In fact, cognitive conflict enhances understanding among group members. Schweiger and his colleagues (1986) have shown in their study that an individual’s underlying assumptions encouraged the evaluation of cognitive conflict. It should enhance commitment as the group members debate their perspectives, they exercise their voice in the decision process and that is why they need to be more committed to the decision (Folger, 1977). So according to this discussion it can be said that cognitive conflict is altogether functional.
Goal conflict is an interpersonal relationship which involve in divergent preferences regarding at least one of the decision outcomes. In extremely unlikely circumstances it may involve divergent preferences over all of the decision outcomes, constituting a zero-sum game. However, goal conflict generally takes some mixed motive form in which decision makers' preferences are partially divergent and partially consistent for different subsets of the set of all possible outcomes.
When a payoff is tied to performance in an interpersonal situation, competition may lead to goal conflict. Viewing the payoff as one relevant goal, competition involves actions taken by one person to attain his or her most preferred outcome while simultaneously blocking attainment of the counterpart's most preferred outcome
According to Brehmer (1976), when a subject perceives high interpersonal policy error with a counterpart, he or she tends to ask more questions to discover what that counterpart is doing. Brehmer interpreted this phenomenon as being dysfunctional since the random error obscures the true nature of the disagreement. However, it seems very likely that in some cases an incentive to probe cognitive differences may in fact be functional.
When conflict is dysfunctional, it tends to be emotional and focused on personal incompatibilities or disputes and this type of conflict is known as affective conflict (Amason & Schweiger, 1994). Distinguishing functional cognitive conflict from dysfunctional affective conflict makes the overall effects of conflict on the strategic decision making easier to understand (Amason, 1996).
Conflict management
research on
decision making by Hollenbeck et al. (1995, 1998) indicated that,
all else equal, team members whose recommendations are uncorrelated
or negatively correlated (i.e., conflict) provide more value
as a unit than do team members whose recommendations are
correlated high and positive (and hence redundant).
Although a prediscussion disagreement appears to stimulate the
quality of group decision making, this positive effect breaks down
quickly when conflict becomes more intense. Carnevale and Probst
(1998) showed that, compared with a control condition in which no conflict was induced, participants were more flexible in their
thinking and more creative in their problem solutions when they
anticipated a cooperative negotiation (low conflict) with another
individual. When participants anticipated a competitive, hostile
negotiation (high conflict), however, cognitive flexibility and creative
thinking decreased substantially. Carnevale and Probst explained
these effects in terms of cognitive load—as conflict intensifies
and arousal increases, cognitive load increases, which
interferes with cognitive flexibility and creative thinking.
Task Versus Relationship Conflict, Team Performance,
and Team Member Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis.....741,742
Similarities and Differences
So, from the above overall discussion, some similarities and differences can be found between work and study group, which described bellows are:
There are some similarities between work group and study group. Firstly, they considered as a group whether they are formal or informal. Secondly, they both group work for a particular purpose. Work group measure effectiveness directly by their influence on others (e.g. financial performance indicator) on the other hand, study group measure effectiveness directly by their good performance. Thirdly, the both group members are concern about their performance as it is related to their self achievement.
The differences between study group and work group are: firstly, study group is an informal group where work group is a formal group. Secondly, works group’s purpose is mostly identical to the organisation’s mission where study group’s purpose is personal achievement. Thirdly, work group work to achieve organisational goal as well as personal goal, where study group work hard to achieve personal goal. Fourthly, in work group there is an assigned position for leader but in study group there is no assigned position for leader, some time they select someone or most often they work without leader. Fifth, in work group as the leader position is assigned so there is no conflict for leadership but as there is no position assigned in study group for leader so all have a hidden desire to be leader, so leadership conflict may find there. Sixth, in work group, members sometime join for meeting but decision is taken by the leader or supervisor, on the contrary in study group, decisions are taken by the group members. Seventh, in work group as the decision is taken by leader so there is low chance for conflict, but in study group as the members take decision so there is more chance for conflict to take decisions. Eighth, work group takes enough time for discussion to take a decision but in study group members takes decision quickly.
Recommendations
So from the above discussion it can be said that in work group members’ attitudes and opinions with respect to an issue or a solution may change during group discussion for decision making (Moorhead, G. & Griffin, R. W. 1998, p. 426). In work group’s members can focus on their own performance rather than think about the effectiveness of the decision because decision is taken by leader or supervisor, so if it is not effective decision, members are not responsible for the decision but if they concentrate on their own performance they can achieve organisational incentives. As well as in study group members can be respectful to each others opinion to take decision avoiding conflict and also they can concentrate on their own performance to develop their own skills.
Both group members need more tolerance or patience to work in a group. Both group members need to avoid superiority mentality. Because, superior mentality is am important cause of conflict among each other.
Both group can follow nominal group technique (NGT) which means group members follow a generate discussion-vote cycle to reach an appropriate decision and where brain storming is used primarily to generate alternatives (Moorhead, G. & Griffin, R. W. 1998, p. 431). This idea helps to overcome the negative effects of power and status differences among group members. As well as this idea can be used to explore different types of ideas to generate alternatives. This technique is good for work group to avoid cognitive and goal conflict in decision making.
Both group need to be more negotiate to avoid conflict in decision making. Study group can select a leader by vote or they can ask their supervisor to select a leader for their group so that with all of their opinion leader can take a particular decision.
To avoid conflict or misbehaviour in group regard on decision making, a positive group context can be developed, a situation in which group members perceive the presence of encouraging work conditions that enhance their attitudes which can include helping behaviour, group cohesiveness, peer leadership, and cooperation in completing work requirements (Kidwell, R. E. & Valentine, S. R., 2009 ).
According to social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), individuals working with others observe their behaviour and may adopt co-workers as role models and engage in similar behaviour. All members in group are not easy going, so difficult members can adopt other member’s attitude to avoid conflict in decision making.
Research has showed that teams made better decisions when pre-discussion preferences are in disagreement rather than agreement (Schulz-Hardt, Mayer, and Frey, 2002).
Conclusion
So last of all it can be said that group decision is more effective than individual decision. In group decision there are so many options to get an effective solution. Also in group there is possibility of internal conflict in decision making as the members of the group are from different background with different personality. So it is important to develop a positive group context which can enhance optimistic impact on reducing group members’ misbehaviour in decision making.
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