Group Development

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Wednesday

Introduction

12:20 PM

As groups develop, members modify formally prescribed group tasks, clarify personal roles, and negotiate group norms. These developmental processes tend to advance through four stages: initiation, differentiation, integration and maturity.

1. Initiation is a stage of uncertainty and anxiety. New or potential members focus on getting to know each other's personal views and abilities. In the beginning they are likely to discuss neutral topics like the weather and news that have little bearing on the group's purpose. As they gain familiarity and begin to feel more comfortable, members turn to discussing general work issues and each person's probable relationship to the formally prescribed task of the group. Attention now concentrates on determining which behaviors should be considered appropriate and what sorts of contributions people should be expected to make to the group. Members may also try to choose a leader.
2. Differentiation conflicts are likely to erupt as members try to reach agreement on the purpose, goals and objectives of the group. Sorting out who will do what - and when, where, why, and how - and what reward members will receive for their performance often proves to be extremely difficult.
3. Integration comes after having weathered the integration stage, group members must resolve conflicts over other crucial issues. Integration focuses on reestablishing the central purpose the group in light of the structure of roles developed during differentiation. The task of the group may come to be defined in informal terms that modify the group's formal purpose and reflect the experience and opinions of group members.
4. Maturity is the final stage of group development. In this stage members fulfill their roles and work toward obtaining group goals. Many of the agreement reached about goals, roles and norms may take on formal significance, being adopted by management and documented in writing. Formalizing these agreements help to ensure that people joining the group at this stage will understand the group's purpose and way of functioning.

Group Productivity

People are more productive when working in groups than when working alone. However, a large body of research indicates that groups of individuals working together are sometimes less productive than the same number of people working alone. Often this falloff in productivity can be avoided if managers work to reduce their negative effects of various obstacles to group productivity.

Obstacles to Group Productivity

Process loss is the difference between what a group actually produces and what it might theoretically produce. It is caused by a variety of obstacles to group productivity, the most influential of which are production blocking, group-maintenance activities and social loafing.

Production blocking occurs when people get in each other's way as they try to perform a group task. For example, when one member of a moving van crew carries a chair through a doorway and another member waits to carry a box of clothing through the same doorway.

In order for a group to function effectively, its members must fulfill the requirements of several group-maintenance roles. The roles include encouragers, people who enhance feelings of warmth and solidarity within the group by praising, agreeing with and accepting the ideas of others. Harmonizers minimize the negative effects of conflicts among the group members by resolving disagreements fairly, quickly and openly, and relieving interpersonal tension. Standard setters raise questions about group goals and goal attainment and set achievement standards with which group members can evaluate their performance.

Social loafing can also cause process loss. Social loafing is the result of the choice made by some members of a group to take advantage of others by doing less work, working more slowly or in other ways decreasing their own contributions to group productivity. According to economists, social loafing makes sense from a loafers perspective if the rewards the group receives for productivity are shared more or less equally among all group members. A loafer can get the same rewards that everyone else gets but without having to expend the same personal effort.

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The End