Group Behavior and Performance

Assessing group performance:

- criteria are decided by the group members

-mere act of deciding on the criteria increases the group’s alliance with the criteria

Effectiveness can be assessed by answering:

1. To what extent does the productive output of the group

meet the standards of the people who receive, review, or use the output?

2. To what extent do the group ’ s social processes enhance

members ’ collective capability to work together interdependently?

3. To what extent does the group experience contribute positively to the learning and personal well - being of individual members?

Examples of group ineffectiveness: groupthink, free-riding, slippage in coordination, inappropriate weighing of member’s inputs to group deliberations

Group vs. individual performance (Steiner, 1996)

Disjunctive tasks - performance of the group as a whole is a direct function of the performance of its best- performing group member (ex. fastest runner affecting the team’s score)

Conjunctive tasks- the group operates at the level of its least competent member (mountain climbers that are roped-together)

Additive tasks- group performance is the sum of members ’ contributions. (a production team in which members are working in parallel)

Compensatory tasks- a group estimate is the average of individual members ’ independent estimates. The expectation: individuals ’ errors will be compensated for by others ’ errors in the opposite direction (predicting next year’s oil consumption)

Complementary