Mgmt 320-01 Group Analysis Paper

Course: MGMT 320-01 Organizational Behavior

Instructor: Steven Restad

Date: October 4, 2015

Group Analysis Paper

       A “group” is two or more freely interacting people with shared norms and goals and a common identity. (Kreitner, R, & Kinicki A. 2013 pg. 269). A group is different from a team in so many aspects. Example, a team can be formed within a group and can be very skill, and they hold each mutually accountable for common purpose, goals and approach. (Kreitner, R, & Kinicki A. 2013 pg. 300). One of the main factors that distinguished a group from a team is the size. A group can be form a huge number of people but an effective team is sometimes restricted to four or 5 the most. I have being part of so many groups in my life, roaming social group, to sport group, and work groups. For the purpose of this analysis paper will discuss my work group.

       This aspect of my work group that I am going to discuss is diversity. I work with an innovative technology and printing services company call Ricoh. This company is not an American founded company. They have their global head quarter in Chūō, Tokyo. This company has their sales and support network covers about 200 countries and regions around the world and they serve their customer directly in more than 50 countries worldwide. Ricoh U.S.A serves as one of the Ricoh network that serves its customers in the United State directly. Talking about diversity? This is one heck of a diverse company in the world. Taking an entire organization and making them my work group is not rational, so I will discuss the diversity aspect of my miniature group within the company that serves Wells Fargo & Co. within Minnesota.

         We are a group of sixteen (16) diverse individual, highly skills and respectful of each other. We kind of hold each other accountable for our goal, maybe that’s why we call ourselves a team, but the number of member doesn’t allow us. When I say we are a diverse group of people, I am talking about diversity way beyond skin colors, race, ethnicity, religions and country of origin even though there is no more than three (3) people are from the diverse group mentioned above. This just tells you how of a diverse group of people we are as far as the categories mentioned above. Diversity in our group described the fact that we are all very good at a specify thing within our group that make our jobs look very easy. An example of this is reflected in my group log. Scott is not a technology savvy like most of us are but he is our leader. He is the one who gathered important information from around the country, interprets them into the tech language we understands and sends it to us for problem solving. We lean on each other when we need help. This leads me to my second point I want to talk about; group dynamics.

           My work group is highly dynamic because of the four sociological criteria mentioned in our textbook. We are a group of 16, we have a collective norms and goals and we have a common identity. For the purpose of this paper I will start the discussion of these sociological criteria with “common identity”. They most obvious common identity of us is our unique name, the name of the organization we are part of and similar role we play throughout the organization and businesses we are associated with. The name of my work group is Print-Support-Specialist one (PSS1). This name is the same no matter what business or organization we support or what part of the world we support them. This distinguishes us from other groups and makes us highly recognizable among businesses and organization as a Ricoh PSS1. This is and the role we play as the print manager is our common identity. Norm is a shared attitudes, opinion, feelings, or actions that guide social behavior (Kreitner, R, & Kinicki A. 2013 pg. 280-283). Every PSS1 which is a member of our group should and in my observation do exhibits the same behavior when dealing with a particular problem or situation. When I first started my job as a PSS1, I was sent all over the state to see how PSS1 does their jobs and I couldn’t distinguish who did what and how because everybody did approached their respective problems the same way with customer’s satisfaction their top priority. The standard and attitudes of approaches were similar, that I one point I thought there were scripts that designed. When I started work, I realized I was using those same words and phrases and approaching my problem with the exact mindset. The common goal of our group reflects the overall mission of the Ricoh Company “Customer First”. We valued the Ricoh value that says: “To be one global company, we must care about people, our profession, our society, and our planet. We must dedicate our winning spirit, innovation and teamwork to sharpen our customer centric focus, and we also must commit to the highest standards of ethics and integrity”. This every member of my team is focus on. This leads me to discussing the role each of us plays to uphold our norms and reach our goals.