Group Assignment
Prepared for: Beverley Mcnelly
Prepared by: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
Section: 201
Name: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
OB
groups
instructor: Beverley Mcnelly
section :201
1- Define group? What are the different types of groups?
Group is defined in the text as: “two or more individuals, interacting and
interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives”
There are six types of groups:
Formal groups: “a designed work group defined by an organization’s structure”
Informal groups: “a group that is neither formally structured nor organizationally
determined, such a group appears in response to the need for social contact”
Command group: “a group composed of individuals who report directly to a given
manager”
Task group: “people working together to complete a job task”
Interest group: “people working together to attain a specific objective with which
each is concerned”
Friendship groups: “people brought together because they share one or more
characteristics”
2- What are the five stages of group development?
All types of groups go through a general stages during their development, these
stages are five in total and they are presented in the “five-stage model” it shows a
simple way of displaying the stages:
Forming, storming, norming, preforming and adjourning:
Name: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
OB
groups
instructor: Beverley Mcnelly
section :201
Regardless of the “prestage” part, a group’s first stage of developing is its forming
stage;
Stage I “forming”, where the group is yet not sure about what its objective and
purpose is, as well as the structure of its members, and the set of roles of the group
is.
This is followed by stage II “storming”, where the members if the groups have by
now established and solved the difficulties they were facing in the previous stage
and started moving their attention on the hierarchy of their group, to make the
feeling of the group even deeper.
And following that is stage III “norming” where they become more familiar with
each other and their expectations.
And than comes stage IV “preforming” where the group starts to physically preform
their tasks.
Than finally comes stage V “adjourning” it’s the final step, before closing everything,
when the group finished their task and start wrapping up their activities.
3- Do role requirements change in different situations? If so, how?
Roles do certainly change and constantly, in the work place a lot of unanticipated
events may occur, such as time of a meeting change, or more easily demonstrated a
member of a presenting group not being able to attend in the day of the
Name: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
OB
groups
instructor: Beverley Mcnelly
section :201
presentation and one of the members would have to add their requirements on top
of their own, they might be responsible for the tech stuff, and all of a sudden part of
their role would be to make sure that everyone has their notes and the pens are
working and such. Another example is how a person probably belongs to more than
one or two groups where they face different situations and have different roles to
play.
4- How do group norms and status influence an individual’s behavior?
Norms are the acceptable and expected behaviors of the group; they do influence
the individual since they become so fimilier with these behaviors that they become
part of their own. The norms in a group can be in any aspect of the behavior.
And the status which is the position or rank of the group as a whole of the members
of the group, the status does highly effect the individual and nor necessarily in a
good way. High status people or groups tend to be more respectful and admired, and
so have more influential power the those of a lower status, and so some individual’s
behavior tend to reflect their pride to be belonging to that group.
5- How does group size effect group performance?
Depending on the task or the situation in general group size can have different
effects on the results. Both small and large groups have their advantages as well as
disadvantages. For example smaller groups are faster at completing their task, since
they don’t take a long time dividing and agreeing on their jobs. But when the task
requires a lot of different ideas or immediate action towards an unpredicted event
than a larger group is more effective.
6- What are the advantages and limitations of cohesive groups?
Cohesiveness: “the degree to which members are attracted to each other and
motivated to stay in the group”
When group members are used and are most of the time together working, that
group becomes cohesive, and so most groups are known to be that. And it seems
that more cohesive groups are actually more productive, that would be
understandable since they all know each other’s ability very well and work in sync,
but for their productivity to be of this high, being cohesive is not enough they need
their norms performance to be high as well. And so cohesiveness in a group is an
important asset to hold, but is as limited as any other if we only depended on it.
7- What are the strength and weaknesses of group (versus individual) decisionmaking?
The strength of the group decision making process, is the different ideas, and
different information sources, where individual have only a single point of view on
each matter, their own. While the weaknesses of the groups is closely related to
their strength, because of all the different ideas and viewpoints they are incredibly
Name: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
OB
groups
instructor: Beverley Mcnelly
section :201
time consuming, its take a long time for all the group members to truly agree on a
decision which they all believe in, unlike in individual where this is its strength,
since the decision an individual decides on is the one that he/she are comfortable in
and highly believes in.
8- How effective are interacting, brainstorming, nominal, and electronic
meeting groups?
First lets get to know each of these to know their effectiveness:
Interacting groups “typical groups in which members interact with each other face
to face”
Brainstorming “an idea-generation process that specifically encourages any and all
alternatives while withholding any criticism, of those alternatives”
Nominal “a group decision-making method in which individual members meet face
to face to pool their judgments in a systematic but independent fashion”
Electronic meeting “a meeting on which members interact on computers, allowing
for anonymity of comments and aggregation of votes”
The first one, interacting, depends on both verbal and nonverbal communications,
but they lack the ability to simply say what they think, they need to verify their
information which can make them miss a lot of valuable new ideas.
The brainstorming is effective in having the trait missing in the first type, when
simply and immidatly throwing all sorts of ideas on the table; one is likely to end up
with a very unique and different idea.
Nominal group technique is a productive mix of both interacting and brainstorming
groups; the groups physically meet, and pitch all their ideas, each member end up
suggesting one of his/her ideas, than the group discusses them to reach a decision. It
has the best of both groups and is more effective, but lacks a little something that
the last type of group brings to the table.
Electronic meeting, is basically the nominal technique mixed with the technology, it
can be the most effective since it doesn’t have the limitation of having all members
physically attending, the idea’s are as limited as the members are, and can be as
anonymous as well.
9- What are the evidence of the effect of culture on group status and social
loafing? How does diversity affect groups and their effectiveness over time?
The culture has a strong undeniable effect on the group’s status, for example the
counties’ culture and beliefs such as our own country for example, belonging to a
specific family “group” can either give you high status in society or a law one. Social
loafing might not be as obvious in our culture, the culture of our country and our
Name: Dana Al-Baadi
ID: 200900719
OB
groups
instructor: Beverley Mcnelly
section :201
customs make insist on us behaving and obliging to the norms of the society and
being part of the group that defines us, such as family name for example.