Exam 11: Effective Work Groups and Teams

Jack Jones heads a team of automobile designers at A-One Automotive. The team was formed to present new car plans to local dealers to get their input. Although the workers are capable of excellent performance, the presentations are disorganized and the local dealers are often kept waiting unnecessarily. This is an example of a group whose ________.

________ occur when the organization's activities are divided among the group's members and their inputs are subsequently combined into a product or output.

Process losses are performance difficulties a group experiences due to ________.

Process losses are especially likely to occur when the nature of the task itself makes it difficult to identify individual performance levels and reward employees on that basis.

________ leads to process gains, whereas ________ lead(s) to process losses.

Cross-functional research and development teams consist of ________.

Which type of task interdependence results when the activities of all work-group members are fully dependent on one another?

A group likely has a low level of cohesiveness when information flows slowly within the group and the group has little influence over its members' behavior.

Social loafing can be reduced by making sure group members' individual contributions cannot be noticed in the group's final product.

An exclusive group is NOT characterized by ________.

Which of the following is MOST OFTEN a characteristic of exclusive groups?

Social loafing is more common with sequential interdependence than with pooled interdependence, as individual contributions are harder to identify in sequentially interdependent tasks.

In ________, a significant amount of communication and interaction among members occurs electronically, using computer hardware and software.

Since self-managed work teams are truly self-managing, they need not have the support of managers in the organization to be effective.

According to Thompson's model of group tasks, ________ is the extent to which the work performed by one member affects what other group members do.

As cohesiveness increases, members become more active participants in the group, and the level of communication within it increases.

A group task based on ________ requires specific behaviors to be performed by the group's members in a predetermined order.

Which of the following BEST describes the relationship between group size and social loafing?

Some research and development teams have been called "skunk works." What is a skunk works team and how does it enhance organizational effectiveness?

Discuss how various levels of cohesiveness (low, medium, and high) affect group performance and effectiveness when group goals are aligned with organizational goals.