MGHB02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7.7: Social Loafing
7.7 Discuss how to design and support self-managed teams
Collective efficacy: the group’s elief that they a suessfully oplete a task idiidual self-efficacy
does not necessarily mean collective efficacy)
Self-managed work teams (autonomous/semi-autonomous/self-directed): work groups work with little
supervision; success of self-managed groups depends on the nature of the task, composition and other
support mechanisms
• Breaks down traditional idea of roles within a group; instead everyone does everything
(whatever will make the group most effective)
• Task nature: needs to be challenging with high reliance on each other, task significant, and
needs skill variety
Composition of self-managed teams:
• Stability: strong group attendance and membership as members need to understand and trust
eah other to e effetie do’t reoe or add people ofte, it’ll daage the deelopet of
group identity)
• Size: as small as possible to avoid coordination problems and social loafing (reduced supervision
means there is no one to facilitate coordination and reprimand social loafers)
• Expertise: Everyone (or at least the group as a whole) should have a good understand of the task
(no boss to run to for problems); everyone needs sufficient social skills like communication and
conflict resolution
• Diversity: similar enough to work together, diverse enough to have variety of perspectives and
skills
• Tea ay at to odut their o hirig ith HR superisio to aoid ias as fit is ery
important
o Self-managed teams have higher turn over rates, which affect team development
• Overall, looking for high cohesiveness and developing group norms that stress group
effectiveness
• Leads to improved productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, and safety
Supporting self-managed teams:
• Training: technical training (math, computer use, etc.), social skills (assertiveness, problem
solving, dispute resolution), language skills (particularly for ethically diverse teams), business
training (finance, accounting and production to help see bigger picture)
• Rewards: should be related to team accomplishment over individuals (but still have individual
performance feedback; gain sharing, profit sharing or skill-based pay are also compatible
• Management: mediate between teams (particularly with unions), and should encourage internal
observation, evaluation and reinforcement of behaviour
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