Deck 11: Effective Work Groups and Teams

Question 1

As the size of a group increases, so does the potential for coordination and conflict problems.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Process losses are performance difficulties that a group experiences because of coordination and motivation problems.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The term "social loafing" refers to the tendency for people to exert less effort when working in a group than when working alone.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Task interdependence is the extent to which one task affects one or more other tasks.

Question 5

Effective work groups contribute to the attainment of organizational goals by providing the organization with important outputs.

Question 6

Managers strive to have groups perform at the highest level possible, which is called a group's potential performance.

Question 7

The sucker effect occurs when group members raise their efforts because they do not want others to think they are slacking off.

Question 8

Process gains can be achieved by encouraging group members to be more creative and willing to take risks.

Question 9

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.

Question 10

Making individuals feel like they are valued group members is a way to reduce social loafing and increase work group effectiveness.

Question 11

Social loafing is a serious problem for groups and teams because it results in process losses that lower group performance.

Question 12

Motivation, effort, and performance tend to be highest when outcomes such as pay and praise are administered to employees based on a system of seniority.

Question 13

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

Question 14

Social loafing is more likely as groups get bigger because individuals perceive that their own effort and performance levels are unidentifiable, unnecessary, or likely to be duplicated by others in the group.

Question 15

Process gains are increases in potential performance that result from new ways of motivating and coordinating group members.

Question 16

Social loafing sometimes occurs when workers think their own efforts are unimportant or not needed.

Question 17

As the size of the group decreases, group members tend to exert less effort.

Question 18

Effective work groups minimize process losses and achieve process gains.

Question 19

The potential performance of a group is easy to identity and does not change.

Question 20

Managers and work groups need to strive to ensure that a group's actual performance comes as close as possible to its potential performance.

Question 21

The potential for synergy increases as the level and intensity of group members' interactions increase and their expertise and skills are applied to the group's tasks.

Question 22

By rewarding employees for good attendance and punctuality, managers can minimize coordination difficulties involved with sequentially interdependent tasks.

Question 23

When the activities of group members are sequentially interdependent, the performance level of the most capable or highest-performing member of the group determines group performance.

Question 24

Since its tasks are organized in a sequential fashion, members of a reciprocally interdependent work group have few coordination problems.

Question 25

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

Question 26

Large groups have the greatest potential for conflict.

Question 27

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

Question 28

In reciprocal task interdependence, each group member's performance influences the performance of every other member of the group.

Question 29

When group members A, B, and C make independent contributions to group performance, and their contributions are added together to measure the group's performance, it is referred to as reciprocal task interdependence.

Question 30

Because pooled interdependence allows each member's contribution to be measured and rewarded, the potential for process losses due to a lack of motivation is relatively low.

Question 31

A group is cohesive when its members find the group attractive, when they value their group membership, and when they have strong desires to remain members of the group.

Question 32

Pooled task interdependence occurs when each member of the group makes a separate and independent contribution to group performance.

Question 33

As the level of task interdependence increases, so does the potential for both process gains and process losses.

Question 34

Assembly-line work in which each group member's performance affects other group members later in the work cycle is characterized by pooled interdependence.

Question 35

Sequential interdependence makes identifying the individual performances of group members difficult because each member contributes to the same final product.

Question 36

Process losses on tasks with pooled task interdependence can occur because of the duplication of effort.

Question 37

The potential for process losses is lowest when tasks are reciprocally interdependent.

Question 38

Large groups tend to be more cohesive than small groups.

Question 39

The negative effects of sequential task interdependence can be minimized by forming work groups consisting of individuals with divergent ability levels.

Question 40

Process losses can be minimized in a reciprocally interdependent group when group members feel personally responsible for meeting the group's goals.

Question 41

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

Question 42

The goal of group conformity is to eliminate any deviance from group norms.

Question 43

Top management teams are characterized by pooled task interdependence.

Question 44

As group cohesiveness increases, conformity to the group's norms tends to increase.

Question 45

When groups are successful, they become especially attractive to their members and others, and the cohesiveness of the group increases.

Question 46

Competition between groups in an organization increases group cohesiveness when it motivates members of each group to band together to achieve its goals.

Question 47

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.

Question 48

An organization's top management team is the team of managers who report to the chief executive officer (CEO).

Question 49

Homogeneous groups tend to be the most cohesive.

Question 50

Competition across groups, no matter how intense it may become, always promotes the organization's goals.

Question 51

The defining characteristic of self-managed work teams is a high degree of autonomy in deciding what the team will do and how it will go about doing it.

Question 52

A moderate amount of group cohesiveness is functional for groups and organizations because it facilitates goal accomplishment.

Question 53

Self-managed work teams are most effective when their work is sufficiently complex and it results in some sort of finished end product.

Question 54

Groups of firefighters and fraternities tend to be highly cohesive, in part because of how difficult it is to become a member of the group.

Question 55

Heterogeneous management teams can minimize groupthink, a pattern of faulty decision making that occurs when like-minded people tend to interpret events and information in similar ways.

Question 56

The best decisions are made by homogeneous top management teams, which consist of managers from the same function.

Question 57

The impact of group cohesiveness on organizational effectiveness is the same whether or not the group's goals are aligned with organizational goals.

Question 58

If the diversity of the group's members helps them achieve goals, then diversity, rather than similarity, is likely to facilitate group cohesiveness.

Question 59

When group goals are not aligned with organizational goals, the consequences of group cohesiveness are MOST OFTEN negative.

Question 60

When group members socialize excessively on the job, it is a sign that the group has a very high level of cohesiveness.

Question 61

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

A) motivation and coordination problems
B) personal and situational problems
C) actual and potential problems
D) low potential performance and process gains

Question 62

The highest level a group can possibly perform at is known as ________.

A) actual performance
B) realistic performance
C) potential performance
D) optimal performance

Question 63

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

Question 64

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 ________.

A) potential performance is below its actual performance
B) actual performance is below its potential performance
C) actual performance is below its realistic performance
D) realistic performance is below its optimal performance

Question 65

Managers attempt to create and sustain highly effective work groups by doing all of the following EXCEPT ________.

A) limiting actual performance
B) raising potential performance
C) creating process gains
D) eliminating process losses

Question 66

Periodic face-to-face meetings and scheduled recreational and social activities can improve the cohesiveness of virtual teams.

Question 67

Videoconferencing, teleconferencing, and instant messaging are examples of synchronous information technologies.

Question 68

Effective work groups perform at lower than optimal levels when they ________.

A) minimize process losses
B) minimize process gains
C) minimize performance difficulties
D) minimize communication

Question 69

A garage band gets together every week to practice. The members typically argue about musical style and what to play. They recently found out that they would be playing a big show in a few weeks, so they put aside their differences. This will cause their potential performance to ________.

A) stay the same
B) match actual performance
C) decrease
D) increase

Question 70

Organizations often use research and development teams to develop new products, especially in high-tech industries.

Question 71

A group is working on increasing fuel efficiency in cars. The group is composed of the brightest minds in the field, but one of the researchers has a breakdown and isn't able to finish his work. Other group members are delayed in their portion of the project. This will cause ________.

A) actual performance to be much lower than potential performance
B) actual performance to be much higher than potential performance
C) actual performance to equal zero
D) actual performance to equal process gains

Question 72

The globalization of business has reduced the need for virtual teams.

Question 73

A "skunk works" is a research and development team created to expedite new product designs and promote innovation in an organization.

Question 74

Organizations use virtual teams to help people in different places and/or time zones work together.

Question 75

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

Question 76

In order for an organization to achieve its goals, managers and work groups need to strive to ensure that a group's ________ performance comes as close as possible to its ________ performance.

A) actual; targeted
B) actual; potential
C) potential; latent
D) actual; forecasted

Question 77

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

A) Production problems
B) Allocation issues
C) Coordination problems
D) Procedural ramifications

Question 78

A product analysis group that has a hard time writing reports because the members use different word-processing software is experiencing ________.

A) actual performance due to decreased process gains
B) potential performance due to the division of labor
C) motivation decreases due to process problems
D) process losses due to coordination problems

Question 79

________ are increases in potential performance that result from new ways of motivating and coordinating group members.

A) Output gains
B) Process gains
C) Incremental gains
D) Productivity gains

Question 80

The following statement reads correctly, "The skunk works at Ford was successful in developing the new Mustang in record time."