Deck 8: Team Dynamics

Question 1

Teams are groups of two or more people who have equal influence over each other regarding the team's goals and means of achieving those goals.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Under stressful or dangerous conditions, people are more likely to stay together than disperse, even when the other people are strangers.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Employees are more motivated in teams because they are accountable to fellow team members who also monitor their performance.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

All teams exist to fulfill some purpose, either for the organization or for its members.

Question 5

Social loafing is more common among people with collectivist values.

Question 6

Social loafing is least common in situations where team members work alone towards a common output.

Question 7

Team members are held together by their interdependence and need for collaboration to achieve common goals.

Question 8

Organizational behavior scholars have concluded that employees always work better in teams than alone.

Question 9

Process losses are the resources expended to develop and maintain an effective team.

Question 10

Teams typically provide better customer service.

Question 11

Our desire for informal groups is mostly influenced by our drive to defend.

Question 12

Task forces are temporary groups that typically investigate a particular problem and disband when the decision is made.

Question 13

All teams are groups, but some types of groups are not teams.

Question 14

All groups are teams, but some types of teams are not groups.

Question 15

Some informal groups exist primarily to satisfy the drive to bond.

Question 16

Employees in a department are considered a team only when they directly interact and coordinate work activities with each other.

Question 17

Brooks' Law states that, "Whatever can go wrong in groups will, so one should be prepared for it."

Question 18

Teams are groups with some degree of task interdependence and a common objective.

Question 19

Informal groups exist primarily to complete tasks for the organization that management doesn't know about.

Question 20

Social identity theory partly explains why people join informal groups.

Question 21

Team effectiveness refers to how well a team accomplishes its objectives for the organization, even if this undermines the team's ability to survive for future tasks.

Question 22

Companies with the best team dynamics are more likely to have team-based rewards and encourage interaction among team members.

Question 23

Teams develop their first real sense of cohesion during the norming stage of team development.

Question 24

A team's effectiveness is partly measured by how well its members' needs are fulfilled.

Question 25

Reciprocal interdependence is the highest level of task interdependence in organizations.

Question 26

The five most frequently mentioned characteristics of effective team members are communicating, comforting, conflict resolution, coordinating, and cooperating.

Question 27

Diverse teams have faultlines that may split the team into subgroups along gender, ethnic or other dimensions.

Question 28

The optimal team size exists when the team is as small as possible, yet has enough people to accomplish the task.

Question 29

The longer team members work together, the better they develop common mental models to help them complete the work together.

Question 30

In effective teams, each member must possess the full set of competencies to perform the team's entire task alone.

Question 31

Communicating, comforting and conflict resolution are task related characteristics of effective team members.

Question 32

Team members typically hold one or more formal roles in the team as well as roles that they informally fulfill at various times.

Question 33

Students experience pooled interdependence when they are lined up at the laser printers trying to get their assignments done just before a class deadline.

Question 34

The norming stage of team development is marked by interpersonal conflict as team members compete for leadership and other positions on the team.

Question 35

Teams are generally more effective when the task is complex and lacks definition.

Question 36

During the adjourning stage of team development, team members shift their attention away from relationships and instead focus mainly on completing the task.

Question 37

Teams are well suited when complex work can be divided into more specialized roles.

Question 38

Teams are best suited for tasks with low interdependence among team members.

Question 39

Diverse teams take longer to work through the stages of team development than do heterogeneous teams.

Question 40

Forming, storming, and norming are the three main levels of task interdependence.

Question 41

Team cohesiveness decreases with increased interaction because there are more chances for conflicts to emerge.

Question 42

Cohesiveness tends to be higher in teams where the office design facilitates communication among team members.

Question 43

When highly cohesive teams have norms that conflict with organizational goals, team performance is reduced.

Question 44

Team members rarely conform to team norms unless other team members apply reinforcement or punishment.

Question 45

Knowledge-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.

Question 46

The only way to alter team norms is to disband the group.

Question 47

Identification-based trust is the most robust or sturdy form of trust in work relationships.

Question 48

Team roles are typically negotiated among team members.

Question 49

Trust occurs when we have positive expectations about another party's intentions and actions toward us in situations involving vulnerability.

Question 50

Calculus-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.

Question 51

One way to change team norms in existing teams is to explicitly discuss the counterproductive norms with team members using persuasive communication strategies.

Question 52

Highly cohesive teams invariably perform organizational objectives better than teams with moderate or low cohesiveness.

Question 53

Team building interventions often fail because many times they are offered as a three-day jump-start rather than an ongoing process.

Question 54

One advantage of team building activities is that they can be used as general solutions to general team problems.

Question 55

Some team-building interventions clarify the team's performance goals and increase the team's motivation to accomplish these goals.

Question 56

Knowledge-based trust develops over time.

Question 57

Diversity among team members tends to undermine cohesion.

Question 58

When people join teams, they usually begin with a very low level of trust in the other team members.

Question 59

To maximize cohesiveness, the team should be as small as possible without jeopardizing its ability to accomplish the task.

Question 60

Norms are the informal rules and standards established by a team to regulate the behavior of its members.

Question 61

Departments are considered teams only when:

A)they operate without any supervisor.
B)everyone in the department has the same set of skills.
C)employees directly interact with each other and coordinate work activities.
D)all employees are located in the same physical area.
E)all of the above conditions exist.

Question 62

Evaluation apprehension is most common in meetings attended by people with different levels of status or expertise.

Question 63

Production blocking occurs when employees are unable to complete their tasks because they spend too much time in meetings.

Question 64

Which of the following statements about teams and groups is FALSE?

A)Some teams exist without any goal or purpose.
B)A team can have dozens of members.
C)Departments are teams when employees interact with each other.
D)All members of a work group have influence, although some may have more influence than others.
E)A group always requires some form of communication among its members.

Question 65

In most self-directed work teams, the supervisor assigns tasks that individual team members perform.

Question 66

The nominal group technique involves a three-stage process.

Question 67

Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking.

Question 68

Teams have which of the following features?

A)Two or more people
B)Perceive themselves as a social entity
C)Exist to fulfill some purpose
D)All of the above
E)Only 'A' and 'C'

Question 69

One of the rules of brainstorming is that no one is allowed to piggyback or build on the ideas of other team members.

Question 70

The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups.

Question 71

The trust that new team members feel towards their teammates is fragile and easily weakened.

Question 72

The nominal group technique is essentially a variation of brainstorming.

Question 73

The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking.

Question 74

Constructive conflict occurs when team members hold different opinions or assumptions and debate the issues through an open, healthy dialogue.

Question 75

Virtual teams are usually permanent functional groups that communicate mainly through weekly face-to-face meetings.

Question 76

Having groupthink and evaluation apprehension are two characteristics of effective decision-making teams.

Question 77

Self-directed work teams plan, organize, and control activities with little or no direct involvement of supervisors.

Question 78

An important rule in brainstorming is that no one is allowed to evaluate or criticize another team member's ideas.

Question 79

Members of self-directed work teams have enriched and enlarged jobs.

Question 80

One symptom of groupthink is that the team feels comfortable with risky decisions because possible weaknesses are suppressed or glossed over.