This entry is missingOverview, add relevant content to make the entry more complete, and it can also be upgraded quickly. Hurry upeditCome on!
Group structure is the composition of group members.Groupableage structure, ability structure, knowledge structure, character structure, etc.The group structure has an important impact on group behavior and work results.Proper collocation of group members can make all members of the group coordinate and cooperate closely, thus improving work efficiency.Improper collocation of group members will make the group loose, thus reducing work efficiency.[1]
What does the group structure variable include?It mainly includes: formal leadership, roles, norms, status, group size, and group composition.
Formal leadership
Announce
edit
Almost every working group has a formal leader.Their titles can be department manager, department head, foreman, project leader, task team leader or committee chairman.Group leadership has a great impact on group performance, which makes us prepare to discuss leadership in one chapter.In Chapter 11, we will review the research on leadership and study the impact of group leadership on group members and group performance.
role
Announce
edit
Shakespeare said: The world is a big stage, and all men and women are just actors on the stage.Using the same metaphor, we can say that all group members are actors, and each plays a role.We use the word role here to refer to a series of behavior patterns expected by people who occupy a position in a social unit.If each of us only chooses one role and can play it consistently for a long time, the understanding of role behavior will be much simpler.But unfortunately, we are forced to play many different roles at work and off duty.As we have seen, the key to understanding a person's behavior is to find out what role he is playing now.
For example, Bill Patterson is a factory manager of the Electronics Industry Company, a large electronic equipment manufacturer in Phoenix.
In his work, he has to play a variety of roles, such as employees of electronic industry companies, middle managers of companies,Electronic engineer, the company's main spokesman in the community.After work, he has more roles to play: husband, father, Catholic, member of Rotary International, tennis player, member of country club, etc.Many of these roles are compatible, while some are conflicting. For example, will Bill's religious beliefs affect his decision to cut employees as a manager?Will it affect his ability to provide accurate information to government departments?Recently, a new appointment in the company asked him to move to another place, but his family really wanted him to stay in Phoenix.Should he give in to the demands of his husband and father?
It should be clear that, like Bill, each of us needs to play a variety of different roles, and our behavior varies with the role we play.Bill's behavior when he went to church on Sunday morning was different from his behavior on the golf course that afternoon.It can also be said that different groups have different requirements for individual roles.
[Role identity]
Role identity refers to the consistency between the attitude towards a role and the actual role behavior.If people clearly realize that environmental conditions require them to make significant changes, they can quickly change their roles.For example, when trade union clerks are promoted to become grass-roots managers, their attitudes will change in the following months, from pro trade union to pro company management.But if the situation changes later and they fall back to their original position, their attitude will also change and they will start to be pro trade unions again.
[Role perception]
A person's understanding of what kind of behavior response he should make in a certain environment is role perception.Our behavioral response is based on our explanation of what others want us to do.
Where do we get these insights?It should be said that it comes from various stimuli around us: our friends, books, movies, and television.Many criminal police detectives nowadays learn their role behavior by reading Joseph Wambaugh's novels or watching movies like Dirty Harry.
Tomorrow's lawyers will be influenced by the jury's behavior in Simpson's double murder trial.Of course, the purpose of setting up apprenticeship system in trade and professional fields is to let beginners observe an expert and learn to act in the way expected by others.
[Role expectation]
Role expectations refer to what kind of behavioral response others think you should make in a specific situation.The way you behave is largely determined by the context in which you react.Generally, we believe that the United States senators are superior and noble;The coaches of the football team are enterprising, flexible and good at motivating their own players.In the same cultural background, if we hear that the priest in the neighborhood is also a bartender, we will be surprised, because our expectations for the roles of the priest and the bartender are too different.When role expectations focus on general role categories, they become role stereotypes or role stereotypes.
In the workplace, the concept of psychological contract helps us better examine the theme of role expectations.There is an unwritten agreement between employers and employees.This psychological contract stipulates the expectations of both parties, that is, the expectations of employers on employees and employees on employers.In fact, it is this psychological contract that stipulates the behavioral expectations of each role.Generally speaking, employees expect employers to treat employees fairly, provide them with acceptable working conditions, clearly express the task of the day, and give feedback on the quality of employees' work.Employers expect employees to work conscientiously, obey commands and be loyal to the organization.
If the role expectations contained in the psychological contract are not met, what will happen?If the employer fails to meet the employee's role expectations, the employee's performance andJob satisfactionIf the employee fails to meet the role expectations of the employer, the result may be: he or she is subject to some form of disciplinary punishment, or even dismissed.
Psychological contract should be regarded as the authoritative determinant of organizational behavior.This sentence accurately shows the importance of the role expectations of both sides.In Chapter 17, we will discuss how organizations socialize employees in order to make them act in the way they expect.
[Role Conflict]
When individuals face multiple role expectations, role conflicts may occur.If an individual obeys the requirements of one role, it is difficult to obey the requirements of another role, which leads to role conflict.In extreme cases, it may include such a situation: two or more role expectations faced by individuals are contradictory.
Among the various roles Bill Patterson played, some of which are conflicting.Bill tried to reconcile his role expectations as husband and father with his role expectations as company director.On the one hand, the former emphasizes family stability, cares about his wife and children, and has a strong desire to stay in the local area;
On the other hand, the electronic industry company expects employees to obey the company's needs and meet the requirements of his role as factory director, so that he should go to other places.In this way, his role expectation as husband and father conflicts with his role expectation as director of the company.Although in terms of his financial income and professional interest, Bill is willing to obey the company's needs and move to another place, the problem he is facing now is the conflict between family role expectations and career role expectations.
All people have experienced and will continue to experience role conflict.From our point of view, the key issue is how the role conflict caused by different role expectations within the organization affects organizational behavior.
Of course, role conflict will enhance the internal tension and frustration of individuals.Faced with role conflict, individuals can make a variety of behavioral responses.For example, individuals can adopt a formal and bureaucratic response: in this way, role conflicts can be resolved by rules and regulations that can regulate organizational activities.For example, when an employee is confronted with the conflict between the expectations of the company's control office and the factory director for various roles, he decides to do things according to the requirements of his immediate boss.In addition, individuals can also take other behavioral responses, such as retreat, delay, negotiation, or redefining facts or situations as we mentioned in Chapter 4 when discussing discord, to make them consistent.
Simulated prison experiment
A rather convincing role experiment was completed by Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University, and his colleagues.They set up a "prison" in the basement of the office building of the psychology department of Stanford University. They hired 24 students to participate in the experiment at a price of 15 dollars a day.These students are emotionally stable, physically healthy, law-abiding, and scored at a normal level in the general personality test.The experimenter randomly assigned roles to these students, some of whom were "guards" and others were "criminals", and formulated some basic rules.Then the experimenter hid behind the scenes to see how things would develop.
At the beginning of the two-week simulation experiment, there was not much difference between the students assigned as "guards" and the students assigned as "criminals".Moreover, the "guards" have not been specially trained to be prison guards.The experimenter only told them to "maintain law and order in prison" and not to take the nonsense of "criminals" seriously (such as "criminals" saying that violence is prohibited).In order to more realistically simulate prison life, "criminals" can receive visits from relatives and friends just like criminals in real prisons.However, the simulated guards change shifts every eight hours, and the simulated criminals have to stay in their cells day and night in addition to eating out, exercising, going to the toilet, and doing other necessary things.
It didn't take long for the "criminal" to recognize the authority of the "guard", or to imitate the guard to adjust himself and enter a new authority role.Especially after the "guards" smashed the "criminals" 'attempts to resist on the second day of the experiment, the "criminals" reacted more negatively.No matter what the "guard" ordered, the "criminal" obeyed.In fact, "criminals" began to believe that, as the "guards" often told them, they were really inferior and could not change the status quo.In addition, every "guard" has abused "criminals" in the process of simulation experiments.For example, one "guard" said, "I think I am unbelievable... I asked them to call each other's names and let them scrub the toilet with their hands. I really think of 'criminals' as livestock, and I always thought,' I must watch them to prevent them from doing bad things." Another "guard" added,"As soon as I arrived at the 'criminal''s cell, I was annoyed. They were wearing rags and the cell was full of bad smell. In front of our order, they cried to each other.They didn't regard this as an experiment, everything seemed to be true. Although they were still trying to maintain their original identity, we always showed them that we were the boss, which made their efforts have little effect. "
This simulation experiment proved quite successfully how quickly individuals learn a new role.Because the students participating in the experiment showed pathological reactions in the experiment, the researchers had to stop the experiment after six days of the experiment.It should be noted that the participants in this experiment are strictly selected people with normal mind and stable emotion.
What conclusions can you draw from this prison simulation experiment?The students who participated in this experiment, like most of us, learned about the role stereotypes of criminals and guards through the mass media and their own personal experiences, such as at home (parents and children), at school (teachers and students), and in other occasions involving the right and the right.On this basis, these students can easily and quickly enter into the hypothetical roles that are completely different from their original personality.In this example, we can see that people with normal personality who have not undergone the training required by the new role will also extremely behave in a way consistent with the role they play.
standard
Announce
edit
Have you ever noticed that on the golf course, when one partner plays, they can't talk to each other;In public, employees cannot criticize their boss.Why?The answer is: Norms.
All groups have formed their own norms.Norms are some behavior standards that are accepted by group members.Group normsLet group members know what they should and should not do under certain environmental conditions.From the perspective of individuals, group norms mean that, in a certain situation, groups expect individual behavior.
After group norms are recognized and accepted by group members, they become a means of influencing group members' behavior with minimal external control.Different groups and communities have different group norms. However, all groups have their own norms.
The formal specification of the group is written in the organization manual, which stipulates the rules and procedures that employees should follow.However, most of the rules in the organization are informal. For example, you don't need to be told. When the boss of the company headquarters comes to inspect, you can't throw paper airplanes or chat with colleagues endlessly.Similarly, we all know that when attending a job interview, when talking about the places where we were dissatisfied with our previous job, some things should not be talked about (for example, it is difficult to get on well with colleagues and superiors in work), but some things are more appropriate to talk about (lack of development opportunities, work is not important or meaningful).Facts have proved that even high school students know that some answers in such interviews are more in line with social expectations than others.
General type
The norms of a working group are like a person's fingerprint, each of which is unique.However, for most working groups, norms can still be divided into general types.
The first group norms are mostly related to group performance activities.Groups usually tell their members clearly how hard they should work, how they should complete their tasks, what level of output they should achieve, and how they should communicate with others.Such norms have a huge impact on individual employee performance.They can largely adjust the performance forecast based on the ability and motivation level of employees.
The second group norm is about the image of group members, including how to dress, show loyalty to the group or organization, when to be busy, and when to talk.Some organizations have developed a formal dress code, while others do not. But even in organizations without such a code, organizational members have some tacit standards about how to dress at work.It is important for individuals to show loyalty to groups or organizations.For example, in many organizations, especially for professional and technical personnel and senior management personnel, it is considered inappropriate to openly seek another job.
The third group norm is informal social conventions.Such norms come from informal groups and are mainly used to restrict the interaction among members of informal groups.For example, who the group members should have lunch with, who they should make friends with at work and off work, and social games are all subject to these norms.The last group norm relates to the allocation of resources.Such norms mainly involve the remuneration of employees, the distribution of difficult tasks, the distribution of new tools and equipment, and so on.
"How" and "Why"
What is the form of group norms?Why do they work?Reviewing the research in this field, we can answer these questions.
Generally speaking, group norms are gradually formed in the process of group members mastering the behaviors necessary for the effective operation of the group.Of course, some key events in the group may shorten the process and quickly strengthen the new specification.Most group norms are formed through one or more of the following four ways: (1) A clear statement made by a group member, who is usually the group leader or an influential person.For example, group leaders may specifically emphasize that they should not make personal phone calls or drink coffee at work, and the rest time should not exceed 10 minutes.(2) Key events in group history.This kind of event is usually the cause of the group to formulate some important norms.For example, during work, a bystander was injured because he was too close to the machine. Since then, the group has such a rule: group members should always pay attention to that no one except the operator should enter the site within 5 feet of the machine.(3) Personal friendship.The first behavior pattern within a group often sets the tone for the expectations of group members.For example, the members of the friendship group among students sit up in the first class.If someone takes their seat in class later, they will feel angry.
(4) Reservation behavior in past experience.When members from other groups enter a new group, they will bring some behavioral expectations in the original group.This can explain why the working group likes to absorb those members whose original background and experience are similar to those of the current group when adding new members, because the behavioral expectations brought by such new members may be more consistent with those already existing in the current group.
determinant
However, groups do not set norms for every possible situation, but mainly set norms that are important to themselves.So, what factors determine the importance of a norm?(1) If it can promote the survival of the group.Of course, the group is unwilling to fail, so the group focuses on strengthening the norms that can increase the chances of success.This means that they should try their best to protect themselves from interference from other groups or individuals.(2) If it can increase the predictability of group members' behavior.Predictive norms can be added to enable group members to predict each other's behavior, so that they can make appropriate responses: (3) If it can reduce embarrassing interpersonal problems among group members.A norm is important if it can guarantee the satisfaction of group members and prevent interpersonal friction as far as possible.(4) If it allows group members to express the central values of the group and clarify the signs representing group identity, then norms can encourage the performance of group values and group identity, which will help to strengthen and maintain the existence of the group.
Conformity
As a member of the group, you must be eager to be accepted by the group, so you will tend to do things according to the group's norms.A large number of facts show that groups can give their members great pressure to change their attitudes and behaviors and keep them consistent with group standards.
Do individuals accept the pressure of conformity from all the groups they belong to?Obviously, the answer is no.Because people usually participate in multiple groups, and the norms of these groups are different.In some cases, these norms may also contradict each other.So, what should individuals do?The answer is that they follow the norms of the groups they think are important. These groups may be the ones they have participated in now or they hope to participate in the future.This group that individuals think is very important is a reference group, and its characteristics are: individuals know other people in the group;Individuals think they are a member of this group or aspire to be a member of this group;Individuals feel that members of a group are important to themselves.It can also be seen from the definition of groups that not all groups can give their members the same pressure to conform.
The influence of the group's conformity pressure on its members and on the group members' individual judgments and attitudes has been fully proved in the classic experiment of S010monAsch.
Ah Xi formed a small group of seven or eight subjects and asked them to sit in the classroomComparative experimentTwo cards in their hands.One card has one straight line, and the other card has three straight lines. The three lines have different lengths.One of the three lines has the same length as the line on the first card.The length difference of line segments is very obvious.Under normal conditions, the probability of wrong judgment of the subject is less than 1%. The subject only needs to say out loud which of the three lines on the first card is the same length as that on the other card.But what will happen if the group members' initial answer is wrong?Will the pressure of the group to conform lead the uninformed subjects (USS) to change their answers in order to be consistent with other members of the group?That's what Ashi wants to know.For this reason, he made such an arrangement: let other members of the group make wrong answers, which is unknown to the uninformed subjects.Moreover, when Ashi arranged the seats, he purposely let the uninformed subjects sit at the last and give the final answer.
After the experiment began, several sets of similar exercises were done first.In these exercises, all the subjects made correct answers.However, when doing the third set of exercises, the first subject made an obviously wrong answer, for example, the line C is as long as the line X.The next subject also made the same wrong answer, and the following people did so until they did not know the subject.The unknown subject knows that B is the same length as X, but others say that it is C. The choice he faces is: can he publicly say the answer different from other members of the group?Or, in order to be consistent with the reaction of other members of the group, make an answer that you believe is wrong?
The results obtained by Ah Xi showed that in many experiments, about 35% of the subjects chose to be consistent with the answers of other members of the group, that is, they knew their answers were wrong, but this wrong answer was consistent with the answers of other members of the group.
What conclusions can we draw from this experiment?The results of Ashe's experiment show that group norms can create pressure on group members and force their reactions to be consistent.We all aspire to be a member of the group, rather than being different.We can further expand this conclusion: if an individual's view of something is very different from that of others in the group, he will feel a lot of pressure and drive him to be consistent with others.
status
Announce
edit
At the beginning of the first year of college, a teacher asked them to list what could show a person's status in high school.They listed a long list, such as being an athlete or playing truant without being caught.The teacher asked them to list what hindered their personal status in high school.They also effortlessly listed a list, such as the result has always been A, when going to school, let my mother drive, and so on.Finally, the teacher asked them to list what could neither improve nor hinder their personal status.They were at a loss.Finally, a student in the back row stood up and said, "In high school, nothing has nothing to do with personal status."
Status cognition
It refers to a social definition of the position or level of a group or group members by others.It permeates every corner of the society and has penetrated the walls of middle schools.To the student above, we can fully understand that nothing is irrelevant in the life composed of status and rank order.We live in a society full of hierarchical order. Although we have made great efforts, we are struggling to pursue a non hierarchical society.Even a small group has its own role, power and ritual norms to distinguish it from other members.When understanding human behavior, status is an important factor, because it is an important incentive factor. If an individual realizes that his or her status cognition is inconsistent with others' cognition of his or her status, it will have a huge impact on the individual's behavior response.
Formal and informal status
The status can be formally given by the group, that is, the organization makes the individual obtain a certain formal status by giving the individual a certain title or something pleasant.The title marked with "heavyweight world championship" or being selected as "outstanding teacher of the year" is status.We are all familiar with the external signs of senior status in the organization, such as large and bright offices, dazzling titles, generous salaries, flexible work arrangements, and so on.No matter whether the management of the organization realizes the existence of status hierarchy, it is obvious that there are some pleasant things in the organization that not all people can get, so they have the role of status markers.In more cases, we treat status issues in an informal sense.Status can be obtained informally through education, age, gender, skills, experience and other characteristics, as shown in Table 8-2.As long as anything is regarded as status related by members of other groups, it has status value.It should be remembered that informal status is not necessarily less important than formal status.
William F. Whyte showed the importance of status in his classic hotel research.
He believes that in a group, if the behavior is initiated by people of high status to people of low status, they can cooperate more happily together.He found that if a certain behavior was started by a person with low status, it would lead to conflict between the formal and informal status systems.An example he cited is that in the past, the restaurant waiter directly delivered the customer's menu to the checkout clerk, which means that the waiter with low status took the initiative in communication.Later, the restaurant installed aluminum wires on the menu, so that the menu can be hung up and hooked. The checkout staff can hook the menu when they feel necessary, so that the checkout staff will take the initiative.
Table 8-2 Professional Status: Ranking of American Jobs (Urgent to Investigate 740 Jobs)
White also noted that in the kitchen, the service personnel who give the menu to the chef and then deliver the prepared dishes are another example of low skilled personnel in the active position in the interaction process.Whether the service personnel explicitly or not urge the chef to "speed up", there will be conflicts between them.However, White found that there was almost no conflict between a person who handed over the menu and the chef, because he had to give the menu to the chef first, and then told the chef to go to serve the dishes after they were ready, so the chef was still in the initiative.White also put forward some suggestions in his research, telling hotel managers what changes would make the working procedures more consistent with people's actual status and grades, and would greatly improve the relationship between employees and work efficiency.
[Status and norms]
Many studies have shown that status has an interesting impact on the effectiveness of group norms and the pressure on people to conform.For example, compared with other members of the group, members of a group with higher status have greater freedom to deviate from group norms: they can better resist the pressure of conformity imposed on them by group norms than their peers with lower status.If a group member is highly valued by others in the group, and he does not care about the social rewards given to him by the group, then to a certain extent, he can disregard the group's conformity norms.
This finding can explain why many star athletes, famous actors, first-class salesmen, and outstanding scholars despise some social norms that constrain their colleagues.As a person of high status, their autonomy scope is relatively large.However, only when the activities of high position people do not seriously hinder the realization of group goals, can all this become a reality.
[Fair status]
It is important to make group members believe that the status level in the group is fair.If group members believe that there is unfairness in the group, it will cause imbalance within the group and bring about various corrective actions.
The concept of equity that we discussed in Chapter 6 also applies to status issues.People expect themselves to be paid in line with their investment.For example, if Dana and Annie are the last two candidates to compete for the position of head nurse in the hospital, and Dana has deeper qualifications and more sufficient conditions for promotion, Annie will think that Dana's promotion is fair;On the contrary, if Annie is promoted because she is the daughter-in-law of the hospital director, Dana will think it is unfair.
The external signs corresponding to formal status are also important factors for maintaining a sense of fairness.If we feel that a person's status is unfair to the status symbol given to him by the organization, there will be status conflicts.There are many examples. For example, a low-level employee in an organization has better office conditions;For another example, the company pays for the managers of subsidiaries to join the country club, but does not give such treatment to the vice president of the company.In the insurance industry, the contradiction between salary and status has always been a problem. In this industry, top salesmen earn two to five times more than senior management personnel.
As a result, it is difficult for insurance companies to attract insurance agents into the management.Our view is that all employees expect a person's everything and income to be consistent with their status.
Within a group, there are usually consistent status standards, so the status grades of group members are relatively consistent.But it is different between groups.When people move from one group to another, they may face conflict situations, because the status standards of this group are different, or the group members have different backgrounds.For example, executives of enterprises may use personal income or the development speed of the company as the decisive factor to measure personal status;The standard of government officials may be the budget size;The standard of professionals may be the degree of freedom in performing work tasks;The standard of blue collar workers may be seniority;Academic researchers may use the number of project grants or published papers as the standard.If groups composed of people from different backgrounds or groups from different backgrounds depend on each other, conflicts may arise in cooperation and consistency at different levels due to different status standards.As we will see in the next chapter, this will become a prominent problem when managers let people from different organizational departments form work teams.
Group size
Announce
edit
Can group size affect the overall behavior of a group?The answer is clear: yes, but its influence depends on the variables you are examining.
For example, facts show that small groups complete tasks faster than large groups.However, if the group participates in the process of solving problems, the large group performs better than the small group.It may be somewhat risky to convert this conclusion into figures, but we can use some parameters, and large groups of more than 12 people are better at absorbing a variety of different views.Therefore, if the goal of the group is to investigate the truth, then it should be more effective for large groups.On the contrary, small groups are good at accomplishing productive tasks.Therefore, groups with about 7 members are more effective in performing tasks.
One of the most important findings related to group size is social loafing.The so-called social laziness refers to a tendency that one person works harder in groups than when working alone.This discovery challenges the following logic: that is, the productivity of a group as a whole is at least equal to the sum of the individual productivity of group members.
The general stereotype of the group is that the group spirit will encourage its members to work harder, thus improving the overall productivity of the group.In the late 1920s, Ringelmann, a German psychologist, compared individual performance and group performance in a rope pulling experiment.He originally thought that group performance would be equal to the sum of individual performance, that is, the pull of three people pulling together is one person
The pulling force of 8 people pulling the rope together is 8 times that of 1 person pulling the rope alone.However, the results of the study did not confirm his expectations.The pulling force generated by a group of three people is only 2.5 times that of one person, and the pulling force generated by a group of eight people is less than 4 times that of one person.
Other studies that repeated Rigelman's work with similar tasks basically supported his findings.The increase of group size is negatively related to individual performance.In terms of overall productivity, the overall productivity of a four person group is greater than that of one or two people, but the larger the group size, the lower the productivity of individual group members.
What causes this social laziness effect?Perhaps the reason is that group members believe that other people are not doing their part.If you regard others as lazy or incompetent, you may reduce your efforts so that you will feel fair.Another explanation is the spread of group responsibility.Because the results of group activities cannot be attributed to the role of a specific person, the relationship between individual input and group output is very vague.In this case, individuals will reduce the efforts of the group.In other words, when individuals recognize that their contributions cannot be measured, the efficiency of the group will be reduced.
This social laziness effect in the working groupOrganizational BehaviorThe significance is significant: if Tuowu managers want to use the strength of the group to strengthen morale and work team, they must provide a means to measure individual efforts.Otherwise, managers should weigh whether the decline in productivity that the group may bring is acceptable.However, this conclusion is biased by the West. It goes hand in hand with individualistic culture. Countries like the United States and Canada are dominated by individualism, which dominates everything. Social laziness may be prominent.In a collectivist society where individuals are mainly motivated by group goals, this conclusion may not be applicable.For example, a comparative study on American employees and Chinese and Israeli employees (both are collectivist countries) found that Chinese employees and Israeli employees have no tendency to engage in social laziness.In fact, when Chinese employees and Israeli employees participate in the collective, their performance is higher than when they work alone.
Additional conclusions
Announce
edit
The research on group size can lead us to two other conclusions: (1) groups with odd members seem to be more popular than groups with even members;(2) A group of five or seven people is more effective in performing tasks than a larger group or a smaller group.The number of group members is odd, which can reduce the possibility of deadlock when voting.Moreover, a group composed of 5 or 7 people is enough to form a majority, allowing different opinions to be expressed.At the same time, it can also avoid some drawbacks related to large groups, such as minority occupying a dominant position, developing small groups, and prohibiting some members from participating in decision-making?Procrastination in decision-making, etc.
Group composition
Announce
edit
Most group activities need a variety of technologies and knowledge to be carried out smoothly.In this regard, we can draw the conclusion that heterogeneous groups - groups composed of different individuals - are more likely to have multiple capabilities and information, and their operation efficiency will be higher.Relevant research confirms this conclusion.If a group is heterogeneous in gender, personality, perspective, ability, skills and vision, it will increase the characteristics needed by the group to effectively complete the task.Such groups may have more conflicts, and it may not be easy to improvise due to the establishment of multiple positions.But facts have proved that this heterogeneous group is more effective than the homogeneous group in performing tasks.
Diversity consequences
Announce
edit
But,raceOr the diversity brought about by ethnic differences?There is evidence that this diversity sometimes interferes with the process of group interaction, at least in the short term.Cultural diversity seems to be an advantage when performing tasks that require multiple perspectives, but culturally heterogeneous groups will encounter more difficulties in learning to cooperate and solve problems.Fortunately, this difficulty will disappear over time.Although the performance of the newly formed cultural diversity group is worse than that of the newly formed cultural homogeneity group, this difference disappears after about three months.The reason is that heterogeneous groups need a certain amount of time to learn how to get along, how to treat different opinions and how to solve problems. After this learning process, the difficulties encountered by heterogeneous groups in the process of working together and solving problems disappear.
Population demography
Announce
edit
Recently, a branch of the problem of group composition has received extensive attention from group researchers.The question is to what extent group members have demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, race, education level and service years in the organization, and the impact of these characteristics on employee turnover rate.We call this variable group demography.
We discussed individual demographic factors in Chapter 3.Here, we will consider these factors in the context of the group.That is to say, what we are looking at now is no longer the question of whether a person is male or female, or whether an employee has served in the organization for 1 year or 10 years, but the relationship between the characteristics of an individual and the characteristics of the person he wants to work with.Let's first analyze the logic of population statistics of a group, review the evidence obtained, and then consider their implications.
Groups and organizations are made up of cohorts. What we call "cohorts" here is individuals with common characteristics.For example, all people born in 1960 are the same age.This means that they share some common experiences.For example, they experienced the women's movement, not the Korean War. People born in 1945 all experienced the Vietnam War, not the Great Depression of the 1930s.Therefore, demographic theory believes that some characteristics, such as age and the time when a person joined a specific group or organization, can help us predict the turnover rate of employees.It is worth noting that in the group composed of people with different experiences, the turnover rate of employees in this group is high due to the difficulty of communication between group members.In such groups, conflicts and power struggles may be difficult to control once they begin.In the process of more and more intense group conflict, the attraction of the group to its members becomes less and less, and the possibility of their resignation becomes greater and greater.Similarly, in the power struggle, losers are more likely to resign automatically or be forced to resign.
In order to verify the correctness of this theory, scholars have done many studies, and the results are encouraging.For example, if a large part of the members of a department and work group join the group at the same time, the turnover rate of group members other than those of the same kind is higher.
Similarly, if the gap between peers is deeper, their turnover rate will also increase.If people enter an organization at the same time or about the same time, they are likely to be willing to strengthen ties with each other, hold similar views on groups or organizations, and stay in the organization.On the contrary, if group members enter the group at different times, the mobility rate within the group may increase.
The significance of the above research is that the composition of the group may be an important variable in terms of predicting the turnover rate of group members.The difference itself may not predict the turnover rate of group members, but there are huge differences within a group, which will lead to an increase in the turnover rate of group members.In a group, if everyone is different from others, they will not have a strong sense of being an outsider.Therefore, the difference of group members in some aspects, rather than their level in some aspects, is the most important.
We can think that the differences in other aspects within the group, compared with the time when group members enter the group, are more likely to cause imbalance among group members and cause some employees to leave.These differences mainly refer to: differences in social background, gender differences, educational level differences, etc.Furthermore, the fact that the members of a group are women is not important for predicting the turnover rate.However, if there are 10 people in a group, 9 of whom are women and 1 is male, we can predict that the male employee is more likely to leave.However, there are fewer women in the management class, so they are more likely to move.
