Workforce Arrangements Quarter

Group Design Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the first of four lectures of Operations Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise discovery, or, in other words, to concepts related to obtaining data needed to administer the enterprise effort; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Outline

The predecessor lecture is Social Rationale Quarter.

Concepts

1. Group decision-making. individual decision-making
2. Group. Two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives.
   • Group. Two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together to achieve specific goals.
   • Informal group. A group that is neither formally structured nor organizationally determined; such a group appears in response to the need for social contact.
   • Workgroup. A group that interacts primarily to share information and to make decisions to help each group member perform within his or her area of responsibility.
   • Interacting group. A typical group in which members interact with each other face to face.
   • Reference group. An important group to which individuals belong or hope to belong and with whose norms individuals are likely to conform.

• Conformity. The adjustment of one's behavior to align with the norms of the group.
• Groupshift. A change between a group's decision and individual decision that a member within the group would make; the shift can be toward either conservatism or greater risk but it generally is toward a more extreme version of the group's original position.
• Groupthink. A phenomenon in which the norm for consensus overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action.
• Groupthink. When a group exerts extensive pressure on an individual to align her or his opinion with others; opinions.
• Hawthorne Studies. A series of studies during the 1920s and 1930s that provided new insights into individual and group behavior.

• Nominal group technique. A group decision-making method in which individual members meet face to face to pool their judgments in a systematic but independent fashion.
• Political behavior. Activities that are not required as part of a person's formal role in the organization but that influence, or attempt to influence, the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within the organization.
• Stereotype threat. The degree to which we internally agree with the generally negative stereotyped perceptions of our groups.

Methods

• Thumb vote. A quick pulse to get a sense of where the team are in terms of commitment, or agreement on a decision, etc. thumb up generally means agree, yes, or good, and thumb down disagree, no or bad; the analog version of this allows the thumb to be anywhere on the half circle to indicate differing degrees of agreeability.
• Survey feedback. The use of questionnaires to identify discrepancies among member perceptions; discussion follows, and remedies are suggested.

Practices

The successor lecture is Leadership Quarter.