Workforce Arrangements Quarter

Workgroup 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 Stakeholder Engagement Quarter.

Concepts

1. 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.
   • Formal group. A designated workgroup defined by an organization's structure.
   • 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.
2. Role. A set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit.
   • Role. Behavior patterns expected of someone occupying a given position in a social unit.
   • Role ambiguity. When role expectations are not clearly understood.
   • Role expectations. How others believe a person should act in a given situation.
   • Role overload. Having more work to accomplish than time permits.
   • Role perception. An individual's view of how he or she is supposed to act in a given situation.
3. Status. A prestige grading, position, or rank within a group.
   • Status. A socially defined position or rank given to groups or group members by others.
   • Status characteristics theory. A theory that states that differences in status characteristics create status hierarchies within groups.
4. Group cohesion. The extend to which members of a group support and validate one another while at work.
   • Group cohesiveness. The degree to which group members are attracted to one another and share the group's goals.
   • Group cohesion. A situation when group members are emotionally attached to one another and motivated toward the group because of their attachment.
5. Norm. A standard or expectation that is accepted and shared by a group's members.
   • Norm. An acceptable standard of behavior within a group that is shared by the group's members.
6. 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.
   • Conformity. The adjustment of one's behavior to align with the norms of the group.
   • Hawthorne Studies. A series of studies during the 1920s and 1930s that provided new insights into individual and group behavior.
7. 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.
   • Stereotype threat. The degree to which we internally agree with the generally negative stereotyped perceptions of our groups.
8. Group functioning. The quantity and quality of a group's work output.
   • Social loafing. The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually.
   • Social loafing. The tendency for individuals to expend less effort when working collectively than when working individually.
9. 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.
10. Group decision-making. individual decision-making
11. Employee empowerment. Giving employees more authority (power) to make decisions.
    • Decentralization. The degree to which lower-level employees provide input or actually make decisions.
    • Centralization. The degree to which decision making is concentrated at upper levels of the organization.
    • Centralization. The degree to which decision making is concentrated at a single point in an organization.
12. Work team. A group whose individual efforts result in performance that is greater than the sum of the individual inputs.
    • Work team. A group whose members work intensely on a specific, common goal using their positive synergy, individual and mutual accountability, and complementary skills.
    • Self-managed work team. A work team of 10 to 15 people who take on responsibilities of their former supervisors.
    • Self-managed work team. A type of work team that operates without a manager and is responsible for a complete work process or segment.
    • Virtual team. A work team that use computer technology to tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.
    • Virtual team. A type of work team that uses technology to link physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal.
    • Problem-solving team. A work team of 5 to 12 employees from the same department who meet for a few hours each week to discuss ways of improving quality, efficiency, and the work environment.
    • Problem-solving team. A work team from the same department of functional area that's involved in efforts to improve work activities or solve specific problems.
    • Cross-functional team. A work team composed of individuals from various functional specialties.
    • Cross-functional team. A work team composed of individuals from various functional specialties.
    • Cross-functional team. A work team of employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task.
    • Multiteam system. A collection of two or more interdependent teams that share a superordinate goal; a team of teams.
13. Job design. The way tasks are combined to form complete jobs.
    • Job design. The way the elements in a job are organized.
    • Proactive perspective of work design. An approach to job design in which employees take the initiative to change how their work is performed.
    • Relational job design. Constructing jobs so employees see the positive difference they can make in the lives of others directly through their network.
    • Relational perspective of work design. An approach to job design that focuses on how people's tasks and jobs are increasingly based on social relationships.
14. Job characteristics model. A framework for analyzing and designing jobs that identifies five primary core job dimensions, their interrelationships, and their impact on outcomes.
    • Job characteristics model. A model that proposes that any job can be described in terms of five core job dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
    • High-involvement work practice. Work practice designed to elicit greater input or involvement from workers.
    • High-performance work practice. Work practice that leads to both high individual and high organizational performance.

Methods

1. Group decision-making technique.
   • 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.
   • 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.
2. Survey feedback. The use of questionnaires to identify discrepancies among member perceptions; discussion follows, and remedies are suggested.

Instruments

• Material symbol. What conveys to employees who is important, the degree of egalitarianism top management desires, and the kinds of behavior that are appropriate.
• Team building. High interaction among team members to increase trust and openness.
• Pair working. A scenario where two team members share a single workstation and work together to develop a single feature.
• Swarming. Mutual work of team members with appropriate skills work together to complete a task that a team member is having trouble completing on his or her own.
• Open workplace. Workplace with few physical barriers and enclosures.
• Staff authority. Positions with some authority that have been created to support, assist, and advise those holding line authority.
• Workforce diversity. The concept that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics.
• Workforce diversity. The ways in which people in an organization are different from and similar to one another.
• Downsizing. The planned elimination of jobs in an organization.
• Affirmative action. Organizational programs that enhance the status of members of protected groups.
• Chain of command. The line of authority extending from upper organizational levels to the lowest levels, which clarifies who reports to whom.
• Chain of command. The unbroken line of authority that extends from the top of the organization to the lowest echelon and clarifies who reports to whom.
• Human resource planning. Ensuring that the organization has the right number and kinds of capable people in the right places and at the right times.
• Job description. A written statement that describes a job.
• Job engagement. The investment of an employee's physical, cognitive, and emotional energies into job performance.
• Job enlargement. The horizontal expansion of a job by increasing job scope.
• Job enrichment. The vertical expansion of a job by adding planning and evaluating responsibilities.
• Job rotation. The periodic shifting of an employee from one task to another.
• Job specification. A written statement of the minimum qualifications a person must possess to perform a given job successfully.
• Labor union. An organization that represents workers and seeks to protect their interests through collective bargaining.
• Line authority. Authority that entitles a manager to direct the work of an employee.
• Mental model. Team members' knowledge and beliefs about how the work gets done by the team.
• Mentoring. A process whereby an experienced organizational member (a mentor) provides advice and guidance to a less experiences member (a protégé).

Practices

The successor lecture is Workteam Leadership Quarter.