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CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior 200 Perception Have you ever experienced something with another person, and afterward realized that the two of you understood the experience completely differently? Maybe it’s happened at the movies, when you figured out who the villain was, and your friend had no idea—even though you were sitting together in the same movie! Or imagine in the business world that a certain manager’s assistant takes several days to make an important decision. Does she take so long because she’s slow, disorganized, and reluctant to make up her mind? Or is she thorough, thoughtful, and deliberate? Two different managers may have two different ideas about her. These two different interpretations are examples of different perceptions. Perception is the way people make sense of their world. Or, to put it a little more formally, perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory impressions to give meaning to the environment. What Influences Perception Consider another example of different perceptions. Bill shows up for a job interview at a large petroleum products firm—and he has a nose ring. Cathy, who is 45, is a marketing supervisor for the company. She’s likely to be Bill’s supervisor if he’s hired. But he may not get the job, because she’s not impressed with the nose ring. She checks in afterward with Sean. He is 22 and is the human resources recruiter who first brought Bill in to talk about a job. Sean gets an earful from Cathy: “That guy had a nose ring! What made you’d think he’d fit in around here?” Sean is puzzled. He can’t remember whether he even saw the nose ring when he first met Bill. He certainly didn’t think it was anything he needed to warn Cathy about. perception how people learn foundations of group behavior Learn About . . . B Think of an experience in which someone got you to change your usual behavior. How did they accomplish it? Quick Write LESSON 2 2 Managers and Group Behavior Managers and Group Behavior

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Page 1: Managers and Group Behavior7420471_CH07_02_pp200-213 7/17/08 1:42 PM Page 202. How Attributions Can Be Distorted Researchers have learned from their study of attribution theory that

CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior200

Perception Have you ever experienced something with another person,and afterward realized that the two of you understood theexperience completely differently? Maybe it’s happened at themovies, when you figured out who the villain was, and yourfriend had no idea—even though you were sitting together inthe same movie!

Or imagine in the business world that a certain manager’sassistant takes several days to make an important decision.Does she take so long because she’s slow, disorganized, andreluctant to make up her mind? Or is she thorough,thoughtful, and deliberate? Two different managers may havetwo different ideas about her.

These two different interpretations are examples of differentperceptions. Perception is the way people make sense of theirworld. Or, to put it a little more formally, perception is theprocess of organizing and interpreting sensory impressions to givemeaning to the environment.

What Influences Perception

Consider another example of different perceptions. Bill showsup for a job interview at a large petroleum products firm—andhe has a nose ring. Cathy, who is 45, is a marketing supervisorfor the company. She’s likely to be Bill’s supervisor if he’shired. But he may not get the job, because she’s not impressedwith the nose ring.

She checks in afterward with Sean. He is 22 and is the humanresources recruiter who first brought Bill in to talk about a job.Sean gets an earful from Cathy: “That guy had a nose ring!What made you’d think he’d fit in around here?”

Sean is puzzled. He can’t remember whether he even saw thenose ring when he first met Bill. He certainly didn’t think itwas anything he needed to warn Cathy about.

• perception

• how people learn

• foundations of groupbehavior

Learn About . . . B

Think of an experience inwhich someone got you tochange your usual behavior.How did they accomplishit?

Quick Write

L E S S O N

22 Managers and Group BehaviorManagers and Group Behavior

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As you see, people’s perceptions are affected by theirown attitudes, background, and life experience. Yourassessment of another is also affected by where andhow you both meet. And a person’s characteristics canalso influence your interpretation of him or her.Someone who’s large and loud will stand out, and youwill see that person differently than you will a quiet,unassuming individual at the edge of a crowd.

Think how your impressions of people are shaped bythe context in which you meet. Someone you meet forthe first time in the school library working on a reportmay always seem studious to you, for instance.Someone you first meet at a party where everyone is alldressed up may seem rather glamorous and exciting.Someone you meet on a Saturday afternoon wheneveryone in the group is just goofing off at theneighborhood pizza place may seem hard to takeseriously later on. And if someone you trust and admireintroduces another person to you, that introduction willmake you think well of the new person. “If she’s a friendof Bill’s, she must be OK,” you are likely to think.

How Managers Judge Employees

Much research into perception has focused on studies ofhow people see inanimate objects. The pictures in Figure 2.1are good examples of how your eyes can play tricks on you. Butmanagers have to be most concerned with how people perceiveother people. When people look at other human beings, theydraw conclusions and make assumptions about them. They tryto explain other people’s behavior—often based on incompleteinformation. Suppose you see a young woman wearing a jacketwith the logo of a particular baseball team. Does the jacketmean she’s a fan? Or does it just mean that she was chilly, andher boyfriend gave her his jacket to keep her warm?

Attribution Theory

Your perceptions and judgments about a person, then, arebased on assumptions you make about them. Many of theassumptions have led researchers to develop attributiontheory. Attribution theory is based on the premise that peoplejudge other people differently depending on the meaning theyattribute to a given behavior.

When you look at another’s behavior, you try to decidewhether the behavior is internally or externally caused.Internal causation has to do with intents and motives that the

LESSON 2 | Managers and Group Behavior 201

• perception• attribution theory• fundamental

attribution error• self-serving bias• learning• operant conditioning• social learning

theory• shaping behavior• group• role• norms• status• social loafing• group cohesiveness

VocabularyB

What do you think of this man?If you were interviewing him fora job in your company, whatwould be your first reaction?Positive? Think again. This is aphoto of Ted Bundy, one ofAmerica’s most notorious serialkillers.Corbis/Bettmann

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CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior202

person can control. It’s the things someone does “on purpose.” Externally causedbehavior gets into things beyond the individual’s control. If an employee is late towork on the new boss’s first day, the new boss may think that employee just has a badhabit of often being late. But in fact, the tardiness may be externally caused—theremay be a transit strike, for instance, or perhaps the employee had to take his car to theshop after being rear-ended in traffic.

A manager trying to decide whether another person’s behavior has internal or externalcauses usually looks at three factors:

1. distinctiveness

2. consensus

3. consistency.

The first factor, distinctiveness here refers to whether the behavior shows up everywherein someone’s life, or just under certain circumstances. Take an employee’s tardiness,for example. A manager may judge in one way an employee who is always runninglate. But the same manager may judge in another way another employee who is latejust once, and for a specific reason such as unexpected construction on the road.

Consensus, the second factor, refers to problems that everyone has. If all the employeeswho took that route in to the office got tangled up with the same constructionproject, their managers will judge their lateness less harshly. If one employee is theonly person who has a problem, the manager’s judgment against him or her will beharsher. The manager will think the problem behavior has an internal cause.

Consistency is the third factor. If a person is late every morning, the boss is likely tothink the behavior has an internal cause—something the employee should be able toget a grip on.

Figure 2.2 illustrates how managers look at individual behavior in light of the threefactors in attribution theory.

Old woman or young woman? Two faces or an urn? A knight on a horse?

FI G U R E 2.1

Perceptual Challenges: What Do You See?

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How Attributions Can Be Distorted

Researchers have learned from their study of attribution theory that errors or biasesdistort attributions, or people’s judgment of others’ behavior. The researchers havefound that when most people judge others, they tend to assume more behavior hasinternal causes than is the case. The boss worried about the late employee may see aninternal cause of laziness but be unaware of the employee’s problems with irregularbus service.

There’s a special term for these distortions: fundamental attribution error, the tendencyto underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal orpersonal factors when making judgments about others’ behavior.

This works in reverse, too. Individuals tend to regard their own success as the result oftheir hard work and other internal factors, but tend to ascribe others’ success toexternal factors, such as luck. Researchers use the term self-serving bias to refer to thetendency for individuals to attribute their own success to internal factors while blamingexternal factors for their failures.

Shortcuts Managers Use in Judging Others

As you may have gathered, managers must keep an eye on many different things andpeople in the workplace. All this observing and interpreting takes time and effort, somanagers often turn to shortcuts to help them. These often do save time and helpthem make accurate assessments quickly. The shortcuts aren’t foolproof, though. Amanager who tries to “speed read” his or her staff runs the risk of misreading someonecompletely (see Figure 2.3).

LESSON 2 | Managers and Group Behavior 203

Individualbehavior

Distinctiveness

Consensus

Consistency

External

Internal

External

Internal

Internal

External

Observation Interpretation Attributionof Cause

High

Low

High

Low

High

Low

FI G U R E 2.2

The Process of Attribution Theory

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Here are some of these shortcuts:

• Selectivity, meaning that a manager decides to look at only certain indicatorsbefore judging someone. (“If he went to my old school, he’s probably prettygood.”)

• Assumed similarity, or the “like me” effect, in which the observer sees himself orherself in the person he’s observing. A manager may want challenge andresponsibility in her work—and may assume, incorrectly, that everyone elsedoes, too. This misperception is likely to get in the way of good communicationin the workplace.

• Stereotyping is another shortcut. A manager may believe “All older workers arejust waiting to retire,” or “The younger generation can’t be trusted to handlecustomer service calls.”

• The halo effect is another shortcut—a tendency to let one fact about someonegovern one’s entire picture of that person. For a young person who was boredlast year with a tired-sounding English teacher, the enthusiasm of a young newteacher may be very appealing. But a good teacher needs to bring more to theclassroom than just enthusiasm, and the halo effect may keep students fromnoticing the new teacher’s shortcomings.

• In the self-fulfilling prophecy, an employee ends up acting out the manager’sprediction for him or her. It starts when the manager develops a perception ofan employee, including a prediction of how well (or not) that employee will do.A manager who believes he is in charge of a group of overachievers will bepleased at how well they do. But if the manager thinks she’s supervising a groupof people who can’t quite cut it, she will find that this group, too, will act outthe script that’s been written for them. (Something similar often goes on inschools between teachers and students.)

CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior204

SHORTCUT WHAT IT ISDISTORTION

Selectivity People assimilate certain bits and pieces “Speed reading” others may result in anof what they observe depending on their inaccurate picture of theminterests, background, experience, and attitudesAssumed similarity People assume that others are like them May fail to take into account individualdifferences, resulting in incorrect similarities

Stereotyping People judge others on the basis of their May result in distorted judgments because perception of a group to which the others belong many stereotypes have no factual foundation

Halo effect People form an impression of others on Fails to take into account the total picture the basis of a single trait

of what an individual has doneSelf-fulfilling prophecy People perceive others in a certain way, May result in getting the behavior

and, in turn, those others behave in expected, not the true behavior of individualsways that are consistent with the perception

FI G U R E 2.3

Distortions in Shortcut Methods in Judging Others

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How Understanding Perceptions Helps Managers Be More Effective

In any event, managers must recognize that their employees respond to perceptions,not necessarily to reality. An employee’s performance review may be a model ofobjectivity and fairness. But if the employee thinks it’s unfair, that’s the perception heor she will act on. The company may end up losing an employee it would prefer tokeep. Managers need to pay close attention to how employees perceive both their jobsand the company’s management practices.

How People Learn To explain and predict behavior, a manager also must understand how people learn.Almost all complex behavior is learned. Learning is any relatively permanent change inbehavior that occurs because of experience.

In this sense, learning goes well beyond things you study in school. You are learningfrom your experiences all the time.

How do people learn, though? Psychologists have two popular theories to explain theway people pick up new patterns of behavior: operant conditioning and sociallearning theory.

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning is a behavioral theory that argues that voluntary, or learned, behavioris a function of its consequences. People learn to behave so that they get what they wantand avoid what they don’t want. This principle covers all kinds of situations. It coversstudents studying to get good grades on exams. And it applies to suburban officeworkers figuring out how early to leave for work to avoid rush-hour traffic.

The late Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner is linked with this theory. He didn’t inventit, but built on a foundation of earlier work in the field. He has his critics, but eventhe staunchest among them admit that his principles work.

Skinner argued that creating pleasing consequences for a particular behavior wouldresult in more of that behavior. Behavior that is not rewarded, or is even punished, isless likely to be repeated.

Once you understand this principle, you’ll see it in action everywhere. You’ll alsounderstand that some of the reinforcements—the positive or negative consequencesintended to affect behavior—are implied, rather than openly stated. A real estateagent, for instance, finds that having a high income depends on generating manylistings and sales in his or her territory. Probably no one had to tell the agent that,though. The agent just figured it out and started hustling.

Sometimes even when linkages are made explicit, they encourage behavior that’s nototherwise a good idea. A supervisor facing a crunch on a big project may encourageemployees to put in lots of overtime during the weeks of the project, and may tellthem they’ll be rewarded accordingly during their next performance appraisal. But if

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the appraisal arrives and includes no rewards for the overtime during the big project,the employees may decide not to push so hard the next time a project comes up.

Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory is another concept about how people learn. Social learningtheory is the theory that people can learn through observation and direct experience.

You observe what happens to other people, and you hear about their experiences, inaddition to paying attention to your own. Among the models you learn from is thebehavior of parents, teachers, brothers and sisters, friends, and other adults such asrelatives and neighbors—and even movie and TV stars.

Social learning theory is an extension of operant conditioning. It assumes thatconsequences shape behavior. But this theory also acknowledges that people learn bywatching others. It acknowledges, too, the importance of perception in learning.People respond to the way they perceive and define consequences. They don’tnecessarily respond to the consequences themselves.

Central to social learning theory is the notion that different models influence anindividual differently. The kind of influence a model has on you reflects four specificprocesses:

1. Attentional processes: To learn from a model, you have to recognize and payattention to that model’s critical features. The models that influence you most arerepeatedly available ones you consider attractive, important, or similar to you.

2. Retention processes: A model’s influence will depend on how well you rememberthe model’s action, even when the model is no longer available.

3. Motor reproduction processes: After you have observed a model in action, you stillhave to perform the actual physical activities.

4. Reinforcement processes: You will be motivated to follow the model’s cues if you getpositive incentives or rewards for doing so. Reinforced behaviors will get moreattention. Besides, you will learn them better and perform them more often thanyou will behaviors that don’t get attention.

How Managers Shape Behavior

Managers must focus on how to teach employees to behave in ways that benefit theorganization. A manager will often attempt to mold employees by guiding theirlearning in graduated steps. Shaping behavior is the term for systematically reinforcingeach successive step that moves someone closer to a desired behavior.

If employees are already “with the program,” managers may not have to teach themmuch. But if the workers are far from the goal, their managers may have to get themthere by “baby steps,” with reinforcement all along the way. Suppose a company istrying to get an employee who is always half an hour late to arrive at work on time. Ifthe employee manages to come in only 20 minutes late, that’s an improvement—which the boss should reinforce with praise.

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There are four ways to shape behavior:

1. positive reinforcement

2. negative reinforcement

3. punishment

4. extinction.

Positive reinforcement you have already met: The boss who praises the tardy employeefor being “only” 20 minutes late is giving positive reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement involves issuing rebukes or criticisms in response to badbehavior. If a group of employees keeps taking too long for their morning coffee break,the boss can decide to complain to them directly every day until the problem stops.That would be negative reinforcement.

Punishment is probably a familiar concept to you. An employee who shows up for workdrunk, for instance, might be suspended without pay for a couple of days and sent home.

Extinction is the fourth tool. You can use it in situations like this: An employee keepsraising his hand to speak at the weekly staff meetings and then asks irrelevantquestions. This wastes everyone’s time—but it may not be worth it to the manager touse negative reinforcement. Instead, the manager may simply stop calling on theemployee during the weekly meetings. This saves time right away, and eventually theemployee will stop trying to ask the irrelevant questions.

How Understanding Learning Helps Managers Be More Effective

Managers can benefit from understanding the learning process, including the fourways to change behavior and the four processes that determine how people learn fromtheir models.

Managers should also think about how actively they will manage their employees’learning, through the rewards they allocate and the examples they set. If managerswant a certain type of behavior, but reward another type, they shouldn’t be surprisedif they get what they reward, rather than what they want.

Foundations of Group BehaviorIn the last lesson, you read about the sources of individual behavior. The behavior ofindividuals in groups, however, is not the same as the sum total of all their individualbehavior. People act differently in groups. To understand organizational behaviorbetter, you have to study groups.

Groups

A group is two or more interacting and interdependent individuals who come together toachieve particular objectives. Groups can be formal or informal. A group set up by acompany’s managers to prepare the staff for an office move is a good example of a

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formal group. The five or six people who meet in the lobby every morning at 10:30 togo out for coffee are an example of an informal group. So is the group of four or fivefriends you get together with regularly on Saturday nights.

Why do people join groups? For many different reasons. And people belong to anumber of different groups, each of which provides different benefits to theirmembers. Figure 2.4 details some important reasons for joining groups.

The Basic Concepts of Group Behavior

The foundation for understanding group behavior consists of roles, norms andconformity, status systems, and group cohesiveness.

Roles

A role is a set of expected behavior patterns attributed to someone who occupies a givenposition in a social unit. Even in a group as informal as your Saturday night pals, thereare probably a number of roles. If you think about it, for instance, you may realizethat one of your friends usually takes the initiative to suggest which movies to see.

In an organization, employees try to figure out their roles and learn what they aresupposed to do. They take their cues from the boss and their coworkers, and maybeeven from their job descriptions. And they may find themselves in conflict fromdifferent roles. A newly hired professor, for instance, may face pressure from colleaguesto grade strictly to hold up standards—and from students to grade generously andkeep everyone’s average in good shape.

CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior208

REASON PERCEIVED BENEFIT

Security Gaining strength in numbers; reducing the insecurityof standing aloneStatusAchieving some level of prestige from belonging to aparticular groupSelf-esteem Enhancing one’s feeling of self-worth—especially membership in a highly valued groupAffiliation Satisfying one’s social needs through social interactionPower

Achieving something through a group action not possible individually; protecting group members from unreasonabledemands of othersGoal achievement Providing an opportunity to accomplish a particular taskwhen it takes more than one person’s talents, knowledge,or power to complete the job

FI G U R E 2.4

Reasons People Join Groups

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How Norms and Conformity Affect Group Behavior

All groups have norms—acceptable standards shared by the members of a group. Normsgovern the way people dress at most companies, for instance. Most places don’t haveuniforms or written standards for attire. But they do have an informal standard, and youwould know if you fell short or dressed too formally. Sometimes a new employee maycontinue to wear a suit until coworkers tease and pressure him into more-casual attire.

The area of effort and performance is another part of work life generally governed bynorms rather than explicit rules. A company may have an official start of 8 a.m.—butdoes the workday really start on the dot of eight? Do people cut out right at theofficial quitting time? Or do some stay later because they came in later? Norms aroundsuch questions can be powerful predictors of employee performance.

Loyalty to an organization is another area where norms, rather than formal rules,govern. Few managers would tolerate employees who ridicule the organization, andemployees at any rank who are unhappy and seeking new employment elsewhere knowthey should be discreet about their searches. On the other side of the coin, the desire toshow loyalty often leads people to carry home briefcases full of work, come in onweekends, and even accept transfers to cities they wouldn’t otherwise choose to live in.

Solomon Asch studied group norms and the way they push people toward conformity(see “A Management Classic,”). People want to belong to the group and to avoid beingvisibly different. And when an individual’s opinion of objective data differssignificantly from that of others in the group, the person feels pressure to align his orher opinion to conform to those of the others.

LESSON 2 | Managers and Group Behavior 209

Why do people join the Rotary Club, a service organization, in their community?Research says that they do so in search of security, status, self-esteem, affiliation,power, or goal achievement.Eric S. Lesser/Getty Images, Inc.

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Status, and Why It Matters

Status is a prestige grading, position, or rank within a group. People have been thinkingabout status for about as long as human beings have been on the earth, it appears.Concerns about status can affect people’s behavior when they feel a differencebetween the way they see their status and the way others perceive it to be.

Status may be informally conferred, based on education, age, skill, or experience.“Informal” here doesn’t mean “unimportant”—or “unclear,” either. Anything can be asource of status. And members of groups are pretty clear on who in the group hasstatus and who doesn’t.

Within organizations, it’s important that employees believe the organization’s formalstatus system aligns with its informal system. If the organization makes much ofassigning prestige parking spaces to top officials, and one of the top spots is given tosomeone who wouldn’t have had a job at the company except that he was the generalmanager’s brother-in-law, that will cause a problem for the employees. And conversely,if a senior executive has a less desirable office than someone else farther down theorganizational chart, that will send a message of confusion through the company.

A Management ClassicSolomon Asch and Group ConformityCan pressure to fit in with a group be strong enough to change a member’s attitudeand behavior? According to some classic research by Solomon Asch (1907-1996), theanswer is Yes.

Asch’s study involved groups of seven or eight people in a classroom. An investigatorasked each of them to compare two cards. One card had one line. The other card hadthree lines of varying length. As you see in Figure 2.5, one of the lines on the three-line card was identical to the line on the one-line card. The difference in line lengthwas obvious. The test subject was to announce aloud which of the three lines matchedthe single line on the card. Under ordinary conditions, the error rate was under 1 percent.

But what if all the members of the group began to give incorrect answers? Would theunsuspecting subject (USS) change his or her answer to match the others’? That waswhat Asch wanted to find out. He arranged the group so that the USS was unawarethat the experiment was fixed. The chairs were set up so that the USS went last toannounce his or her decision.

The experiment began with two sets of matching exercises. All the subjects gave theright answer. On the third set, however, the subject gave an obviously wrong answer.For the cards in Figure 2.5, for instance, the subject would say “C” when the obviousanswer was “B.”

Then it was the turn of the USS. This person faced a decision: whether to publicly statea perception that differed from that of the others in the group. The USS had to

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consider, “Am I willing to disagree publicly? Or will I change my answer to fit in withthe group?”

Asch ran the experiment time and again, and hefound that his subjects conformed about 35percent of the time. That is, they gave an obviouslywrong answer because they preferred to agree withthe group than to be correct but out on their own.

The Asch study has a lot to say to managersconcerned with how groups behave. Individualstend to go with the pack. That’s why managersshould encourage a climate of openness so thatemployees can discuss problems without feelingthat there are “right” or “wrong” answers—andthey will be punished for giving the wrong answer.

How Group Size Affects Group Behavior

The size of a group affects its behavior—but just how depends on different criteria.Small groups complete tasks faster than larger ones do. But for solving problems, largergroups are better, because of their potential for diversity and for reaching out to moresources to gather facts. This advantage kicks in with groups starting with a dozenmembers. A good size for a group set up to do something with the facts already inhand is from five to seven members.

Researchers have studied a phenomenon known as social loafing—the tendency of an individual in a group to decrease his or her effort because responsibility and individualachievement cannot be measured. For example, a group of four tends to get more donethan a group of three—but at an individual level, the group of four, per person, is lessproductive than the trio.

Are Cohesive Groups More Effective?

It makes sense that groups with a lot of internal disagreement and lack of cooperationshould be less effective than are groups whose members generally agree, generally likeeach other, and generally cooperate with each other. Researchers use the term groupcohesiveness—to refer to the degree to which members of a group are attracted to eachother and share goals. The more the members of the group are attracted to one anotherand the more group goals align with individual goals, the greater their cohesiveness.

But there’s a little more to this question of cohesiveness than that. What counts inmaking a group effective is not only cohesiveness, but also attitudes. A group may sticktogether very well, but if the members’ attitudes toward their goals aren’t positive, theywon’t achieve them. You’ve no doubt seen this in school. There may be a group ofstudents at the back of the classroom who regularly disrupt things, for instance. They’rea cohesive group, all right—they’re all good buddies who laugh at each other’s jokes.But they’re not “with the program,” and they aren’t helping anyone meet the teacher’sgoals for the class.

LESSON 2 | Managers and Group Behavior 211

X A B C

FI G U R E 2.5

Examples of Cards Used in the Asch Study

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Figure 2.6 shows the findings of scholarly researchinto the question of cohesiveness, goals, andproductivity. A cohesive group aligned withorganizational goals will be highly productive. Aless cohesive group that still is aligned withorganizational goals will be moderately productive.A cohesive group that’s not in alignment withorganizational goals will be less productive than itsmembers would be on their own—that’s where thegroup of classroom cut-ups fits in. And when agroup is not particularly cohesive and or wellaligned with organizational goals, being in a grouphas no particular effect on productivity.

So it’s very important that managers know how toget groups to work together. The next chapter willdiscuss how to do that.

CHAPTER 7 | Foundations of Individual and Group Behavior212

Cohesiveness

High

Low

Alig

nmen

t of G

roup

and

Orga

niza

tiona

l Goa

ls Strong increasein productivity

Moderate increasein productivity

No significant effecton productivity

Decrease inproductivity

HighLow

FI G U R E 2.6

The Relationship Between Group Cohesiveness and Productivity

Air Force special forces units are such close-knitgroups that each member knows what theothers are thinking and how they will react incertain circumstances.Courtesy of US Air Force

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Page 14: Managers and Group Behavior7420471_CH07_02_pp200-213 7/17/08 1:42 PM Page 202. How Attributions Can Be Distorted Researchers have learned from their study of attribution theory that

LESSON 2 | Managers and Group Behavior 213

Lesson 2 ReviewUsing complete sentences, answer the following questions on a sheet ofpaper.

1. What three things does a manager trying to decide whetheranother person’s behavior has internal or external causes usuallylook at?

2. What is fundamental attribution error? Give an example.

3. What five shortcuts do managers use to “speed read” theiremployees?

4. What four processes determine the influence a model has onsomeone’s behavior?

5. What is “shaping behavior”? Give an example.

6. What are four ways to shape other people’s behavior?

7. What are six reasons that move people to join groups?

8. In Solomon Asch’s experiment, what percentage of the time didpeople conform? Why did they conform?

Applying Your Learning

9. Describe an experience in which you or someone close to you wasassigned to a group to achieve some specific goals.Was the groupcohesive? Did the group’s cohesiveness, or lack of it, help or hinderthe achievement of its goals?

CHECKPOINTS

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