Deck 9: Dealing With Team Problems

Question 1

The ___ conflict style is mutually beneficial when a win-win solution is sought that fully satisfies the interest of both parties.

Answer 1

collaborating

Question 2

Your golfing partner, the CEO of a local manufacturing firm, says to you, ""I'm proud to say you won't see any conflict in our organization."" How might you respond?

Answer 2

Answers should address two key points. First, a conflict-free situation is likely to be stagnant and non-creative. Properly managed, conflict provides many positive functions, including diagnosing sources of problems, motivating search for new approaches, providing an opportunity for people to recognize and value differences of opinion, giving parties to conflict the opportunity to learn, and so on. As such, it may be undesirable if there is in fact no conflict in the firm. Second, the fact that ""you won't see any conflict"" means only that conflict has not become manifest. There may still be latent conflict, felt conflict, perceived conflict, and so on. If these exist and don't become manifest, there may be tremendous frustrations; moderate levels of manifest conflict may ""let off steam,"" releasing pent-up tensions. Thus, the lack of visible conflict may say little about the existence of other forms of conflict, and may be dangerous if those other forms exist.

Question 3

A colleague says, ""I can understand how having a strong culture might help management. Still, words such as brainwashed and robot come to mind when I think of cultures where everyone is encouraged to think alike. That doesn't sound like a place I want to be."" What might you say to reassure your colleague?

Answer 3

There is an element of truth in what your colleague says. At the extreme, some things done to strengthen cultures may share characteristics with at least mild forms of brainwashing. Further, some people have raised concerns that strong corporate cultures are ""cult-like."" Still, organizational cultural serves many important functions, as discussed in the chapter. Also, it is important to keep in mind that strong cultures can take many forms. For example, cultures may have strong shared values for individualism, tolerance, creativity, flexibility, or critical thinking. Just as a society may have strong values relating to freedom of speech or the rights of individuals, organizations may have strong values in support of things that have little in common with brainwashing.

Question 4

Provide four guidelines a team leader may use to revive "zombie teams."

Question 5

Discuss four strategies for enhancing intergroup cooperation and reducing conflict that involve the integration of various structures into a team's system.

Question 6

Identify and briefly discuss six symptoms of groupthink.

Question 7

One of the Team Scholars profiled in this chapter, Karen "Etty" Jehn, discussed three types of conflict. List them and briefly describe each.

Question 8

Identify three types of rites and indicate the role of each:

Question 9

Identify and discuss six practical guidelines for dealing with problem behaviors in teams.

Question 10

Briefly discuss four types of problem behaviors in teams.

Question 11

Take a position for or against the following statement: "There is really no such thing as productive conflict. Any benefits gained through conflict could have been achieved equally well in other, less destructive ways."

Question 12

___ conflict is the awareness that we are in a conflict situation.

Question 13

___ are deep-seated personal standards that influence our moral judgments, responses to others, and commitment to personal, team, and organizational goals.

Question 14

Among the elements of organization cultures, ___ are role models, people who behave in exemplary ways that others seek to emulate.

Question 15

___ is the phenomenon in which our expectations shape reality

Question 16

The conflict style in which the parties to conflict try to find a "win-win" solution is called the ___ style.

Question 17

___ is defined as "the mode of thinking that people engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive in-group that it tends to over-ride realistic appraisals of alternative courses of action."

Question 18

___ combine cultural forms into a public performance

Question 19

___ is the tendency to attribute praise or blame to people rather than situations. We tend to overpraise and over blame people when things go well or poorly.

Question 20

___ conflict is essentially conflict waiting to happen.

Question 21

Identify four strategies to counter the team complacency seen in "zombie" teams.

Question 22

What is a crisis? Briefly discuss two strategies to help teams deal with crises.

Question 23

Task conflict, since it may foster creativity and encourage consideration of minority opinions, can often be helpful.

Question 24

An individual with an accommodating conflict style displays a good balance of assertiveness and cooperativeness.

Question 25

Narratives are written or spoken accounts used by members to make sense of their experience and express their feelings and beliefs.

Question 26

According to Karen "Etty" Jehn, a Team Scholar profiled in this chapter, the "paradox of intragroup conflict" refers to the fact that intragroup conflict often serves to resolve intergroup conflict.

Question 27

A culture in which there is sharing and acceptance of core values is called a unified culture.

Question 28

According to the groupthink model, moral dilemmas are an element of the provocative situational context that is an antecedent of concurrence-seeking tendency.

Question 29

Contrary to the Janis groupthink model, it appears that cohesiveness is not a precursor of groupthink.

Question 30

The accommodating style should never be used.

Question 31

Rites, while interesting to observe, actually have little importance in work organizations.

Question 32

Which of the following is not a potential benefit of conflict?

A)it helps diagnose sources of problems
B)it helps motivate the search for new approaches
C)it provides an opportunity for people to recognize and value differences of opinion
D)it gives both parties the opportunity to practice tolerance
E)none of the above

Question 33

In the conflict process model presented in the text:

A)felt conflict precedes perceived conflict
B)perceived conflict precedes felt conflict
C)felt conflict and perceived conflict are not directly related
D)felt conflict and perceived conflict are mutually reinforcing
E)none of the above

Question 34

Identify and discuss seven important functions of organizational culture.

Question 35

The approach in negotiation that seeks to get as big a total as across negotiators as possible (enlarging the pie) is called:

A)a distributive approach
B)an additive approach
C)a disjunctive approach
D)an integrative approach
E)a yeasted approach

Question 36

Which of the following are relatively simple combinations of repetitive behaviors, often brief and carried out with much thought?

A)symbols
B)rites
C)rituals
D)continuations
E)none of the above

Question 37

The "Teams in the News" box. "Law Enforcement Agencies and the Boston Marathon Bombings, was provided to illustrate which of the following regarding the agencies involved?

A)interteam conflict
B)intrateam conflict
C)incompatible conflict styles
D)effective interteam coordination
E)none of the above

Question 38

Which of the following conflict styles may be appropriate when an issue is unimportant, you perceive no chance of satisfying your concerns, when potential disruption outweighs the benefit of resolution, and when others can resolve the conflict more effectively?

A)competing
B)avoiding
C)accomodating
D)compromising
E)collaborative

Question 39

Which of the following is not considered to be a defect in the groupthink model?

A)failure to reexamine the preferred choice
B)poor information search
C)excessive survey of alternatives
D)selective bias in information processing
E)none of the above.

Question 40

One of the Team Scholars profiled in this chapter, Mary Waller, discussed mental models. Mental models are:

A)mental representations of knowledge, relationships or systems
B)artificial intelligence programs designed to simulate team member decision processes
C)sets of strategies designed to facilitate team decision making in crisis situations
D)attractive people used in videos to most effectively communicate key decisions
E)none of the above

Question 41

In the conflict process model presented in the text, the view that manifest conflict ""just isn't worth it"" would be a:

A)strategic consideration
B)environmental effect
C)cognitive disrupter
D)conflict resolution mechanism
E)none of the above

Question 42

Which of the following statements about the conflict process model presented in the text is false?

A)Environmental effects influence latent conflict.
B)Perceived conflict influences latent conflict.
C)Manifest conflict influences the conflict aftermath.
D)Attention-focus and diversion mechanisms influence perceived conflict.
E)None of the above.

Question 43

When negotiating, it is always best to take a purely distributive approach in order to get the largest feasible portion of the final settlement "pie."