Deck 8: Team Dynamics

Question 1

Teams are better suited to simple work such as routine processing jobs than complex jobs.

Answer 1

False
Explanation: For tasks that can be performed alone, process losses can make teams much less effective than a one-person project.

Question 2

Social loafing is most common in teams that are very small.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: Social loafing is higher when individual performance is hidden.Individual performance tends to be hidden in very large teams.

Question 3

Social loafing is more prevalent when the task is interesting.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: Social loafing is less prevalent when the task is interesting, because individuals are more motivated by the work itself to perform their duties.

Question 4

Task forces are temporary groups that typically investigate a particular problem and disband when the decision is made.

Question 5

Process losses are the resources expended to develop and maintain an effective team.

Question 6

Reciprocal interdependence is the highest level of task interdependence in organizations.

Question 7

Employees in a department are considered a team only when they directly interact and coordinate work activities with each other.

Question 8

Students experience sequential interdependence when they are lined up at the laser printers trying to get their assignments printed just before a class deadline.

Question 9

Teams are well-suited to complex work that can be divided into more specialized roles.

Question 10

Smaller teams have more process loss than the larger teams.

Question 11

Informal groups exist primarily to complete tasks for the organization that management doesn't know about.

Question 12

Employees are more motivated in teams because they are accountable to fellow team members who also monitor their performance.

Question 13

Brooks's law says that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later.

Question 14

The Beswick Company has an organizational team whose members are highly interdependent, but have different goals.The organization should try to reduce the level of interdependence.

Question 15

Teams typically provide poorer customer service due to interpersonal conflicts amongst the members.

Question 16

Social identity theory provides one of the reasons why people join informal groups.

Question 17

Teams are groups of two or more people who have equal influence over each other regarding the team's goals and means of achieving those goals.

Question 18

Team members are held together by their interdependence and need for collaboration to achieve common goals.

Question 19

Under stressful or dangerous conditions, people are more likely to stay together than disperse, even when the other people are strangers.

Question 20

Our desire for informal groups is mostly influenced by our drive to defend.

Question 21

Trust refers to positive expectations one person has toward another person in low-risk situations.

Question 22

Comforting and conflict resolution mainly assist team maintenance.

Question 23

Teams tend to have more cohesion when entry to the team is restricted.

Question 24

Some team-building interventions clarify the team's performance goals and increase the team's motivation to accomplish these goals.

Question 25

Cooperating, coordinating, and communicating are task related characteristics of effective team members.

Question 26

Of the three types of trust, only calculative trust is not based on perception.

Question 27

A role is a set of behaviors that people are expected to perform because they hold certain positions in a team and organization.

Question 28

Team members do not conform to team norms unless other team members apply reinforcement or punishment.

Question 29

Norms are the informal rules and shared expectations that groups establish to regulate the behavior of their members.

Question 30

The norming stage of team development is marked by interpersonal conflict as team members compete for leadership and other positions on the team.

Question 31

The members of a diverse team take longer to become a high-performing team.

Question 32

Team members typically hold one or more formal roles in the team as well as roles that they informally fulfill at various times.

Question 33

Homogeneous teams tend to have "fault lines" that may split the team to along gender, professional, or other dimensions.

Question 34

Diversity among team members often makes it more difficult for teams to become cohesive.

Question 35

When highly cohesive teams have norms that conflict with organizational goals, team performance is reduced.

Question 36

Team cohesiveness decreases with increased interaction because there are more chances for conflicts to emerge.

Question 37

During the adjourning stage of team development, team members shift their attention away from relationships and instead focus mainly on completing the task.

Question 38

To maximize cohesiveness, the team should be as small as possible without jeopardizing its ability to accomplish the task.

Question 39

Team processes in the team effectiveness model include team development, norms, cohesion, and trust.

Question 40

Teams develop their first real sense of cohesion during the norming stage of team development.

Question 41

Knowledge-based trust is confidence in one's own ability or knowledge.

Question 42

The nominal group technique is a variation of brainstorming.

Question 43

The nominal group technique removes the problems of evaluation apprehension and production blocking.

Question 44

The trust that new team members feel towards their teammates is fragile and easily weakened.

Question 45

Electronic brainstorming significantly reduces the problem of production blocking.

Question 46

Having plenty of structure is a success factor for virtual teams.

Question 47

Identification-based trust is potentially the strongest and most robust form of trust in work relationships.

Question 48

Team cohesion can cause team members to suppress dissenting opinions, except when a strong team norm is related to the issue of dissent.

Question 49

In most self-directed work teams, the supervisor assigns tasks that individual team members perform.

Question 50

Knowledge-based trust offers a low level of potential and is more unstable because it is exploratory in its nature.

Question 51

Production blocking refers to a constraint in team decision making that discourages employees from mentioning their ideas in front of coworkers.

Question 52

Self-directed work teams plan, organize, and control activities with little or no direct involvement of supervisors.

Question 53

The nominal group technique is not applied in real-world settings.

Question 54

Identification-based trust alone cannot sustain a team's relationship, because it relies on deterrence.

Question 55

Groups are considered teams only when:

A)they operate without any supervisor.
B)everyone in the department has the same set of skills.
C)employees directly interact with each other and coordinate work activities.
D)all employees are located in the same physical area.
E)most of the employees have the same level of motivation to accomplish goals.

Question 56

The nominal group technique tends to produce more and better ideas than do traditional interacting groups.

Question 57

Evaluation apprehension is most common in meetings attended by people with different levels of status or expertise.

Question 58

An important rule of brainstorming is that all the participants should evaluate and criticize the other team members' ideas.

Question 59

Calculus-based trust is based on the belief that the other party will deliver its promises because punishments would be applied if they fail to deliver those promises.

Question 60

When people join teams, they typically have a very low level of trust in the other team members.

Question 61

Employees with _____, in which work output is exchanged back and forth among individuals, should be organized into teams to facilitate coordination in their interwoven relationship.

A)pooled interdependence
B)reciprocal interdependence
C)counterproductive norms
D)high levels of social loafing
E)a very high level of heterogeneity

Question 62

Two company divisions produce completely different products but must seek funding from head office for a capital expansion project.The relationship between these two divisions would be best described as:

A)total interdependence.
B)sequential interdependence.
C)reciprocal interdependence.
D)anticipatory interdependence.
E)pooled interdependence.

Question 63

Social loafing occurs:

A)more in smaller rather than larger teams.
B)more when the task is boring than when it is interesting.
C)more in tasks with high interdependence.
D)more when employees believe the team's objective is important.
E)more among employees with collectivist rather than individualistic values.

Question 64

In team dynamics, process losses are best described as:

A)productivity losses that occur when individual members need to learn a new task.
B)information lost due to imperfect communication among team members.
C)resources expended towards team development and maintenance.
D)knowledge lost when a team member leaves the organization.
E)knowledge lost when tacit knowledge is converted to structural knowledge.

Question 65

Synergie Inc.formed a team to improve revenues for its service stations along major highways in Malaysia.This team, which included a service station manager, a truck driver, and four or five marketing executives, disbanded after it had reviewed the Malaysian service stations and submitted a business plan.This team is called a(n):

A)skunkworks.
B)bootleg group.
C)informal group.
D)community of practice.
E)task force.

Question 66

Which are the task-related characteristics in the "five C's" of effective member behaviors?

A)Comforting and communicating
B)Cooperating and conflict resolving
C)Coordinating and communicating
D)Conflict resolving and coordinating
E)Comforting and cooperating

Question 67

Brooks's Law says that adding more people to a late software project only makes it later.This law is mainly referring to:

A)the lack of team cohesiveness.
B)the existence of process losses.
C)excessive team norms.
D)an unfriendly team environment.
E)the formation of informal teams.

Question 68

Pooled interdependence is:

A)essential for team effectiveness.
B)the same as reciprocal interdependence.
C)stronger than sequential interdependence.
D)the best way to avoid social loafing.
E)is the lowest level of interdependence.

Question 69

According to social identity theory:

A)teams are never as productive as individuals working alone.
B)the most effective teams have a large number of members.
C)the team development process occurs more rapidly for heterogeneous teams than for homogeneous teams.
D)people define themselves by their group affiliations.
E)teams are less productive in performing complex tasks.

Question 70

Fellow team members often monitor performance more closely than a traditional supervisor.This is particularly true where the team's performance depends on:

A)technological factors.
B)the special efforts of members.
C)certain skills of members.
D)the aptitudes of members.
E)the worst performer in the group.

Question 71

Which of the following competencies would primarily assist team maintenance?

A)Cooperating
B)Coordinating
C)Communicating
D)Comforting
E)Concentrating

Question 72

_____ provides an explanation of why people belong to informal groups.

A)Need to defend
B)Social identity theory
C)Confirmation bias
D)Social loafing
E)Cognitive dissonance

Question 73

The phenomenon that occurs when people exert less effort when working in groups than when working alone is referred to as _____.

A)team cohesiveness
B)social identity
C)pooled interdependence
D)team conformity
E)social loafing

Question 74

Keeping the team size sufficiently small and designing tasks such that each team member's performance is measurable are two ways to:

A)minimize team cohesiveness.
B)add more roles to the team.
C)increase the risk of forming dysfunctional norms.
D)minimize social loafing.
E)minimize the process losses.

Question 75

Which of the following types of teams are best known for having a champion who uses bootlegging to develop new products, services, or procedures?

A)Skunkworks
B)Communities of practice
C)Task forces
D)Informal groups
E)Production teams

Question 76

A task force refers to any:

A)informal group that has the same members as the permanent task-oriented group.
B)formal group whose members work permanently and spend most of their time in that team.
C)formal group whose members must be able to perform all of the tasks of the team.
D)temporary team that investigates a particular problem and typically disbands when the decision is made.
E)temporary team that has members in different locations who depend on information technologies to communicate and coordinate their work effort.

Question 77

The drive to bond and the dynamics of social identity theory both explain why people:

A)join informal groups.
B)tend to ignore team norms whenever possible.
C)have difficulty feeling cohesive in teams.
D)engage in social loafing.
E)work better alone than in teams.

Question 78

Which of the following is not a factor that favors effective team behavior?

A)Individual rewards for contributions to the team
B)Information systems that support the team
C)Close physical layout of team members
D)Leadership that supports team behavior and structures
E)Distinctive clusters of work assigned to the team

Question 79

Which of the following types of task interdependence exists among production employees working on assembly lines?

A)Sequential interdependence
B)Total independence
C)Reciprocal interdependence
D)Pooled interdependence
E)Alternate interdependence

Question 80

Informal groups:

A)are initiated by the organization for special purposes.
B)exist primarily for the benefit of their members.
C)perform routine organizational goals.
D)always have a high level of interdependence.
E)perform uncommon tasks of the organization.