Organizational Behavior

Term Paper #2

MAP 310A-002 Organizational Behavior

When individuals come together unknowing of each other, as most first semester Eller students do, establishing and determining the five elements of trust becomes the foundation of all interaction in our group. Among those five elements, consistency became our red flag for determining who was going to be a team player and strongly contribute to a strenuous semester. With many time consuming assignments, meetings, activities, consistency for ones ability to successfully accomplish and attend these functions identified who and what our challenges were for turning individuals into team players.

With only one member of our team not of American culture and little individualistic behavior, our challenges focused more on motivating teammates to actively participate and take on responsibility while conveying an attitude of organizational commitment. This challenge meant our team had to understand ones behavioral and personality characteristics and use them in a way that maximizes team efficiency and effectiveness. Team meetings would often take longer than they needed and assignments were done last minute due to our teams' inability to assimilate information and accomplish tasks efficiently. To eliminate this challenge our team began allocating roles and delegating larger responsibilities to certain members that have been consistent and trustworthy. With a sense of survival, more work for certain individuals did not damage individuals' job satisfaction.

Another challenge our team faced dealt with decision making and whether or not one agreed with or trusted the decision. Whether we were deciding what product to create for our business plan or who was going to get an assignment checked by a T.A., a feeling of uncertainty would often develop among teammates. Much of this anxiety was due to the fact that it was our first semester experiencing the high involvement expected from Eller but it was still a challenge to help these individuals develop positive synergy and become a work team.

As the semester comes to a close our teammates know and understand each others capabilities and work together to achieve the team's goal of scoring high. Now members have become more focused and accepting of responsibility, creating an effective team where individuals all work together to successfully accomplish tasks. Furthermore, each of the members mutually feels confident in all elements of trust and we feel the absence of one member is beneficial to our team.

Short cuts are often used as an initial screening process. At the beginning of the semester we judged teammates based on their majors, physical characteristics, and composure in class, assigning tasks to each member accordingly. Since none of the team members knew each other prior to entering Eller, this tactic was used to assess each member's skills and qualities. When little information is available, one tends to create a way to assess situations as accurately as possible. A stereotyping short cut was also used because one of our members is from Hong Kong and is exceptionally good at math so we put him in charge of all finance section. We used the halo effect as a short cut because one of the group members is really friendly so we all drew the impression that she would be very easy going.

As the semester took way members began to use selective perception shortcuts, noticing and acknowledging different activities and use of language from each member of the team. With use of the contrast effect, these activities and use of communication were used to delegate responsibility. When members were late to group meetings we used the attribution theory and blamed their punctuality on the fact that they didn't wake up or were lazy. Responsibility and task delegation was then determined based on how it influenced members of the team. We also used the contrast effect and judged other teammates performances based our own performance and how much effort we put into projects.

Now that most of the team interaction is over for the semester the need for stereotyping and halo affect are no longer relevant in the way we characterize team