And rely on other team members for information

and rely on other team members for information, materials and resources needed to accomplish work
for the team.
 The process of how the work gets done
 The relationship between one member’s work and another member’s work to produce group
outcomes.
 Task - About the relationship between a group member’s individual contribution to the
performance of the group
o Additive Task – sum total task
 Tasks in which group performance is dependent on the sum of the performance
of individual group members.
 For additive tasks, the potential performance of the group increases with group
size. Eg. Fundraising – everyone’s contribution matters to total
o Disjunctive – best contributor matters
 Tasks in which group performance is dependent on the performance of the best
group member.
 The potential performance of groups doing disjunctive tasks increases with group
size. Eg. Trivia teams – if you have someone on your team who knows
everything, it doesn’t matter who else is on the team.
o Conjunctive – worst contributor matters
 Tasks in which group performance is limited by the performance of the
poorest group member.
 Both the potential and actual performance of conjunctive tasks would decrease
as group size increases. Eg. Assembly line work teams – the slowest person slows
the whole team down.
o Compensatory – average contributor matters
 Tasks in which group performance is limited by the average performance of all
group and size will vary as it depends on the composition, but in general past a
certain point as the size goes up performance should regress to the mean.
o Process Losses
 Group performance difficulties stemming from the problems of motivating and
coordinating larger groups
 Process losses are caused by events that occur within the group that make it
difficult for the group to live up to its full potential.
 As groups performing tasks bigger, they tend to suffer from process losses
 Actual performance = potential performance – process losses
 Goal
 Outcome

Input-Process-Output Model
 Group Input : how does member diversity impact group processes and group outcomes?
o Input:
 Individual-level factors: member attributes, etc.
 Group-level factors: group size, norms, etc.
 Environmental-level factors: tasks, org resources, etc.
o Member Attributes
 Cognitive ability and Big-Five Personality: performance and group cohesion
 Member diversity: surface and deep diversity
 Bad: Longer group development process, More conflict and confusion,
Miscommunication, Difficulty in reaching agreements
 Good: More creative and more open, Multiple perspectives, Increased
flexibility, Better problem-solving skills
 Group Composition/Diversity:
 Homogeneous: Simple tasks, Sequential tasks, Tasks that require
cooperation, Tasks that must be done quickly
 Heterogeneous: Complex tasks, Collective tasks, Tasks that requires
creativity, Tasks that need not be done quickly
 Group process