Advantages And Disadvantages Of Informal Groups

1. Describe the benefits and limitations of teams, and explain why people are motivated to join informal groups.

• The benefits of teams include the following:

• Teams make better decisions under proper conditions. They develop better products and services create an engaged workforce.

• With the need to bond, people feel motivated when they work in teams.

• Teams also increase accountability to fellow team members, hence it improves performance and coworkers become benchmarks of comparison.

• The limitations include the following:

• They have additional cost called process losses- cost of developing and maintaining teams.

• There might be differences of opinions from time to time making decision process slow.

• Developing and maintaining team requirements divert

Identify four constraints on team decision making and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of four structures aimed at improving team decision making.

• The four constraints are identified as time constraints, evaluation apprehension, pressure to conform and groupthink.

• The four structure and their pros and cons are as follows:

1. Constructive Conflict: The main advantage is that it presents different points of view and encourages them to rethink their previously held assumptions. On the contrary, the debate often falls prey to personal attacks.

2. Brainstorming: It brings out creative ideas, leads to team cohesion and increase enthusiasm in team members. However, it still results in production blocking and evaluation apprehension.

3. Electronic Brainstorming: There is minimal production blocking, evaluation apprehension and conformity problem. Still, it is often seen as too structured and technology-bound; also, it results in limited ability to control discussion.

4. Nominal Group Technique: It results in many better quality ideas and due o its high structure it maintains a relatively low potential for conflict. However, there is still a problem of production blocking and evaluation