BUSI 427 Week 2 Discussion Board Forum 1: Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies: Defining an Effective Team

BUSI 427 Team Dynamics, Discussion Board Forum 1: Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The two classmates and their threads are composites; the textbook and the research cited are real, and the structure follows Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 427.

Reply to Tamara

Tamara, your thread made a strong case that diverse teams make better decisions, and your example of a product team that caught a design flaw because one member had worked in customer service was a good illustration. I agree that different perspectives help, but I think the research supports a more specific version of your claim. Horwitz and Horwitz (2007) combined the results of many studies and found that task-related diversity, meaning differences in expertise, education and functional background, was positively related to team performance, while demographic diversity, such as differences in age, gender or ethnicity, showed no clear direct effect on performance either way. Your example is actually a case of task-related diversity: the customer service experience was relevant knowledge. That does not mean demographic diversity is unimportant; it may bring its own benefits, but the evidence suggests that teams gain most when members' different backgrounds bring different, relevant information and when the team has processes for sharing it. Structured turn-taking in meetings is one simple process that helps. Levi (2017) makes a related point in this week's chapters: cooperation depends on members believing their goals are linked, which a diverse team must build deliberately. Diversity gives a team more information; only good process turns that information into better decisions. How did your product team make sure the customer service member's view was heard?

Reply to Devon

Devon, I liked your reasoning that larger teams should produce more ideas, since each person brings a different perspective. The research suggests size has a hidden cost, though. In the experiments of Latané et al. (1979), students cheered and clapped at full volume by themselves and then in groups of two to six, and the sound each person contributed fell as more people joined in. Some of the shortfall reflected poor synchronization, yet the remainder was people simply trying less, the effect the authors named social loafing. Later research has found the effect across many kinds of tasks, especially when individual contributions are hard to identify. In your example of a twelve-person planning committee, it is likely that a few members did most of the work while others assumed someone else would. Levi (2017) suggests that teams can counter this with clear individual roles and visible contributions. A practical alternative might be a core team of four or five, each responsible for a defined piece, with others consulted for specific expertise. Levi's chapter on cooperation and competition adds that people work harder for a group when they believe their effort makes a difference to an outcome they care about, so smaller teams with visible roles serve motivation as well as coordination. Would your committee have produced more with fewer members and clearer assignments?

References

Horwitz, S. K., & Horwitz, I. B. (2007). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: A meta-analytic review of team demography. Journal of Management, 33(6), 987-1015. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308587

Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(6), 822-832. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.6.822

Levi, D. (2017). Group dynamics for teams (5th ed.). SAGE Publications.