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Does your team meet its deadlines?
What helps bring a group together to succeed? Read More
Group effects
The report didn't taken into account group formation effects and task/social preferences?
It is fairly well known that you shouldn't try to set the pace until the group reaches the norming stage which is roughly at the half-way mark of the life of the group. Though action/task oriented people are more comfortable in the early stages when they are given work to do, this is their way of socializing. They often become disruptive if they are not given work to do. They will also 'storm' more over the task, partly because they are doing the task.
This report surprises me a little. These effects are standard curriculum in management classrooms and training courses.
Group dynamics
Hi Jo,
Thanks for the interesting comments. What you note is something very much related to how knowledge claims are generated. For example, much of what management courses draw on is research in social psychology and the study of groups. Combined with this is practical knowledge and experience. From various studies and experience, we then begin to generalize principles, such as the one you write about as we "shouldn't set the pace until the group reaches the norming stage." This statement assumes a theoretical stance about "norming" in a group.
As with all knowledge claims, the assumptions are crucial. The researchers I cited in this blog, don't make assumptions about social norms per se, they work from a different perspective. And, for example, they don't assume that the participants' preference for a pacing style has anything to do with socializing, because they didn't collect data on this. In short, they make fewer assumptions, and stay closer to their data.
All this is to say, that "standard curriculum" doesn't mean that it's correct. I think the more important question with any study is, "what can I learn from this that will affect what I think I understand already?" What we consider standard curriculum this year may not even be taught the next as we do more research and learn more.
We all work with different "disciplinary lenses on" that affect how we see the world, what we count as data and knowledge. When we speak with someone outside our own assumptive framework, we'll only learn if we approach with curiosity as opposed to simply rejecting ideas because they don't fit what we think we already know.
Finally, you're absolutely right that the research doesn't take into account many potentially confounding or important variables in group/social processes. No single research project can take it all into account. Their focus was on two antecedents of "shared temporal cognitions" - pacing style and temporal reminders. Did your management classes include these ideas? I think not, so we all learned something new.
Learning - ours the task eternal!
cheers,
tim
Assumptions
It's all in the details. This is why most research doesn't mean anything until we can actually assess how the research was done which none of us will do.
As a result most social studies research is like literary criticism. We justify our assumptions using data we collect for that intent.
The fallacy of objective research is that the common denominator is always the human being and human beings are subjective by nature.
Since most researchers learn about the outside world but not about their inside world, most research will be tainted by their lack of self knowledge since they have not done the inner work. One important purpose of the inner work is to identify the unconscious biases we project on life and make us less able to see life for what it is.
We can never see it for what it is but part of the game of life is to become as conscious as we can.
Management Curriculum
Interesting points by Tim and Jo. Having gone through an MBA curriculum just recently, my opinion would be that not enough actual research and psychology is presented to management students these days. I think there are some unique takeaways here for project management and team collaboration. While organization behavior classes are mandatory for management students, I learned most about how groups function (and dis-function) by working with teams of my peers on class projects. Sometimes, the groups were functional, sometimes they weren't. Since MBA students are rather analytical, I think programs could be improved by discussing actual research, even if it is imperfect. Combined with as much teamwork as most MBA programs have these days, the theory and practice should work well together.
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