Group Behaviors in DiCon Fiberoptics, Inc. Notes: At least one reference. Well organized between paragraphs.

Essay by fangsze2University, Bachelor'sA+, July 2006

download word file, 3 pages 5.0

"Teams are one of the major forces behind today's revolutionary changes in organizations"(Hunt, Osborn, and Schermerhorn, 2005, p. 218). Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to realize the importance of group behaviors, as well as finding and controlling the impacts on group behaviors in order to reach high-performance levels and meet innovative paces. One of the main factors hinders group members from interacting with each other is the group diversity. According to Hunt, Osborn, and Schermerhorn (2005), "when members are similar in respect to such things as age, gender, race, experience, ethnicity, and culture ... It will probably be easy for members to quickly build social relationships and engage in the interactions needed for teamwork" (p. 221). In order to fully understand the relationship between group diversity and group behavior, DiCon Fiberoptics has been chosen to be the object in the following discussions. The first few discussions will be focused on how group diversity impacts sentiments, how sentiments impact behaviors and what demographic characteristics determine behaviors.

After the discussions of the impacts on group behaviors, the paper will analyze how group behaviors impact motivation, which shows the association between group behavior and group performance.

The most important factor affecting group behaviors is the group or team diversity. "Research indicates that team diversity can be a source of performance difficulties, especially early in the team's life or stage of development"(Hunt, Osborn, and Schermerhorn, 2005, p. 221). One of the ways that group diversity impacts group behavior is through group sentiments. In DiCon, there are employees with different experience levels. Interpersonally, the experiential hierarchy affects group behaviors among members. Those experienced employees are usually more influential than inexperienced employees. For example, opinions from new workers in a team are likely to be influenced or overwhelmed by the ideas from old workers. This...