Week 3 – Topic Overview

Attitude, Motivation &

Teams

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 1. Attitudes

“The attitude is the evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people,

or events. More precisely attitudes can be defined as a persistent tendency to feel
and behave in a particular way toward some object which may include events or
individuals as well” (Hiriyappa, 2008, pp. 122-123).

Attitude may be characterized as a predisposition to feel and behave in a particular

way towards objects, people or events. Furthermore, attitudes are considered as
‘evaluative statements’ or judgments concerning objects, people, or events in an
organization.

1.2 Components of attitudes

Normally, attitudes have three main components: cognition, affect and behaviour.

Cognitive component: the feature of an attitude that is a description of /or belief in

the way things are. For example, “My salary is low”.

Affective component: Affect is the emotional or feeling section of an attitude. For

example, “I feel frustrated with how little I am being paid”.

Behavioural component: The intention to act in a specific way towards someone or

something. For example, “I am going to look for a better paying job”.

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 Components of Attitudes

Cognitive Component (The Affective Component (The Behavioural Component

opinion or belief segment emotional or feeling (An integration to behave
of an attitude) segment of an attitude) in a certain way toward
someone or something)

1.3 Functions of attitudes

According to Katz (1960), attitudes and motives are connected. That is, according to
an individual’s motives, attitudes are sorted into four functions:

Knowledge: To provide a base for the understanding and classification of new

information.
Expressive: Attitudes become a means of expression.
Instrumental: Attitudes maximize rewards and minimise sanctions. Attitudes
towards other people might be apprehended because of past positive or
negative experiences.
Ego-defensive: To protect the ego from an undesirable truth or reality.

1.4 Does behaviour always follow from attitudes?

According to early research, attitudes were assumed to be causally related to
behaviour. However, in the late 60s, this view was challenged by Leon Festinger.
Festinger (1957) argued that attitudes follow behaviour and it is due to the effects of
cognitive dissonance.

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 1.4.2 Cognitive Dissonance
“Cognitive dissonance refers to any incompatibility an individual might perceive
between two or more attitudes or between behaviour and attitudes”. According to
Festinger (1957), any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable thus the individuals will
try to reduce the discomfort and seek a more subtle state whereas there are no or
minimum inconsistencies.

Moderating Variables

The most dominant moderators of the relationship between attitudes and behaviour
are:

The importance of the attitude

The correspondence to behaviour
The accessibility
Social pressures
Individual’s direct experience with the attitude

“Important attitudes reflect fundamental values, self-interest, or identification with

individuals or groups that a person values. Attitudes that individuals consider
important tend to show a strong relationship to behaviour.

The more closely the attitude and the behaviour are matched or correspond, the
stronger the relationship. Specific attitudes tend to predict specific behaviours,
whereas general attitudes tend to best predict general behaviours” (Robbins,
2009).

When are inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviour more likely to occur?

Inconsistencies are more likely to occur when there is extreme social pressure to
behave in a specific way.

2. What are the major job attitudes?

Organizational behaviour focuses its attention to a limited number of work-related
attitudes. It focuses mainly at three attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement
(psychological empowerment) and organizational commitment.

Job Satisfaction: describes a positive feeling about a job. For example, an

individual that has high level of job satisfaction will have positive feelings about
his/her job.

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 Job Involvement: The level, to which an individual identifies with a job, actively
participates in it, and considers performance important to self-worth.

Psychological empowerment: Employees’ belief in the degree to which they affect

their work environment, their competence, the meaningfulness of their job, and their
perceived autonomy in their work.

High levels of job involvement and psychological empowerment are positively related
to organizational citizenship and job performance. Moreover, high job involvement is
related to lower absences and lower resignation rates (Robbins, 2009).

Organizational Commitment: The degree to which an employee identifies with a

particular organization and its goals and wishes to maintain membership in the
organization. There are three distinctive dimensions to organizational commitment:

1. Affective commitment: an emotional attachment to the organization and

a belief in its values.
2. Continuance commitment: the perceived economic value of an
organization compared with leaving it. For example, an employee remains
at his job because leaving will hurt his family economically.
3. Normative commitment: an obligation to remain with an organization for
moral or ethical reasons. For example, an employee that initiated a new
project might stay with an employer because he feels that it would not be
right to leave.

According to a studies review (Wright & Bonnet, 2002), new employees have
stronger relationships between commitment and performance than more
experienced employees.

Perceived Organizational Support (POS): The degree to which employees believe

the organization values their contribution and concerns about their well-being. For
example, an employee believes that his organization will forgive an honest mistake
from his behalf. Research findings suggest that employees with strong POS
perceptions have higher affective commitment and performance (Eisenburger,
Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch & Rhoades, 2001).

Employee Engagement: An individual’s involvement with, satisfaction with, and

enthusiasm for the work he/she does. “Highly engaged employees have a passion
for their work and feel a deep connection to their company; disengaged employees
have essentially ‘checked out’- putting time but not energy or attention into their
work”.

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 3. Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a complex and hard to measure concept. The degree of job
satisfaction is affected by a wide range of variables relating to individual, social,
cultural, organisational and environmental factors.

“Individual factors include personality, education and qualifications,

intelligence and abilities, age, marital status, orientation to work.
Social factors include relationships with co-workers, group working and
norms, opportunities for interaction, informal organisation.
Cultural factors include underlying attitudes, beliefs and values.
Organisational factors include nature and size, formal structure, HR policies
and procedure, employee relations, nature of the work, technology and work
organisation, supervision and styles of leadership, management systems,
working conditions.

Environmental factors include economic, social, technical and governmental

The The Firmrm The employeemployee

The knowledge contract Needs a certain level of skill and Wishes the skills and knowledge
knowledge in its employees if it to they bring with them to be used and
function efficiently developed

The psychological contract Needs employees who are Seeks to further interests private
motivated to look after its interests self, e.g. to secure: achievement,
recognition, responsibility, status

The efficiency/rewards contract Needs to implement generalised Seeks a personal, equitable effort-
output, quality standards and reward bargain and controls,
reward systems including supervisory ones, which
are perceived as acceptable
The ethical (social value) contract Needs employees who will accept Seeks to work for an employer
the firm’s ethos and values whose values do not contravene
their own

The task structure contract Needs employees who will accept Seeks a set of tasks which meets
technical and other constraints their requirements for task
which produce task specificity or differentiation, e.g. which
task differentiation incorporate variety, interests,
targets, feedback, task identity and
autonomy
influences”.

Source: Mumford, E. (1991). Job satisfaction: a method of anaysis, Personnel review, 20 (3), p.14.

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 Alienation and frustration at work
One approach to job satisfaction is the absence of frustration and alienation at work.
Alienation refers to the disinterest of the person from their work role and is originated
from Marx’s views (1969). Blauner (1964) expanded the concept of alienation and it
provided a description for it in terms of four dimensions: powerlessness,
meaninglessness, isolation and self-estrangement.

“Powerlessness denotes the worker’s lack of control over management policy,

immediate work processes, or conditions of employment.
Meaninglessness stems from standardization and division of labour. It
denotes the inability to see the purpose of work done or to identify with the
total production process or finished product.
Isolation is not belonging to an integrated work group or to the social work
organization and not being guided by group norms of behaviour.
Self-estrangement is the failure to see work as an end in itself or as a central
life issue. Workers experience a depersonalised detachment and work is seen
solely as a means to an end”.

The impact of satisfied and dissatisfied employees at work

Whether an employee enjoys or not his job it has consequences on the workplace. In
order to understand the consequences of employee dissatisfaction, we will study the
theoretical model of ‘Exit-voice-loyalty-neglect’.

‘Exit-voice-loyalty-neglect’ framework’s responses:

“Exit: The exit response involves directing behaviour toward leaving the
organization, including looking for a new position as well as resigning.
Voice: The voice response involves actively and constructively attempting to
improve conditions, including suggesting improvements, discussing problems
with superiors, and undertaking some forms of union activity.
Loyalty: The loyalty response involves passively but optimistically waiting for
conditions to improve, including speaking up for the organization the face of
external criticism and trusting the organization and its management to ‘do the
right thing’.
Neglect: The neglect response involves passively allowing conditions to
worsen, including chronic absenteeism or lateness, reduced effort, and
increased error rate.

Two of these behaviours (‘exit’ and ‘neglect’) affect performance variables such as productivity,
absenteeism and turnover.

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 Job Satisfaction and Job Performance

A review of 300 studies suggested that the correlation between job satisfaction and
job performance (Judge, Thoresen, Bono & Patton, 2001).

Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

It seems that satisfied employees will be more likely to help their colleagues, give
positive feedback to the organization, praise their employers and exceed their job
expectations. According to research, job satisfaction is correlated with OCD through
perception of fairness. That is, job satisfaction is affected by fair outcomes, treatment
and procedures (Organ, 1994).

Job Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction

The evidence suggests that job satisfaction, satisfied employees, increase customer
satisfaction and customer’s loyalty (Griffith, 2001; Homburg & Stock, 2004). “Why?
In service organizations, customer retention and defection are highly dependent on
how frontline employees deal with customers. Satisfied employees are more likely to
be friendly, upbeat, and responsive – which customers appreciate. And because
satisfied employees are less prone to turnover, customers are more likely to
encounter familiar faces and receive experienced service. These qualities build
customer satisfaction and loyalty. The relationship also seems to apply in reverse:
Dissatisfied customers can increase an employee’s job dissatisfaction. Employees
who have regular contact with customers report that rude, thoughtless, or
unreasonably demanding customers adversely affect the employees’ job
satisfaction”.

Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism

According to research (Scott & Taylor, 1985) there is a consistent negative

relationship between job satisfaction and absenteeism even though the correlation is
weak. Apart from dissatisfied employees there have been identified other significant
factors that influence the relationship between job satisfaction and absenteeism.

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 Job Satisfaction and Turnover

There is a negative relationship between job satisfaction and turnover but the
correlation is stronger than the one found for satisfaction and absenteeism.
However, other significant factors such as labour conditions, expectations about
alternative job opportunities and length of tenure with the organisation are
considered to be important binding factors to an employee’s decision to leave his/her
job (Carsten & Spector, 1987).
According to Spencer and Steers (1981) the employee’s level of performance is an
important moderator between the satisfaction and turnover relationship. It appears
that the level of satisfaction is less important in predicting performance for superior
performers. Why that differentiation happens?
Organizations tend to make considerable efforts to keep superior performers and
they offer raises, recognition, praise and more opportunities to them. In contrast,
organizations tend to force pressures to poor performers in order to drive them to
quit. Therefore, it seems that job satisfaction is more important in influencing poor
performers to stay in their jobs than superior performers.

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 1. Motivation
What is Motivation?

Motivation is the result of the interaction between an individual and a situation. It is

defined as the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and
persistence of effort toward attaining a goal (Robbins, 2009).

Mitchell (1982) identifies four characteristics which underlie the definition of

motivation:

“Motivation is typified as an individual phenomenon. Every person is unique

and all the major theories of motivation allow for this uniqueness to be
demonstrated in one way or another.
Motivation is described, usually, as intentional. Motivation is assumed to be
under the worker’s control, and behaviours that are influenced by motivation,
such as effort expended, are seen as choices of action.
Motivation is multifaceted. The two factors of greatest importance are: (i) what
gets people activated (arousal) and (ii) the force of an individual to engage in
desired behaviour (direction or choice of behaviour).
The purpose of motivational theories is to predict behaviour. Motivation is not
the behaviour itself and it is not performance. Motivation concerns action and
the internal and external forces which influence a person’s choice of action.

On the basis of these characteristics, Mitchell defines motivation as ‘the degree to

which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specified behaviours’.”

1.2 Early Theories of Motivation

During the decade of 1950 there were developed four specific theories of motivation
which provided the most well-known explanations for employee motivation. Even
though these theories were highly questionable regarding their validity they provided
the foundation for the development of the more contemporary theories.

1.2.1 Hierarchy of Needs Theory

The most well-known motivational theory is that of Abraham Maslow (1954),
Hierarchy of Needs. According to Maslow, human beings prioritise their needs into
five levels and as each of these needs are satisfied then the next need must be
satisfied. In that sense, if you wish to motivate someone, firstly, you must understand
to which level of the hierarchy that individual is and then focus on satisfying the
needs at or above that level.

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 Maslow’s hierarchy of five needs:

1. “Physiological. Included hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, and other bodily needs.
2. Safety. Security and protection from physical and emotional harm.
3. Social. Affection, belongingness, acceptance, and friendship.
4. Esteem. Internal factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement,
and external factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization. Drive to become what one is capable of becoming;
includes growth, achieving one’s potential, and self-fulfilment”.

Maslow proceeded and separated these five needs into higher orders and low
orders. Lower-order needs include physiological and safety needs and higher-order
needs include social, esteem and self-actualization. The reason behind this
differentiation is that higher-order needs are thought to be satisfied internally (within
the person), whereas lower-order needs are thought to be satisfied externally (e.g.
pay, cafeteria, benefits, job security).

1.2.3 Theory X and Theory Y

‘Theory X and Theory Y’ was developed by Douglas McGregor. McGregor
suggested that there are two different views of human beings:

A. Theory X: The assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, dislike
responsibility, and must be coerced to perform.
B. Theory Y: The assumption that employees like work, are creative, seek
responsibility, and can exercise self-direction.

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 “Theory X assumes that higher order needs dominate individuals. McGregor himself
held to the belief that theory Y assumptions were more valid than Theory X.
Therefore, he proposed such ideas as participative decision making, responsible and
challenging jobs, and good group relations as approaches that would maximize an
employee’s job motivation”.

However, there is no evidence supporting these two theories.

1.2.4 McClelland’s Theory of Needs

David McClelland and his colleagues developed their own theory of needs which
focuses on three basic needs:

“Need for achievement is the drive to excel, to achieve in relation to a set of

standards, to strive to succeed.

Need for power is the need to make others behave in a way in which they would not
have behaved otherwise.

Need for affiliation is the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships”.

McClelland and colleagues focused more their attention on the need for affiliation.
According to Robbins (2009), high achievers perform their best when they estimate
that they have 50% success chance. In addition, they tend to not gamble when there
are high chances because they do not receive an achievement satisfaction if it was
due to chance. They like to set challenging goals.

Contemporary Theories of Motivation

1.3.1 Cognitive Evaluation Theory

A theory that states that allocating extrinsic rewards (e.g. pay) for behaviour that had
been previously intrinsically rewarding tends to decrease the overall level of
motivation.

Cognitive Evaluation Theory argues that “when extrinsic rewards are used by
organisations as payoffs for superior performance, the intrinsic rewards, which are
derived from individuals doing what they like, are reduced. In other words, when
extrinsic rewards are given to someone for performing an interesting task, it causes
intrinsic interest in the task itself to decline”.

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 A plausible explanation for this outcome is that when individuals lose control of their
own behaviour then the previous intrinsic motivation loses its effect on them.

“If the cognitive evaluation theory is valid, it should have major implications for
managerial practices. It has been a truism among compensation specialists for years
that if pay or other extrinsic rewards are to be effective motivators, they should be
made contingent on an individual’s performance. But cognitive evaluation theorists
would argue that this will only tend to decrease the internal satisfaction that the
individual receives from doing the job. In fact, if cognitive evaluation is correct, it
would make sense to make an individual’s pay noncontingent on performance in
order to avoid decreasing intrinsic motivation”.

According to Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) verbal extrinsic rewards (e.g. receiving
praise) can increase intrinsic motivation whereas ‘physical’ extrinsic rewards (e.g.
money) can undermine intrinsic motivation. When people wait to receive a ‘physical
reward’ they tend to focus on the reward than on the task.

1.3.2 Goal – Setting Theory

Goal-setting theory is based on the work of Locke (1968). Edwin Locke proposed
that intentions to work toward a goal are a major source of motivation. That is, when
an individual sets a specific goal it will increase performance. It seems that the
specificity of the goal acts as an internal stimulus.

An illustration of Locke’s theory of goal-setting

Goal difficulty

Goals or Responses or
Values Emotions and
intentions actions
desires Consequenc
Work e or
behaviour and feedback
performance

Level of
commitment

In addition, it seems that difficult goals when accepted tend to produce higher
performance than easy goals and that feedback tends to lead to higher performance
than not receiving feedback. Why people are motivated by difficult goals? According
to Robbins (2009), difficult goals shift our attention from extraneous distractions to
the specific task. Furthermore, difficult goals energize us because we have to work
more and persist more in order to complete them.

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 Moreover, in order to attain a challenging goal we tend to develop strategies that
help us complete the task more efficiently. Feedback not only helps an individual
track his progression towards the goal attainment but also helps in identifying
inconsistencies between his steps towards goal attainment.

The question is: If employees have the opportunity to set their own goals, will they try
harder in order to attain them?

According to research there is no conclusive answer to that (Latham, Erez & Locke,
1988; Ludwig & Geller, 1997; Harkins & Lowe, 2000).

In addition to feedback, three other factors have been found to influence the goals-
performance relationship:

Goal commitment
Task characteristics
National culture

“Goal-setting theory presupposes that an individual is committed to the goal; that is,
an individual is determined not to lower or abandon the goal. Behaviourally, this
means that an individual (1) believes he or she can achieve the goals and (2) wants
to achieve it (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, Wright & Deshon, 2001). Goal commitment
is most likely to occur when goals are made public, when the individual has an
internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.”

Goal-setting theory limitations

According to research, goal-setting theory is not consistent across all tasks. That is,
when tasks are more simple, well-learned and independent, goals have a more
substantial effect on performance.

Furthermore, goal-setting theory it is not equally adapted across all cultures. Goal-
setting theory is well adapted to North American cultures. It assumes that employees
will be able to work independently and that they will seek challenging goals. Thus we
cannot expect to be applicable to countries where these conditions are not met.

Implementing Goal-setting theory

How a manager can apply goal-setting theory? A helpful way to apply goal setting is
with a management by objectives program. Management by objectives (MBO) aims
in setting goals that are tangible, verifiable and measurable.

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 MBO programs have four common ingredients:

Goal Specificity
Decision-making participation
Explicit time period
Performance feedback

“Many of the elements in MBO programs match propositions of goal-setting theory.

For example, having an explicit time period to accomplish objectives matches goal-
setting theory’s emphasis on goal specificity.”

Equity Theory
“Equity theory focuses on people’s feelings of how fairly they have been treated in
comparison with the treatment received by others. It is based on exchange theory.”

For example, an employee that has contributed in a great extent in the achievement
of an important organisational objective may expect a promotion. Most exchanges
involve a number of inputs and outcomes. In accordance to the equity theory,
individuals place a value to these inputs and outcomes based on their perceived
importance. When these inputs and outcomes are unequal then there is a perceived
sense of inequity.

Employees in organisations tend to make comparisons between themselves and

their friends, colleagues, neighbours or tend to make comparisons between their
present and past jobs. “Which referent an employee chooses will be influenced by
the information the employee holds about references as well as by the attractiveness
of the referent. This has led to focusing on four moderating variables: gender, length
of tenure, level in organisation, and amount of education or professionalism”.

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 What is a group?

A group has a purpose for its formation and a common goal shared between its
members. The people in the group are inter-connected and are aware of the
connection they share.

Informal groups: their activities and interactions are being developed in order to
satisfy their social needs. A common informal groups is a friendship group. Informal
groups are not necessary being develop to serve formal organizational goals.
Organizations influence though the development of informal groups through the work
setting, managers’ leadership styles and the type of technology that is being used.

Informal groups provide many desirable benefits to their members such as security,
protection, etc. In addition, some informal groups may protect their members by
setting production limitations to their members since organizations might use an
outstanding employee’s performance as a standard.

Furthermore, informal groups can use adverse power over individual members.
These kinds of power are being categorised into:

A group might be in a position where it can manipulate rewards and

punishments and in that way force pressure to its members in order to
conform to the group’s standards of behaviour.
A group may limit a group member’s freedom and the ways in which group
members social needs can be satisfied on the job. For example, they can give
the silent treatment to a member for not coming into terms with the groups
standards of production.

Informal groups cannot be classified into negative or positive as their actions vary
from time to time depending on the organizations issues and circumstances.

Effective groups: It is important to be able to recognize an effective group based on

its characteristics. An effective group shares these characteristics:

Its members know the purpose of the group existence and they share
common goals.
Its members share agreement regarding guidelines or procedures for decision
making.
Its members communicate freely among themselves.
Its members accept help from one another and provide help to one another.
Its members know how to resolve conflict within the group.
Its members know how to identify individual and group procedures and
improve their own and the groups functioning.

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 There is a distinction between groups and teams.

Work group’s objective is sharing information and making decisions to enable each
member to perform at its task. Work team objective is to generate positive synergy
through coordinated effort.

In the business world you will often hear managers or employees referring about
their team. Teams are part of the business world.

Different types of teams

Functional teams: represent individuals that work together on a cluster of on-going

and interdependent tasks. They exist within departments such as marketing, finance,
production, human resources.

Problem solving teams: problem solving teams usually include employees that
meet consistently in order to improve quality, efficiency and the work environment.

Self-managed work teams: consist of employees that work well together to produce
a good or provide a service. These teams can 1) schedule work and vacations by
members, 2) rotate tasks among members, 3) order materials, 4) decide team
leadership, 5) set key team goals, 6) arrange the budget, 7) hire replacements for
departed team members and 8) evaluate each other’s performance.

Cross functional teams: combine the knowledge and skills of individuals from
different work settings in order to recognize and resolve shared problems.

Team Characteristics

Common goal: To gather people with different attributes, expertise and

backgrounds to work on a common goal. For example, to plan a business
project.
Collective working: To promote people work together in order to achieve a
goal. It is more effective to have different people with different ideas,
expertise, experiences and views working in collaboration with one another in
order to achieve a shared purpose.
Payoff: To help all people working on a common goal benefit from it. The
benefit may be everyone’s job becomes more satisfying or that each person
has a new learning experience.

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 Teams’ purpose

Team rules and norms: Team members help develop and apply the
team’s very own rules and norms.
Team collaboration: Team members encourage each other to generate
and share ideas, thoughts in order to solve problems or develop a new
idea.
Team consensus: Team members work collectively in order to reach a
unanimous decision or a decision that team members can support and
commit to it.
Team cooperation for effective conflict resolution: Team members
take advantage of a disagreement and use it as way to improve arising
issues and differences.

Team collaboration skills

Make use of body language. For example, lean forwards toward your
receiver or speaker, nod, and take notes.
Engage in the conversation by making use of your active listening skills.
For example, say “uh-huh, I see”, maintain a good eye-contact, repeat
phrases and words.
Do not interrupt your team members when it is their turn to speak.
Ask follow up questions.
Acknowledge and record every idea as it comes up.
Allow people to be creative.
Ask people for ideas. Brainstorming will help people to be more engaged
and contribute to the team’s goal.
Allow time for thinking. Silence might be a thinking process.
Ask and provide constructive criticism.
Reward people for their involvement and contributions.

How to improve collaboration skills?

o The best way to improve the team’s collaboration skills is by constantly

practising.
o Have some creative warm up exercises before the meeting.
o Encourage people to express their thoughts and ideas.

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 Teamwork effectiveness
Attributes for teamwork effectiveness

Team members’ commitment and motivation needs to be in high levels in

order to ensure team success through sharing goals and ideas for the target
group project.
A positive working environment promoted by team members can work as a
supportive system for each team member thus to encourage team members
to exceed in their learning process, achievement and contribution.
Strong interpersonal skills can facilitate openness between team members
and promote individual working ethics.
Team members’ constructive criticism and positive feedback by active
listening and open communication between team members can promote self-
worth and commitment to individual team members.
Clear and accurate set of tasks and specific team role can diminish possible
misunderstanding and conflicts between team members.
Effective leadership can promote and encourage team members’
commitment.

Group Development
Tuckman’s model of development

For over the past centuries there have been proposed numerous of models of
development derived from group development research. The most well-known
development theory is considered to be that of Bruce Tuckman (1965).

According to Tuckman’s model, groups are developed through time and in sequence
into four stages (forming, storming, norming, performing).

Forming (coming together) is the initial stage of the team. Team members
have not familiarized with one another. At this stage team members are trying
to figure out each other by asking questions and establish their own role in the
group. Most members have a ‘good attitude’ at this stage. Individual member
responsibilities are not clear and members seek team leaders for guidance
and support.
Storming (open conflict) is the second stage. The individuals start to consider
themselves as part of a team. At this stage, team members may challenge the
leadership and intra-group conflicts may arise. They will try to find how the
team operates and the team’s objective and try to change how things are
done or they may show resistance to task demands. Some individuals might
perform alliances or subgroups. Group differences or conflicts need to be
addressed.

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 Norming (settling) is the third stage. The individuals are familiarized with each
other. They are developing policies, sharing their ideas, setting rules and
dividing the workload. Team members have developed rules and good
communication between them.
Performing (executing task) is the final stage of team development.
Established team relationships and high engagement on the task enables
team members to work successfully and effectively together.

A fifth stage was added later by Tuckman and Jensen (1977) called adjourning.

 Adjourning is about the dissolution of the team. Individuals’ attention shifts to

finalizing the team’s activities. Team members have mixed emotions, they feel
the sense of accomplishment and also depressed because they will lose their
new friendships.

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 References

Eisenberger, R., Armeli, S., Rexwinkel, B., Lynch, P. D., & Rhoades, L. (2001).
Reciprocation of perceived organizational support. Journal of applied
psychology, 86(1), 42.

Robbins, S.P. & Judge, T.A. (2009). Organizational Behaviour. (13 th ed.).New
Jersey: Peason Prentice Hall.

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