MGMT 2600, Spring 2025

Organizational Behavior

Wednesday 5:30 – 8:00 pm

Metropolitan Campus: Dickinson Hall 2178

Team Dynamics and Decision Making

Today’s Plan

Review upcoming assignments

Cross Culture Team Work

Decision Making
Professional Perspectives- Due 2/19

Ask your contact…

• Tell me about a time you felt particularly motivated at work?
• Was your motivation just about money?
• What else caused you to be motivated?

Max 2 pages, double spaced - details will be in your syllabus and

Webcampus.
Cross Culture Project
• Make sure each of you reviews what is due and when.
• Plan accordingly and create milestones to prevent panic before an
assignment is due.
• March 26 – Team Process Documentation Round 1
• You will be responsible to complete several templates from ”We Hate Team
Projects!” aka WHTP!
• Plan in advance
• This is not a “graded” assignment…but is an important assignment that I will
give feedback on
Team Orientation – Take 10 minutes
• Your team name Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don't make sense
• A teamwork-themed REFRIGERATOR!!!!
haiku
My life is Jello
• 6-8 team ground rules Sitting and waiting in the bowl
(template 3.2) Patiently to gel

We are a real team

We will support each other
So we reach our goal!

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Team Orientation – 10 minutes
Describe specific aspects of the most effective team you’ve been a
part of

Describe specific aspects of the least effective team you’ve been a

part of

Learning from these, how should we work together this semester?

Team Orientation – 5 minutes
What is the country your team will focus on?

Identify days/times that can be used to meet as a team.

Identify days/times that can be used to meet as a team.

Challenge of
Leaderless Peer
Groups
• Where there is no set leader and no major
status/power differences
• Like team projects you typically have in college
classes, including this one
• Typical problems include:
• Lack of role clarity
• Too little or to much cohesiveness
• No effective way to hold peers accountable
• Motivation loss

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Remember
Tuckman’s
model
Prepping for template 2.1
• Team and Individual Goals: Grade, what you want to learn, is there
something you want to practice doing, etc.
• Team Leadership: Who will make sure that the team is successfully
moving towards a common goal?
• Team Accountability: Shared responsibility of the team to meet goals,
uphold ground rules (tasks and behaviors) and achieve success.
Your Team’s Big Decisions

As a team, discuss and take another 10 minutes to fill out

Template 2.1 Leadership, accountability
and cohesiveness

At least as much as you can right now.

Costco
• Costco's decision to support DEI is a strategic one that aims to create
a more inclusive and equitable workplace.
• While there are potential challenges, the potential benefits in terms
of reputation, employee morale, and business performance can be
significant.
• Ultimately, whether it's a "good" decision will depend on how
effectively Costco implements its DEI programs and how well it
manages any potential backlash.
Decision Making Case Study -
Costco
Potential Benefits: Potential Drawbacks:
• Enhanced reputation: Supporting DEI can • Potential legal challenges: Some argue
improve a company's reputation, attracting
customers and employees who value inclusivity. that DEI initiatives can lead to reverse
• Improved employee morale: A diverse and discrimination, potentially resulting in
inclusive workplace can lead to increased legal challenges.
employee satisfaction, creativity, and • Backlash from some customers:
productivity.
Companies that embrace DEI may face
• Better decision-making: Diverse teams can bring
a wider range of perspectives and ideas, leading
criticism or boycotts from customers
to better problem-solving and innovation. who disagree with these initiatives.
• Increased market share: Appealing to a broader • Difficulty in implementation:
customer base can lead to increased sales and Implementing DEI programs effectively
market share. can be complex and require significant
resources and commitment.
Common Perception and
Decision-Making Errors
• Availability Bias…first idea that is available is the
best
• Contrast effects…comparison not objective
• Halo Effects…one trait is associated with others
positive traits
• First- or Last- Impression Errors
• Primacy, Recency
• Confirmation Bias…I see what supports my ideas
• “Similar to Me” Bias
• Attribution Bias…I’m the best when I succeed,
it’s your fault when I don’t

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A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad.
The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under
the knife, the surgeon says, “I can’t operate—that boy is my
son!”

Who is the surgeon?

The Perception Process
• We have too much information to process at
any one time.
• To make sense of the world, we choose:
• Certain things to pay attention to
• Certain ways to organize what we perceive
• By making these “shortcuts” we:
• Become efficient decision-makers, but
• Open ourselves up to perceptual errors,
• And each see the world differently

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Thinking
Fast and
Slow

Fast thinking (system 1): which is automatic, intuitive,

error-prone and used for most common decisions. This is
by far the majority of how we think each day.

Slow thinking (system 2): which is effortful, reasoned,

more reliable and used for complex decisions.
Our Challenge as Managers
• Make as fully-informed least-biased decisions as possible
• Avoiding the major perception and decision-making errors
• Understanding how others may perceive the same situation
differently from you
• Understanding how others may be making decisions

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Common Supervisory Decisions
• Employee Selection
• Resumes & Interviews
• Evaluating Performance
• Feedback
• Compensation
• Promotion, firing, etc.
• Allocating Budget
• Distributing Job Assignments
• Handling Conflict and Disagreement

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Decision-Making Approaches

• Rational is usually the ideal. However, assumes:

• p.363 figure 11.1 shows this 8 step approach. A clear problem, with clear criteria
• This approach assumes…Full knowledge of alternatives, ability/time to choose
best alternative
• Most decisions made with Bounded Rationality
• Knowingly limit options – in service of time and outcome.
• Potential danger to “Satisfice” (Satisfy + Suffice)
• May not land with the best decision
• Intuitive “gut” decisions, often used in emergent and challenging situations with a
lot of uncertainty and not a lot of time.
• Creative is used for the generation of new ideas.
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 Attribution
bias
• When others fail, we tend to
blame them, and we take credit
when things go right
• Good managers make sure to
examine and rule out whether
poor performance is because of
the context or their
management first, and then
eliminate obstacles
Scenario
You will be interviewing 6 job
candidates this afternoon.

• What are ways to structure the

situation to avoid perception
errors.

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Avoiding
Perception
Errors
• Multiple Raters
• Pre-set criteria
• Same conditions for all
• Structured situational and behavioral
questions
• Gather full info
• Objective info when possible
• Check conclusions to ensure validity
• Slow down!
• Consistent application of process

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Groupthink
Tendency to avoid a critical evaluation of ideas the group favors.
Abilene Paradox: Describes a group dynamic where the
collective agrees on a path of action that none of the
individual members want to do. Jerry Harvey, the
management expert who identified and named the
phenomenon, calls it a “failure to manage agreement.”
Potential Impacts:
1. People are silenced
2. Lack of innovation and ideas
3. Flaws and defects aren’t fixed
4. Alienation of anyone not in the “in group”
Ways to mitigate groupthink
• Collect anonymous feedback – post its, idea box, survey
• Create smaller groups before coming together to make a
collective decision
• Actively encouraging discussion and feedback
• Assigning a devil’s advocate to challenge any ideas that are
presented
• Asking for feedback (privately or in a group setting) from those
who are often quiet
• Requiring ideas be assessed through a critical, data-driven lens