Group Cohesion and Productivity/Norms and Conformity - Assignment Example

To complete the exercise the church required some volunteers that would help sort the books into various subjects and categories, I was among the volunteers that signed up to carry out the exercise. We were grouped into three groups the first group had 10 members, and its main function was to receive the books from the church members who were willing to donate. The second group in which I was in, comprised of 20 people each, our work was to sort the books according to various categories such as math, sciences, and arts.

The last group comprised of 20 members whose work was to package the books into large cartons ready for transportation. The exercise was very productive, that we managed to collect 2000 books thanks to the commitment, corporation, and cohesiveness of the group members. With that experience, I must agree with Losh, (2013), “People who have generally had supportive, positive group experiences in the past will seek similar situations more often. …in general cohesive groups are more productive than the average group.

” On the other hand, one can never be in a perfect environment all the time; therefore, I have also had an opposite situation where group cohesiveness negatively impacted on productivity of the project. In this case, it was back while I was in high school. My friends and I had signed up for some community work, whereby we were required to visit a children’s home and help take care of the children for a day. We were around 15, but when the day for the community work was due, six of my friends could not show up.

They tried to convince us to cover for them, but since we were only nine left, work at the children's home was so much that we failed to finish. The group cohesiveness was there as we tried to cover for our friends, but at the end of the day, it was not productive. References Losh, S. (2011). Group behavior in organizations. San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Discussion 1: Responses Hello Schreffler, Thanks for sharing your experience on this week’s discussion topic. I must agree that as managers the best decisions are made when you have a brainstorming session with your colleagues as this helps in creating diversity and broadens ones scope in viewing the situation at hand.

You did not share your side of an opposite situation, I am sure as a manger one way or another you must have had a negative productivity despite managing a cohesive group kindly share with us. Hi Marshal, Thanks for sharing your opinion and experiences on this week’s discussion topic. I must agree that one or more of these “poor communication, mistrust, and just plain old inexperience leadership” are key reason in unproductive group projects. Organizations need to be fully aware of the importance of such factors for there to be any productive work from a group.

I also believe that there more an organization is adaptive to the changing business environment the more likely it will be in a position to eliminate such setbacks. Discussion 2: Norms and Conformity According to Losh, (2013) “As long as norms in larger and smaller groups solidly align with the norms of the larger company, attempts to foster social togetherness are worthwhile because, in such cases, cohesive teams will out-produce less cohesive collectivities.” Conformity is a result of our actions towards matching