How does being part of a group change the way people behave and perform at work?
Explain how group processes such as cohesion, roles, groupthink and social loafing affect behaviour and performance in the workplace.
How group processes including cohesion, roles, norms, groupthink and social loafing shape behaviour, decision making and performance in the workplace.
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What this dot point is asking
You need to explain the main group processes that operate in workplaces and evaluate how they affect individual behaviour, decision making and overall performance.
How groups form and organise
A group is more than a collection of individuals: it develops shared norms (expected behaviours), roles (expected functions, such as leader or coordinator), and cohesion (the bonds that hold members together). Tuckman described group development as forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
Cohesion is generally positive: cohesive teams communicate better and are more committed. However, very high cohesion can become a problem when it discourages disagreement.
Roles can be formal (assigned job titles) or informal (the person who keeps morale up, or the one who challenges ideas). Belbin's team-role work suggests effective teams need a balance of roles rather than many people playing the same one. Role conflict (incompatible demands from different roles) and role ambiguity (unclear expectations) both reduce satisfaction and performance, which is why clear job design matters. Norms, meanwhile, can be productive (punctuality, helping colleagues) or counter-productive (tolerating low effort), and once established they exert strong conformity pressure on new members.
Effects on individual performance
- Social facilitation. The presence of others improves performance on simple or well-learned tasks but can impair performance on difficult or new tasks.
- Social loafing. Individuals tend to exert less effort when their contribution is pooled and cannot be identified, because responsibility is diffused.
Group decision making and groupthink
Irving Janis described groupthink: when a cohesive group values agreement and harmony more than realistic appraisal, it can make poor decisions. Symptoms include an illusion of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, and self-censorship. Groups can also show group polarisation, where discussion pushes the group towards a more extreme position than members held individually.
Groupthink is reduced by encouraging dissent, appointing a "devil's advocate", seeking outside opinions, and having leaders withhold their own view until others have spoken.
Building effective workplace teams
Effective teams combine enough cohesion to cooperate with enough psychological safety to challenge ideas. Clear individual accountability counters social loafing, diverse membership widens the range of ideas, and structured decision processes guard against groupthink and polarisation.
Two further effects are worth knowing for the exam. Deindividuation describes how being part of a large or anonymous group can reduce self-awareness and personal responsibility, sometimes leading to behaviour a person would not show alone; in a workplace this can appear as people going along with poor conduct they would individually reject. Social facilitation can be explained by arousal: the presence of others raises arousal, which strengthens the dominant response, so performance improves on easy, well-learned tasks but worsens on hard or unfamiliar ones. A manager who understands this will give staff time to master a task in private before asking them to perform it in front of others.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SACE Board exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
SACE 20226 marksA project team of six employees is asked to brainstorm cost savings. The manager records that the team generated fewer ideas than six people working alone would have, and that two members said very little. (a) Identify and explain the group process most likely responsible for the reduced effort. (b) Suggest two strategies the manager could use to reduce this effect.Show worked answer →
This is a research/application item marked on knowledge and application.
(a) Identify the process (3 marks). The most likely process is social loafing: individuals exert less effort when their contribution is pooled into a group total and cannot be individually identified, because responsibility is diffused across the group. The fact that the team produced fewer ideas than the same number working alone, and that two members withdrew, fits social loafing rather than, say, social facilitation.
(b) Two strategies (3 marks, roughly 1.5 each). First, make individual contributions identifiable and accountable, for example by asking each member to submit their own ideas before the group pools them, so effort can be seen. Second, keep the group small and set clear, individual responsibilities or sub-tasks, which raises the felt importance of each person's input. Either smaller groups, individual accountability, or meaningful unique roles are creditable.
SACE 20218 marksUsing the concept of groupthink, explain how a cohesive workplace team can make poor decisions, and evaluate strategies that reduce the risk of groupthink.Show worked answer →
This is an extended-response item marked on knowledge and evaluation.
- Define groupthink
- Irving Janis described groupthink as a mode of thinking in a highly cohesive group where the desire for agreement and harmony overrides realistic appraisal of alternatives. Symptoms include an illusion of invulnerability, pressure on dissenters, self-censorship and a shared illusion of unanimity.
- How it produces poor decisions
- When members value being part of a united team over being correct, they suppress doubts, fail to examine risks, and do not seek outside information. A directive leader who states a preference early makes this worse, so the team converges on a flawed plan that no one openly challenges.
- Evaluate strategies
- Appointing a devil's advocate forces objections into the open and is effective but can be ignored if the role is treated as a formality. Leaders withholding their view until others speak reduces premature conformity. Seeking independent outside opinions widens the information base. Breaking into smaller subgroups lets concerns surface before they are smoothed over. A top answer notes these work by restoring critical evaluation, and that the aim is cohesion plus open dissent, not the removal of cohesion, which would harm cooperation.