Organizational Behavior: Teams Vs. Groups

An organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed carefully to meet a need or to accomplish particular goals. Organizations can be simply explained by considering them as systems. Just like a system, an organization has well defined and deliberated inputs to attain a desired result. There is constant feedback throughout the organization to aid the process. Business organizations vary in size; from one person to thousands of members. Being a social system with so many possible variations, organizations are complex and thus one of the key components of an organization is studied in detail – the employees. Organisational Behaviour is a systematic study of the actions and attitudes that people exhibit within the organisations

Teams and groups have subtle but very clear differences and are also different in scope. While a group is a collection of individuals in an organization whose performance is a sum of the inputs of individuals, a team is a particular type of group which works together and focuses on a joint goal. Each individual in a team works with others in synergy to accomplish a team’s objective goals. In a group, each individual is only responsible and accountable for their own respective area, however, in a team, the individuals collaborate with each other. Groups always have a fixed hierarchy, with the manager or supervisor at the top and sub-ordinates in succession but teams may be manager-led or have some autonomy by being self-managed. Individuals are the core component of groups and tasks are completed individually, even though they are formally organized into one social unit together. On the other hand, teams are responsible for their own work and monitor themselves. Therefore, the key difference between teams and groups are the specifics – i.e., the dynamics of the team or group and the reason why they were brought together (Keen, 2003).

It is then easy to conclude by saying that Organizational behavior plays a very important role in the management of any organization by impacting the performance, operation, work environment, and most importantly, the individuals involved. Organizational behavior applies the knowledge of human psychology to predict the actions and mindset of individuals when they work alone, work in groups, or work in teams. It enables leaders and managers to most effectively structure the individuals in an organization and ensure that the categorization they have chosen will benefit the organization to its fullest