▶ Your Answer :
A company carried out a project testing group performance of the workers. Each team was assigned a project and the company reviewed their performance 6 months later. However, results were negative.
Firstly, they found workers having ‘free rides,’ meaning they did not contribute much but benefited from the team because of some ‘real contributors.’ This is not fair for the real contributors who actually tried really hard compared to the people who did not. Also by the fact that they worked as a team the recognition does not reach each individual but as a group. This contradicts the idea suggested in the reading. Because from the experiment introduced in the lecture it is clear that group work does not provide individuals to shine and cause problems like workers getting free rides.
Secondly, work process was relatively slow. Because they are a group consisted of different kinds of individuals, they had to have many meetings to agree on how they would proceed their project which also contradicts the reading which pointed out the quickness of work as one of the advantages of group work.
Finally, when working as a group, one or two people become too influential. If those influential people gain more power they start to organize and decide things in ways they favor. When this situation encounters the group, opposition is ignored and the majority follows the leaders. Eventually, when the project fails, the responsibility is casted on everyone, to the members who opposed as well. In the reading, it states group work spreads the responsibility to members, however, influential leaders controlling the group in unfair ways proves that group work doesn’t spread responsibility between the members. |