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Organizational Behavior: Shift From Individual To Team Term Paper

Organizational Behavior: Shift From Individual to Team Behavior Traditionally, organizational behavior has been defined as understanding human behavior and the means of influencing individuals, singularly and in work groups. Hierarchical control and hierarchical referral have been common practice. More contemporary visions of organizational behavior have de-emphasized the role of the individual and hierarchical management in favor of team work and decentralization. When considering the merits of these two organizational behavior approaches, the real answer is that the old needs to be melded with the new. Teams still require strong leadership to prevent conflict that can cause the same degree of inefficiency as centralized hierarchies. However, the role of leader is vastly different from that of a hierarchical manager.

There are many reasons that companies are transitioning to team management. In complex operations with diverse business units, it's difficult for one person to manage everything.

Also, hierarchical management implies that a manager needs to be able to move up the hierarchy over time if that person has proved to be a success in his or her role. However, positions in a hierarchy require different...

An August 2000 Business Week article describes the decline of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) role, and the difficulty of a COO to rise to a Chief Executive Office position because of the different skills sets required for the two jobs. The article also goes on to mention that many believe that extra layers of management slow operations and prevent the necessary development and execution of a strategy that could change on a daily basis
While team management provides opportunities for better decision making and efficiency, organizations must take appropriate measures to make sure that this really happens. There's an equally good chance of conflict arising from team members that do not: openly communicate with each other; share common goals with team members; have the same expectations of how groups or individuals should behave; react well to status distinctions within the group; and/or have a sense of cohesion with the group. Comments organizational behavior expert Wilf Ratzburg on this issue, "Teams that are uncomfortable with conflict tend either to avoid it altogether or allow the conflict to drift onto any number of unrelated issues." Thus, teams can just as easily run into many of bureaucratic…

Sources used in this document:
Bibliography

Brady, D. (2000, August 28).

An executive whose time has gone: Increasing corporate complexity and the shift to team management are killing the chief operating officer.

Business Week, (3696).

Greene, C., Everett, A., & Ebert, R. (1985). Management for effective performance. Englewood Cliffs: NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Ratzburg, W. Team effectiveness and awareness of conflict. Retrieved November 15, 2002 at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1650/htmlgroups21.html
Ratzburg, W. Team effectiveness and awareness of conflict. Retrieved November 15, 2002 at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1650/htmlgroups21.html
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