WGU Organizational-Behavior WGU Organizational Behavior (GTO1, C715) Exam Practice Test

In group dynamics, the failure described—redundant efforts and a lack of task synchronization—points to a failure incoordination. TheCoordinatorrole is responsible for clarifying goals, delegating tasks, and ensuring that the efforts of individual team members are integrated rather than duplicated. Without effective coordination, even highly motivated and skilled teams can fail because their energy is dissipated through "working in different directions".

While a "Planner" (Option B) sets the initial schedule and a "Controller" (Option C) monitors outcomes, the Coordinator acts as the glue during the execution phase. The Coordinator ensures that every member knows their specific contribution and how it fits into the whole. In this case, because the members were "mistakenly working on the same tasks," a Coordinator would have intervened to clarify boundaries and manage the interdependencies of the work. Effective coordination is the primary antidote to the "process losses" that occur when team members overlap in their efforts.

In Organizational Behavior, a critical distinction is made between a "work group" and a "work team". A work group is a collection of individuals who interact primarily to share information and make decisions to help each member perform within his or her area of responsibility. In a work group, there is no particular need or opportunity for collective work that requires joint effort; therefore, their performance is merely the summation of each group member’s individual contribution.

A work team, however, is a group whose individual efforts result in performance that is greater than the sum of those individual inputs. The fundamental goal of a work team iscollective performance. While work groups focus on individual accountability and sharing information to assist individual tasks, work teams focus on mutual accountability and synergy. This synergy allows the team to achieve a level of output that exceeds what the members could accomplish alone. For a team to be effective, it requires a mix of complementary skills—technical, problem-solving, and interpersonal—directed toward a common purpose and specific performance goals. Managers transition from groups to teams when the task at hand is complex enough that it requires the coordinated, collective effort of multiple people rather than just a series of independent tasks. Therefore, the shift from "sharing information" (group) to "collective performance" (team) represents a significant increase in the interdependence of the members.

While a strong culture can be a significant asset by improving employee commitment and reducing ambiguity, it can also become aliabilityunder certain conditions. One of the most critical liabilities occurswhen a strong organizational culture limits diversity within the organization. Because a strong culture pressures employees to conform to accepted values and behaviors, it can create a "mismatch" for people who bring different perspectives or backgrounds.

Strong cultures often act as a barrier to change because they lead to institutionalization, where behaviors are followed blindly without question. This can be particularly damaging during mergers or acquisitions, where two conflicting strong cultures may fail to integrate. Furthermore, when the shared values do not align with the organization's effectiveness in a changing environment, the culture becomes a "barrier to diversity" and a "barrier to change". Management must therefore balance the benefits of a cohesive culture with the need for diverse viewpoints that prevent "groupthink" and allow the organization to remain adaptable.

Designing an effective reward system for teams requires a delicate balance between individual and collective incentives. If the reward system focuses solely on individual achievement, it can foster internal competition and discourage the very collaboration the team is lacking. Conversely, if it focuses only on the group, "social loafing" may occur where some members coast on the efforts of others.

To improve effectiveness and collaboration, the organization should implementa system that emphasizes rewards for individual contributions as well as for selfless contributions. This means that while members are recognized for their technical proficiency, they are also evaluated and rewarded for being "good team players"—sharing information, helping colleagues, and resolving conflicts. Rewarding "selfless contributions" directly addresses the concern that members need to be more collaborative. This dual-focus approach ensures that individuals are motivated to perform their specific tasks at a high level while simultaneously being incentivized to support the team’s overall synergy.

Cross-functional teams are composed of employees from about the same hierarchical level but from different work areas—such as marketing, finance, and production—who come together to accomplish a task. While these teams are highly effective for coordinating complex projects and solving problems that require diverse perspectives, they are notoriously difficult to manage in the early stages.

The primary challenge is thatit takes time to build trust and teamworkamong people with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Each member comes from a different functional "culture" with its own jargon, priorities, and ways of looking at a problem. For example, a member from the engineering department might prioritize technical perfection, while a member from the marketing department might prioritize speed to market. These differing perspectives can lead to conflict and misunderstandings during the initial stages of group development. Furthermore, because members have primary loyalties to their home departments, creating a sense of "team identity" takes significant effort from the leader. Leaders of cross-functional teams must spend considerable time facilitating communication, resolving interpersonal conflicts, and aligning the various functional goals into a single project vision. Until a baseline of mutual trust is established, the team may struggle with "silo" thinking, where members protect their own department's interests rather than working toward the team's collective goal. Only after the team moves through the "storming" phase of development and builds trust can it begin to leverage its diverse skills for high performance.

In the context of global operations, teams are often physically dispersed across different time zones and geographic locations. To maximize participation, organizations rely onvirtual teamtechnologies. Usingonline computer technologies and/or phone communication(such as video conferencing, instant messaging, and collaborative platforms) allows for real-time or near-real-time interaction that bridges the physical distance. These technologies enable members to share ideas, provide immediate feedback, and engage in the "give-and-take" necessary for effective decision-making.

While unilateral messaging (Option C) or physical mail (Option D) might transmit information, they lack the interactive richness required to sustain high levels of participation and engagement. Effective global leadership involves selecting the communication channel that best balances the need for speed with the need for social presence. By utilizing synchronous online tools, global teams can simulate the "face-to-face" experience, which helps in building the rapport and trust that are often difficult to establish in a virtual environment. This approach ensures that all members, regardless of their location, have an equal platform to contribute to the team's objectives.

Groupshift is a phenomenon related to groupthink, specifically describing the way group members tend to exaggerate their initial positions when discussing a given set of alternatives. In a group setting, the collective decision often shows a shift toward a more extreme version of the position held by members before the discussion began. While many people assume groups always lead to more conservative decisions, groupshift demonstrates that the shift can move in either direction: toward greater caution or toward greater risk.

The shift toward risk is more common in many organizational settings. This occurs for several reasons: first, the shared responsibility of a group diffuses the accountability for any single individual, making them feel bolder. Second, members who are more willing to take risks may be perceived as more confident and thus exert more influence over the group's final decision. Conversely, if the initial atmosphere of the group is conservative, the discussion tends to reinforce that caution, leading to a "shift" toward even more extreme avoidance of risk. Understanding groupshift is vital for managers because it highlights that group decisions are not necessarily "average" or "moderate" versions of individual opinions; rather, the social dynamics within a group can drive the collective toward extremes that no single member might have chosen independently. Recognizing this allows leaders to implement checks and balances, such as appointing a devil’s advocate, to ensure that the group does not drift into a dangerous or overly timid position due to the social reinforcement of the shift phenomenon.

Astrong organizational cultureis one in which the core values are both intensely held and widely shared by the members. One of the primary advantages of such a culture is theformation of strong employee commitment. When employees believe in and identify with the organization's values, they are more likely to be dedicated to its goals and more willing to put in extra effort to see the organization succeed.

A strong culture also serves to reduce turnover because it creates a high level of agreement among members about what the organization stands for. This unanimity of purpose builds cohesiveness and loyalty. Furthermore, a strong culture acts as a substitute for formalization; it tells employees how they are expected to behave without the need for thick manuals or rigid rules. While it can have liabilities (as noted in Q32), the immediate organizational benefit is a motivated, committed workforce that shares a common sense of direction.

The link between performance evaluation and motivation is best explained throughExpectancy Theory. According to this theory, an individual's motivation to exert effort depends on three relationships: Effort-Performance, Performance-Reward, and Rewards-Personal Goals. For an employee to be motivated, theymust have confidence that the effort they exert will lead to a favorable performance evaluation(the Effort-Performance relationship).

Image of Vroom's Expectancy Theory

If an employee believes that no matter how hard they work, the evaluation process is biased, based on luck, or uses unclear criteria (like personality traits rather than measurable behaviors), their motivation will suffer. Furthermore, the employee must believe that a good evaluation will lead to organizational rewards (such as a bonus or promotion) and that those rewards will satisfy their personal goals. If any of these links are weak—for instance, if the evaluation process is perceived as unfair—the entire motivational chain is broken. Therefore, the perceptual process is central to this relationship; it is not the objective reality of the evaluation that motivates, but the employee's perception of its fairness and accuracy.

The interaction between cohesiveness and performance norms is a critical concept in Organizational Behavior. As shown in the research regarding group dynamics,the productivity of the team will improve significantlywhen both cohesiveness and performance norms are high. Cohesiveness provides the social "glue" that keeps the team together, while performance norms provide the "direction" by establishing clear expectations for effort, output, and quality.

When these two factors coincide, the group becomes a powerful force; members motivate one another to meet the high standards they have collectively accepted. This is the "ideal" state for any work team. If cohesiveness is high but performance norms are low, the group is unified but unproductive. If cohesiveness is low but norms are high, productivity improves only slightly because members lack the social bond to sustain high-level collaboration. Therefore, the combination of a strong bond and high standards yields the most significant productivity gains.

Culture is transmitted to employees in several ways, most notably through stories, rituals, material symbols, and language.Ritualsare repetitive sequences of activities that express and reinforce the key values of the organization—what goals are most important, which people are important, and which are expendable. For example, a company might hold an annual awards ceremony that celebrates "risk-taking," thereby reinforcing a culture of innovation more effectively than a written document could.

These ritualistic activities serve as a physical manifestation of the organization's underlying values. While mission statements (Option A) provide a formal overview, they often fail to capture the "lived experience" of the culture. Similarly, while the selection process influences who enters the organization, the transmission of culture happens after hiring through consistent, repeated social practices. By engaging in these rituals, employees internalize the organization's norms and expectations, transforming them from "outsiders" to "insiders" who understand the shared organizational meaning.

Virtual teams use computer technology to unite physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal. The defining advantage of virtual teams is their ability to overcome the constraints of time and space, allowingpeople to work together who might otherwise not be able to collaborateon a work task. This is particularly beneficial for global organizations that need to pull together the best experts regardless of where they are located in the world.

Image of virtual team collaboration

However, virtual teams face unique challenges compared to face-to-face teams. Because they rely on electronic communication, they often suffer from a lack of nonverbal cues (like body language and tone of voice), which makes communication less rich and more prone to misunderstanding. Consequently, virtual teams often report lower levels of satisfaction with the interaction process and may take longer to build trust and rapport (refuting options B and D). To be effective, managers of virtual teams must ensure that the team has the right technology, that progress is closely monitored, and that efforts are made to create "social presence" through occasional video calls or face-to-face meetings to build the trust that forms more naturally in traditional office settings. Despite these hurdles, the strategic benefit of accessing diverse talent from across the globe makes the virtual team an essential tool in the modern organizational landscape.