Question

Do you consider that social loafing occurs within your Course Assignment groups? Please explain

Why?

5

Do you consider the punctuated-equilibrium model is affecting your ASsignment groups for the

COurse? Please clarify why or why not?

6. According to course presentations, do you believe that managers utilize rational decision

making for majority of decisions? Why?

Answer 1

4. Group work teaches team work skills and this is more valuable as more and more organisations are using distributed employees who need to coordinate work from being in distance. Group work also brings Social Loafing. Social Loafing is the tendency to reduce individual effort when working in groups compared to the individual effort expended in working alone. Individuals exert less efforts on collective tasks rather than on individual tasks. There might be one or two people who will not be able to contribute their fair share in the assignment. This not only undermines the quality of the project but also creates differences among team members as others are not contributing their share of project. This creates frustration among other team members and this can have a dampening effect on the motivation and thus performance of other members of the group.

5. The "Punctuated Equilibrium Model" will be affecting the assignment groups because in this model, groups can jump around the stages and go back into other stages. There are three stages of "Punctuated Equilibrium Model."

Phase 1- The group gets together and sets the agenda. The group members agreed to some tasks and they work together to accomplish them. The task goal and the way group members worked remained unchanges. Hence, there was an impact on the focus and productivity got reduced.

Midpoint Transition- The group sees that they need to start working together and getting the task finished.

Group membres undergo a series of radical changes and they become aware that time was passing and triggered to rethink on the project. There were shift in goals and the way they worked together.

Phase 2- The group performs the task with increased focus and great performance.

This is the evaluation, not all the groups experience this transition.

6. Rational model of decision making is a model where individuals use facts and information, analysis and step-by-step procedure to make a decision. This is a more advanced type of decision making model. This is a multi-step model from problem identification through solution for making logically sound decisions.

This model assumes that people will make choices that will maximise benefits for alternatives and minimise any cost. The decision maker has full or perfect information about alternatives; they have time, cognitive ability and resources to evaluate each of the alternatives.