High group cohesiveness and its effects on productivity

High Group Cohesiveness and Its Relationship to High Productivity

In a business organization, groups and teams are vital for the maintenance and continuous efficiency of the organization. Groups are vital for decision-making processes, since the process must delegate each member or sector of members within the organization to increase the diversity and the representativeness of each member in the organization. It is thus imperative to ensure that group cohesiveness is maintained in the organization in order to further increase productivity in performing the tasks and operations at hand.

The beneficial effects of high group cohesiveness to the organization are the reason why organizations must ensure that there is unity not only among the members of the organization, but between its members and administration personnel as well. In this paper, the researcher argues that high cohesiveness within the organization results to high productivity in its operations. In the texts that follow, a discussion of the nature of group cohesiveness and its relationship with productivity and efficient performance are analyzed in the context of the current state of the organizational environment.

Schultz et. al.'s (1999) study on group cohesiveness identified the concept as "the resultant of all forces acting on the members of a group to remain in the group...It can be thought of as a measure of the commitment of group members to the group task." Group cohesiveness is almost always associated with group effectiveness, primarily because the basic premise of group cohesion is to ensure the formulation of effective and efficient solutions at the shortest period of time. This principle is synonymous with the saying, "two heads are better than one," and this saying rings true for business organizations, where numerous tasks need to be accomplished, necessitating the employment of numerous people rather than an individual to finish these tasks.

Apart from faster and easier accomplishment of organizational tasks, the diversity of opinions and views that members composing a group offer leads to maximizing the talent, skills, and intelligence of each member, resulting to the improvement of decision-making tasks within the organization. Group cohesion is also an effective tool in increasing productivity because of the competitive nature of groupings. Within the group, each member strives to work hard in order to be credited by his/her co-members for his/her efficient work. Among groups, efficiency and high productivity results from the competition that arises among each group in the organization, as they compete for the administration's favor of their proposed solution to a difficulty faced by the organization (Kreitner, 1995:251-3).

These illustrations of the benefits of group cohesion within an organization are reflected in numerous studies on the dynamics of a business organization. In Worklife Report's (2002) survey study of the effect of socialization in work relationships, it was found out that "...workers who regularly socialize with their colleagues are likely to be happier at work, have stronger team working skills and stay in one job for a longer period of time" (14). This finding illustrates how unity among members of the organization leads to better working performance and environment. Of course, it is inevitable that conflicts between or among members of the organization happen, but even these conflicts function to improve the efficiency and performance of the workers. However, it is also vital these conflicts function under a healthy working environment; otherwise, these conflicts can lead to disunity among the organization's members and dissolution of cohesiveness among groups.

However, there is also counter-evidence on the high productivity yield and high group cohesiveness relationship as illustrated in Lindorff's (2001) survey research, wherein the author identified that there is indeed a relationship between workplace stress and establishing social relationship within or outside the workplace environment. This relationship reflects the fact that social relations established within the workplace environment leads to greater stress among the respondents surveyed than social relations established outside the workplace environment (276).