Changes in Behavior and Performance in Secluded Environments

Discuss about the Study Of Human Behavior Within The Organization.

Organizational behavior is defined as the study of human behavior within the organizational settings. Organizational behavior refers to the interaction of people within a group. The organizations and humans interact, and any interaction between an employee and the organization should critically be analyzed to see how it impacts organizational growth or success. The behavior of employees within the organizational settings, informs their commitment and readiness to survive the organization. If the employees conduct themselves positively, it indicates that they have a positive relationship with the organization and they are ready to commit all their efforts to the company for its success. In a nutshell, this paper would compare and contrast scholarly articles on organizational behavior.

This article describes the changes in behavior and performance in environments that are secluded. These environments are defined as the isolated, confined and extreme and they include research stations, space simulators, submarines, Antarctic expeditions and isolation chambers. Palinkas, (2000) notes that these environments impact the behaviors and performance of the individuals involved in working within these environments. The changes in behavior could be rise in the psychiatric disorder rates, disruption of the circadian rhythms, mood disturbances and raised interpersonal tension. Contrastingly, the author claimed that the changes for example in mood do not necessarily reduce performance.

However, these environments do not inherently produce decrement in performance. The article claims that living in confined and isolated paces like Antarctic for a long period has some salutogenic effects on people, and fortunately it can boost performance. According to Palinkas, (2000) individuals working in ICE experience less mood disturbances and increased performance measures. In addition, the changes in circadian rhythms occur due to a protracted exposure to isolation, darkness and isolation and coldness.

Nevertheless, the article also observed that ICE environments and lengthy space missions have similar behavior changes. In summary, the article arrived at conclusions that behavior changes in long-duration mission and ICE environments occur, but they do not directly result in performance drop. Hence, people who are exposed to isolated environments are likely to have some mood disturbances, poor interpersonal relations, anxiety and depression, but that does not directly mean that their performance can decrease.

The author acknowledges that task conflict is a subject that has attracted different opinions. There has been a discussion whether task conflict can be useful or hurtful to the team performance. To address this debate on the impact of task conflict the article, the author took a calculated approach, where it analyzed the perception of conflict in teams. Groups are likely to perceive conflicts differently, and it’s their perception of the conflict that determines its effect on performance. According to Sinha et al, (2016) “when a few team members perceive a high level of task disagreement while a majority of others perceive low levels of task disagreement—that is, there is positively skewed task conflict, task conflict is most likely to live up to its purported benefits for team performance.”  Thus, the authors found in their research in situations where a few people perceive the task conflict to be of a high level, where the larger population sees it as a low level task conflict, the relationship between the team performance and skewed task conflict would be positive. Another finding according to Sinha et al, (2016) is that reflective communication within the team, contributed to positive relationship between team performance and skewed task conflict.

Impact of Task Conflict on Team Performance

In actuality, the article sees the task conflict from a twofold perspective. Sinha et al, (2016) indicate that the task conflict has benefits to the team outcomes, and this is due to the fact that enhances some deeper insights into tasks. It also promotes understanding as well as commitment to decisions, which obviously aim to improve team performance. On the other hand, task conflict can hurt team outcomes, because it causes cognitive overload, interpersonal conflicts as well as stress to teammates. In essence, in case of any task disagreements, one should think that they would definitely lead to positive team outcomes, because these conflicts are a double-edged sword. It is therefore, the mandate of team leaders to see how the conflict is deescalated instead of escalates for it to bring positive outcomes. In entirety, the article has shown that task conflict should be seen as disagreements that hurt the performance of teams significantly in the event many people are in disagreements. Alternatively, when the majority of the people are in agreements, there is a high probability of the task conflict leading to positive results. Hence, these kinds of conflict where the majority support are in agreement, but the minority is in disagreement or opposing is defined as a skewed conflict. Further, the article has noted that in the case of positive skewed task conflict, the majority is likely to be cooperative, motivated and committed to their tasks. The minority on the other side can be given an opportunity to give their differing opinion which can then give an opportunity for reflective communication and constructive cooperation to see how the differing opinion can be incorporated into the majority position in order to achieve positive goals.

In summary, the article argues that corporates reliance on team-based work systems is increasing, however, the behaviors of groups tend to focus on competition and this can make it hard to manage conflicts.  Thus, the article is offering an integrative complexity model of group decision making to help resolve differences and social dilemmas that may arise following intergroup conflicts. Park, & DeShon, (2018) report that structured group discussions in the event of different perspectives or conflicts can help reduce fear, greed and competition among the group members. Further, the authors asserts that cooperative discussion leader can help reduce competition among the group members for sometimes, but later it can fail inspire cooperation among the groups, hence causing conflicts.

Intergroup Conflicts and Decision Making

Centrally, the authors noted that intergroup conflicts happen frequently and can cause serious damages, if not properly resolved. In reality, intergroup competitions are the ones that lead to conflicts, but when different groups in an organizational setting or any setting opt to cooperate they can avoid conflicts. Thus, Park, & DeShon, (2018) underscore the need of intergroup decision-making to promote diverse information sharing and cooperation, which ultimately will reduce greed and fears among groups. When greed or fears are significantly reduced, the groups can collaborate to achieve a goal that would be mutually beneficial to all stakeholders.

All the three articles agree that human behaviors are subject to changes and such changes impact team performance. In the article of Palinkas, (2000) it was apparent that behaviors of individuals working in ICE or isolated and confined environments are likely to change. For instance, mood disturbances would decrease interpersonal tension and also one can develop some psychiatric disorders. However, these changes do not necessarily lead to poor performance. Similarly, in the second article the task conflicts can result in different behaviors between those who agree to the task conflict and those who disagree to it. When there is disagreement between the majority and minority definitely their behaviors would change and their engagement would also change. Finally, the third article also discusses intergroup conflicts, which in all probability result to greed and fears. When people become greedy and fearful, it simply implies that their behaviors have changed and that is why divergent groups will compete to achieve their goals differently.

There is also consensus in the three articles that human behaviors have both positive and negative effects on the performance of the teams depending on the perception of the conflict. For instance, Palinkas, (2000) notes when the mood disturbances or general interruptions are eliminated among teams working in long-duration space missions are reduced, the team performance can definitely increase. However, the satulogenic effects brought about by ICE environments can to some extent affect the performance of team or an individual within a team. In the same breath, Sinha et al, (2016) argues that when opposing groups bury the hatchet and accept to share information or to incorporate dissenting opinions in decisions making arguments, confrontations among the opposing teams can reduce as a result the teams can focus on cooperation. Cooperation is vital to teams because it enables them to make better decisions that would in turn improve their performance. On the flipside, if the teams fail to pursue a bipartisan approach the majority and minority can have constant fights that can impact performance. The minority in their own capacity can paralyze the performance of the majority and sometimes the majority could be following the wrong approach. Consequently, the team outcomes shall be negative. Similarly, Park, & DeShon, (2018) report that the intergroup conflicts are damaging, and can disrupt team activities. When the intergroup conflicts escalate greed and fear arises, and this without a doubt would derail performance or delivery of some services. On the hand, Park, & DeShon, (2018) believe that when integrative complex discussions are held, where the two conflicting groups are allowed to make decisions together, there is a high possibility of cooperation which presumably can lead to cooperation and high team performance. In a nutshell, the point has been that organization behaviors can positively and negatively impact team performance.

Effectiveness of Teams in Organizational Settings

In finality, all the articles agree that organizations apply team-based systems. These research articles do not see an organization is an institution that can be run by an individual. They all agree that the running and success of an organization is dependent on the effectiveness of the teams. However, behavior changes among the teams impact their relationships, and in the end if interpersonal or intergroup differences are not resolved the team performance can nosedive.

These research articles did not focus on one organizational setting, and that is why their approach to organizational behaviors is dissimilar. For instance, in the article by Palinkas, (2000), the organizations analyzed are those that operate in extremely isolated or confined environments. The teams working for instance in submarines or space simulators have different experiences than the teams that work in workstations that are not isolated or confined. Also, Park, & DeShon, (2018) discuss intergroup conflicts, but apparently the article did not give a specific organizational settings. As a result, the findings or results of these three articles are different, although they all write about organizational behavior changes. Further, the articles used dissimilar data analysis and also the literature review used is different. This explains why the articles failed to give similar reasoning on how to eliminate team differences for the sake of increasing their performance.

Organizations should use organizational behavior to improve people or team management. These articles have shown that human behaviors are likely to change, and when they change, team performance can be impacted as well. That suggests that the organizational behavior and team performance have an inherent relationship. Thus, corporates leaders and managers should influence the behaviors of their employees positively for them to be cooperative and focused on meeting common goals. Organizations should be all-inclusive need in conflict management so that all team members can be satisfied with the decisions made to enhance cooperation and team performance. Failure to include all team members can escalate the conflict among the team members and that would hurt team outcomes. Lastly, structured discussions should be enhanced in organizations to achieve team cooperation and commitment to the organization.

Conclusion

The three research articles show that conflicts can exist among teams and such conflicts if not properly managed they can affect team performance. The articles also insinuate that when human behaviors are properly managed negative effects of behavior change can easily be allayed or avoided. For that reason, organizational leaders should be able to provide proper leadership or management of teams for them to be better placed to inspire team building, cooperation and collaboration among the team members. If teams or groups have excellent work relationships they are likely to channel their energies to the organizations they are working for. As a result, the performance of such organizations shall improve and its goals shall also be achieved.

References

Palinkas, L. A. (2000). Summary of research issues in behavior and performance in isolated and

confined extreme (ICE) environments.

Park, G., & DeShon, R. P. (2018). Effects of group-discussion integrative complexity on

intergroup relations in a social dilemma. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 146, 62-75.

Sinha, R., Janardhanan, N. S., Greer, L. L., Conlon, D. E., & Edwards, J. R. (2016). Skewed task

conflicts in teams: What happens when a few members see more conflict than the rest?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(7), 1045.