Advantages and disadvantages of working in groups free essay sample

A group is a collection of two or more people who possess a common purpose (Bennett 1997 (Hollings and Rimmer (2007) Pg 171)). This is shown where a shared goal is accomplished by multiple people together. Group work can be effective however problems may also arise in which could be detrimental to the effectiveness of the group. Working in groups can increase productivity if synergy can be formed. This is to say that a group can give access to shared knowledge, experience and skills.where the group is likely to outperform the individual in most cases, due to shared resources and shared ideas (Hollings and Rimmer 2007 Pg), so theoretically the best ideas are put forward and used to bring out the best outcome for the task. If formed properly the group can form cohesion so that the task can be done quicker if certain aspects of the task are shared out for everyone to do a specific thing to contribute to the overall work. We will write a custom essay sample on Advantages and disadvantages of working in groups or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However this cohesion may result in a negative effect in the group, As the group becomes more cohesive, its functioning is affected in a number of ways. First, the interactions and communication between members increase. Common goals, interests and small size all contribute to this. In addition, group member satisfaction increases as the group provides friendship and support against outside threats, (Wikipedia 2011) as indicated by Wikipedia in their article on Synergy. This means that as the group becomes more cohesive social communication increases, so the members of the group may become distracted from the task in hand and therefore there may be a decrease in the productivity. Also because of the increase in friendship the group will develop the same ideas and tend to agree with each other as oppose to differing so new ideas wont be introduced to the main group because there is little effective collaboration as members do not know about each other so there will be an underuse of human resources as other members are not aware of others talents (eCollab 2007). This cohesion links to the two types of groups formal and informal. The  group will initially be formal where a group of people will be brought together under a common purpose without necessarily choosing who they will form a group with however over time through cohesion the group may become informal where there is small groups in the group. This can be damaging to the overall formal group work as informal groups can be so cohered that people out of the informal group can be excluded meaning conflicts can arise. However these informal groups can be positive to behavior of the formal group, because it can as mentioned above bring cohesion, leading to an effective team, which is outlined in an article by UK Essasys.com It is possible for informal groups within the organization to contribute positively to the aims of the organization and informal group norms can be brought more in line with those of the organization through a process dialogue and reasoning with networks of influence within the group. (UkEssays.com).