Foundations of Group Behavior and Business Process Reengineering

A collection of two or more than two individuals, who are interdependent and working for a common goal is generally known as a workgroup, who interact to achieve a common objective. The Foundations of Group Behavior are generally the different types of groups which the people form based on common interest as well as on the basis of demography. Basically, there are 2 types of group, ie, Formal and Informal group. The informal group mainly promotes friendships and cooperation, whereas, the formal group is mainly defined by an organization’s structure with proper assignment of work. 

When a core business process is recreated with an aim of improving product output, to reduce the costs or improve the quality, we call it Business Process Reengineering and it involves a radical design of the process of the core business in order to achieve improvements in quality and productivity. Generally, companies use the re-engineering process to improve quality and reduce cost and cycle times. The re-engineering process eliminates unproductive activities and the errors. It further improves the quality by reducing the fragmentation of work as the workers involved gains responsibility for their work based on feedback. 

Groups are basically a subset of a larger organization whose potential level of performance is dependent largely on the resources that the member of that group brings. It includes skills, abilities and their knowledge which in the beginning set the parameters for their performance. The personality characteristics of an individual in a group also have its effect on the group behavior. Groups can further be sub-categorized into command, task, interest or friendship groups. The command group reports directly to the manager, whereas Task groups are the individual who is working together to complete a given work. We can call all the command groups as task groups but not the task groups as command groups. In an Interest group or Friendship group, the individual share a common interest and characteristics based on their age and geographical location. 

The stages of group development are based on 2 models, ie, The Five-stage model and the Punctuated-Equilibrium Model. The five-stage model consists of, as the name suggests, 5 stages which are Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. Further, the consistency of the groups can be encouraged by making the group smaller, increasing the time that the members spend together, and stimulate competition with other groups. The decision making the process of a group generates more complete information & knowledge, offers an increased diversity of views and opens up the opportunity for approaches.