Introduction
Since man settled on earth and thanks to his instinct to socialize, groups have been formed, over time it was possible to define what a group was, study and deduce what types of groups exist, currently knowing more about the formal and informal groups that arise in companies is important, since this can better understand all of these to achieve synergy among all and lead companies to success; because without a doubt the staff of a company is vital for it and the proper functioning of the organization depends on its proper functioning.
Concepts
In order to better understand this topic, it is necessary to mention some definitions such as group, formal group and informal group.
Group: it comes from Italian and Steers defines it “ as a group of individuals who share common goals, who generally represent different roles among themselves and who interact with each other, in order to achieve certain purposes.
Organization: according to Amitai Etzioni, it is a set of "deliberately structured and restructured social units to achieve specific ends".
Formal groups: or institutional, are formed and structured by the company, are groups of people who have established tasks for the company and in order to achieve its goals (losrecursoshumanos.com, 2003).
Informal groups : they are groups of people that are made up of personal relationships, they arise in response to the need for social contact in companies, but they are not imposed by the company, but by staff.
Why are groups formed?
There are certain stages that a group goes through before establishing itself as such, these stages are (Porret Gelabert, 2010):
Formation stage: in informal groups individuals discover and try to know the attitudes of others, to know what role each plays; In formal groups, the management of the company will indicate what functions and tasks the new member will perform and how he should behave.
Conflictual stage: in conflict in formal groups, when a new collaborator is introduced and he is given a lot of attention and is very hospitable to him, then the group may get upset and see him as an intruder or not even accept him; In informal groups, when a new person arrives and conflicts arise, or the group rejects it and ends up removing it, or the individual leaves on his own, not feeling comfortable.
Cohesion stage: it is the phase of attribution of roles for each member of the group, here they are already motivated and become efficient in their work, because they already accepted the new member and he adapted to the way of working and acting of the others. Finally, there is a common hierarchy in all groups in which there is a leader (dominant position) that influences the others, some are part of the semi-dominant position because if they influence the others but not to the degree of the leader and the rest of the members who submit.
Comparison between formal and informal groups
Types of groups
Within any organization there are two types of groups that are always formed, these are the formal groups and the informal groups, which are subclassified, the formal groups in command groups and labor groups; and informal groups are divided into interest groups and friendship groups. The command groups are the group of subordinates who directly notify a superior, for example supervisors have to report to the manager of the company; labor groups that are a group of collaborators who work together to finish a project, for example the workers in the production area; interest groups are groups of employees who come together to address a specific issue, for example unions; friendship groups originate from common and non-company issues,for example, soccer groups that are made to reduce work stress. Regardless of this classification, formal groups are classified according to their mission and activity into: departmental groups, ad hoc groups, improvement groups, quality circles and autonomous groups, below is a comparative table of these for greater understanding.
Who studies the groups?
Sociometry is an analytical tool to study group interactions. Try to find what people like and dislike and with whom they would like to work or not. This information can be obtained through interviews or questionnaires. This information can be used to create a sociogram that is a graphic representation of the preferred social interactions (Cárdenas Rovira, 2011).
What affects groups?
There are basic factors that can influence the behavior of groups, regardless of whether they are formal or informal, and they are: size, roles, norms, goals, cohesion, leadership and environment, these factors can influence positively or negatively to the group (Cárdenas Rovira, 2011).
Is it good to make group decisions?
Advantages for the company of working as a team
- Improves the quality of work and customer service.
- Produces a favorable climate for the development of creativity and initiatives.
- Makes productivity increase and absenteeism decrease
- Increased employee motivation and satisfaction
- Facilitates the learning and exchange of information
- Develop skills
- Produces an improvement in working methods (Porret Gelabert, 2010).
High performance teams
Currently, companies are constantly searching for ways to stay in this changing environment and are integrating the term high-performance teams into their organizations. These are groups of people who not only achieve their immediate productivity goals for a given good or service, but They are also capable of creating the conditions to maintain or increase their performance in a sustained way (German, 2008). Below is a table with the characteristics that you must have a high-performance computer.
conclusion
After all of the above, it is concluded that teamwork brings greater benefits than working together, in addition to the fact that different types of groups are always formed in a company, but that it is the task of senior management to achieve the union of all these groups to that they work at the same time in the achievement of the success of the company since if they are not taken into account all of these can have a negative impact on the organization and cause serious problems for it, achieving a balance between the goals of all groups, cohesion can be achieved in order to achieve shared goals.
The integration of high performance teams to companies today is essential to improve the operation of the company, and it is a topic that, being recent, has a lot of opportunity to work.
Bibliography
Cárdenas Rovira, JM (May 12, 2011). Gestiopolis. Retrieved on October 8, 2012.
German, N. (November 17, 2008). rrhhmagazine.com. Retrieved on October 9, 2012, from rrhhmagazine.com:
Iupuebla. (April 24, 2004). iupuebla.com. Retrieved on October 9, 2012.
losrecursoshumanos.com. (March 29, 2003). losrecursoshumanos.com. Retrieved on October 8, 2012
Porret Gelabert, M. (2010). People Management: Manual for the management of human capital in organizations. Spain: ESIC.
