INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND GROUP MECHANISMS

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS AND GROUP MECHANISMS

Individualism

Individualism refers to a moral stance, political inclination, or ideologies that focus on the value of a person. In other words, individualism is concerned about a person taking care of one’s self. The implication here is that even the government should never mingle in a person’s personal affairs. According to the concept of individualism, each human being is unique from anybody else and independent of any other person (Pardeller et al., 2017). It is caused by various factors, such as socio-ecological factors. Several elements comprise the principle of individualism. The features include autonomy, independence, individual, success, and responsibilities for one’s self.

Collectivism

Collectivism is quite different from individualism. It refers to the concept or principle of emphasizing value on the group as opposed to individual members of the group. It a  theory based on political inclination associated so much to communism (Pardeller et al., 2017). In other words, it demands that a person should prioritize the welfare of the general society at large at the expense of individual people in society. In that case, the concept of collectivism requires that power should be on the hands of the whole community as opposed to having it on the hands of a few greedy individuals.

Power distance

Power distance is a concept that defines how people from a particular culture perceive the flow of power or authority. The flow of power can be elaborated in terms of subordinate and superiority in an organization. It also encompasses the degree to which those who are not in control accept the unequal spread of power.

Uncertainty avoidance

This concept defines the degree to which an organization or community involves culture, laws, and other policies to alleviate the uncertainty of future events. An organization with a high degree of uncertainty avoidance lives a life of little unexpected events. Such an organization expresses low tolerance to ambiguity and vagueness (Pardeller et al., 2017). Where there is a lesser degree of uncertainty avoidance, you will find employees staying with one employer for a long time as compared to an organization with high uncertainty avoidance.

Understanding the big five personality traits is essential for TGI Fridays to understand its employees. The understanding was used to design plans for role assignment and also employee motivation plans in the company (Katifori et al., 2019). Personal traits have a direct impact on an employee’s performance. They influence how TGI Friday’s employees react to different situations during work. Some personality enhances job satisfaction and increases productivity, while others deter job satisfaction and productivity. Personality is the engine or the motor that drives individual behavior in the company.

There are several steps that the organization has put into practice when hiring individuals with high emotional and cognitive skills. The steps are outlined below (Katifori et al., 2019)

• General Intelligence Tests – these are tests that are designed to assess the cognitive ability of an individual. Cognitive ability refers to the capability to reason when solving problems. Such tests can be used to replace high school tests because they assess the cognitive of an individual at the level of high; school students.
• Aptitude Tests – these are tests that designed to identify a person’s competence in a particular field of knowledge

Work teams – it is an element of team composition that refers to employees who work together on a recurring task. They are suited for work environments where the content of the job regularly, but employees have limited job skills.

Management teams -it is the component of team composition that works at to levels of an organization. Its primary role is to supervise the operations of lower groups in the organization.

Parallel teams – this is a scenario where two teams are deployed to solve a particular problem in an organization.

Project teams – its comprised of employees from different groups to work on a particular project.

Action teams – these are teams developed to solve specific problems in an organization. The team has the responsibility to come up with solutions and implement the best solution for the problem.

There are several recommendations that could help the company to build better and effective teams. The management should consider cultivating the culture of thanksgiving or appreciation among the team members. Such behavior increases the aspect of job satisfaction and also increases employee morale. The other thing is to have regular team-building sessions. The management of the company should facilitate annual retreats for employees, where they go out for camping. There are activities and games that are so efficient in creating cohesion among different individuals.

References

Pardeller, S., Frajo-Apor, B., Kemmler, G., & Hofer, A. (2017). Emotional Intelligence and cognitive abilities–associations and sex differences. Psychology, health & medicine, 22(8), 1001-1010.

Katifori, A., Vayanou, M., Antoniou, A., Ioannidis, I. P., & Ioannidis, Y. (2019, June). Big Five and Cultural Experiences: Impact from Design to Evaluation. In Adjunct Publication of the 27th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (pp. 363-369).