Making the Team: A Guide for Managers

Conclusions

People in organizations have a fundamental need to categorize people into groups. This categorization process is automatic and nonconscious. The mere act of categorization creates in-groups and out-groups. Partly for these reasons, conflict between groups and teams in organizations is an inevitable aspect of organizational existence. Not surprisingly, people treat members of in-groups better than members of out-groups, even when the basis for group categorization is completely arbitrary and when the person does not stand to gain from discriminatory behavior. Thus, contrary to popular belief, conflicts among groups in organizations are not always rooted in competition for scarce resources; groups can be in conflict over values—what ...