BUSS5080 · Succeeding In The Accounting Profession
Teams & Team Decision-Making
Accounting is done in teams — engagement teams, project teams, and your own BUSS5080 group case — so this module asks two exam-favourite questions: why organisations use teams and what makes one effective. The organising idea is that a team's inputs (the members and how they behave) drive its process (how it coordinates), which drives three outcomes: performance, member satisfaction and viability (will members stay?). You learn the 'bad apple' behaviours that spoil a team and the positivity/respect/fairness antidote, the Nominal Group Technique for running good meetings, and the Vroom-Yetton-Jago contingency model for deciding who should make a decision.
What this chapter covers
- 011. Why organisations use teams — many hands (tasks too big for one person) and many minds (pooling unique views can beat the smartest lone member); not because teams are 'always faster or cheaper'
- 022. Input → Process → Outcome — the members and their behaviours feed the team process, which feeds the outcomes; weak inputs poison the process
- 033. The three team outcomes — performance (work done well), member satisfaction (members enjoy it) and viability (members will stay over time); most students forget viability
- 044. The 'bad apple' problem (Felps, Mitchell & Byington) — affective negativity, interpersonal deviance and withholding effort are the three behaviours that spoil a team
- 055. The antidote culture — positivity (aim for ≥3 positive : 1 negative, mind the facial-feedback effect), respect ('yes… and', act as a facilitator) and fairness (make each member's contribution visible)
- 066. The three classic meeting mistakes — no facilitator, no agenda/pre-work circulated in advance, and doing solo work during group time
- 077. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) — generate ideas individually first, share round-robin with no critique, then discuss and vote anonymously so quiet voices are not crowded out
- 088. Vroom-Yetton-Jago contingency model — choose Autocratic, Consultative or Group using five diagnostic questions (quality, commitment, information, structure, goal alignment), with the destructive-conflict caveat (consult 1-on-1)
Short answer — fix a struggling student project team
- +2(a) Name the bad-apple behaviours. The openly negative member who cuts others down shows interpersonal deviance (disrespect that erodes trust), and the member who rarely does their share shows withholding effort (free-riding / social loafing). Naming them from Felps, Mitchell & Byington signals you know the framework, not just that the team is 'difficult'.
- +2(b) Fix 1 — respect + fairness antidote. Have someone act as an informal facilitator who builds on ideas ('yes… and') to curb the deviance, and make each member's contribution visible with clear, assigned responsibilities so the free-rider has nowhere to hide (fairness curbs social loafing).
- +2(b) Fix 2 and 3 — better process. Circulate an agenda plus pre-work before each meeting and keep solo work out of group time (two of the three classic meeting mistakes), and run idea generation as a Nominal Group Technique — write ideas individually first, share round-robin with no critique, then vote anonymously — so the negative member cannot dominate the discussion.
- +0Optional lift — tie it to the outcomes. Explain that these fixes protect all three team outcomes, not just performance: they raise member satisfaction and viability (whether members would willingly work together again), which is exactly what the confidential Teammate Evaluation rewards.
Key terms
- Viability
- The forward-looking team outcome — members' willingness to stay in the team over time; the third outcome (alongside performance and satisfaction) that students most often forget.
- Bad apple
- A team member whose behaviour spoils the team through affective negativity, interpersonal deviance or withholding effort (Felps, Mitchell & Byington).
- Affective negativity
- Persistent negative emotion — cynicism, complaining, a bad mood — that spreads because emotions are contagious; one of the three bad-apple behaviours.
- Withholding effort
- Slacking or free-riding — contributing less under cover of the group (social loafing); curbed by making each member's contribution visible.
- Facial-feedback hypothesis
- The idea that your facial expression influences your own emotions (smiling can lift your mood) and, via contagion, the team's — a lever for building positivity.
- 3:1 positivity ratio
- The target of at least three positive statements for every negative one; note the direction — 3 positive to 1 negative, not the reverse.
- Nominal Group Technique (NGT)
- A structured idea process: members generate ideas individually first, share round-robin with no critiquing, then discuss and vote anonymously, so status and volume do not crowd out good ideas.
- Vroom-Yetton-Jago model
- A contingency framework that selects who should decide — Autocratic, Consultative or Group — from questions about decision quality, commitment need, the leader's information, problem structure and goal alignment.
Teams & Team Decision-Making FAQ
What are the three team outcomes?
Performance (was the work done well?), member satisfaction (do members enjoy being in the team?) and viability (will members stay over time?). Naming only performance is a classic exam slip — there are three, and viability is the one people forget.
What are the three 'bad apple' behaviours, and how do you counter them?
Affective negativity, interpersonal deviance and withholding effort (Felps, Mitchell & Byington). You counter them by deliberately building a culture of positivity (aim for ≥3:1 positive-to-negative), respect ('yes… and', act as a facilitator) and fairness (make each member's contribution visible).
When should a leader use a Group decision under Vroom-Yetton-Jago?
When commitment to the decision is critical, the team is capable and shares the organisation's goals, and there is time. If the leader already has the information, speed matters and commitment need is low, move toward Autocratic instead.
What is the destructive-conflict caveat?
If the Vroom-Yetton-Jago model points to a Consultative or Group decision but the team meeting together would spark destructive conflict, the leader should consult members one-on-one and then decide. Group participation assumes the group can actually function.
What are the three classic meeting mistakes?
No facilitator to steer the process; no agenda or pre-work circulated in advance (so members arrive unprepared and the intended output is undefined); and doing individual work during group time. Save meetings for what only the group can do together.
Why do organisations use teams at all?
Two reasons the exam wants by name: many hands (some tasks are too big or complex for one person) and many minds (pooling unique perspectives can beat the smartest individual). It is not because teams are always faster or cheaper — they add coordination cost.
Exam move
Teams is the hinge of BUSS5080: it is examinable in the closed-book MCQ and it is the lived content of your group case project and Teammate Evaluation, so learn it as tools you will actually use. Memorise the small, countable lists cold, because that is where the MCQ lives — the three outcomes (performance, satisfaction, viability), the three bad-apple behaviours (affective negativity, interpersonal deviance, withholding effort), the matching antidotes (positivity ≥3:1, respect, fairness), and the three meeting mistakes. Then drill the Vroom-Yetton-Jago routing until you can do it on reflex: high commitment-need plus a capable, goal-aligned team plus time pushes you toward Group; leader-holds-the-information plus speed plus low commitment-need pushes you toward Autocratic — and never forget the destructive-conflict caveat. For applied questions, practise turning a messy team scenario into named fixes (agenda and pre-work, NGT, visible contribution) rather than vague advice, because concrete, framework-anchored answers are what score.
