Introduction
This report is a discussion on the concept of in-group and out-group based on the experience of a female engineer who previously worked in an appliance manufacturing company who now works in Intel, an electronics company making chips and integrated circuits. Telling about her personal experiences related to in-group and out-group helps in analyzing the difference between in-group and out-group and how such things affect performance at work. The engineer’s experiences being in the out-group, then on the in-group help company leaders perceive the feelings and thinking of their subordinates and team members and armed them with knowledge and awareness on how to deal with the members of their organizations. Leaders such as departmental managers, directors and anyone who handles a team, no matter how small or large the team should know and be familiar with the concepts presented in this report to be able to address current group performance problems and problems that will soon arise.
In and Out Group
Two of the most common qualifications companies today are looking for their applicants especially for the positions on production, research and development and managerial positions are being a team-player and goal-oriented. No matter how qualified an applicant is with his educational background, if the interviewer sensed, based on the applicant’s response to interview questions and sometimes written examinations, that the applicant cannot play as a member of a team, the applicant is will not be hired. This is because playing in a team or a group is important in achieving the goals of a department in a company or the goals of the entire company. Aside from performance and personal work achievements, being a good follower and a good leader are also important.
Additionally, leaders should be able to form good relationship with his followers. According to Graen and Uhl-Bien (1991, p. 33-28) on Nahavandi (2006, p. 176), there are there stages of relationship development between leaders and their followers. The first stage is testing and assessment where leaders assess and test their followers’ potential, ability, skills and loyalty. This assessment is usually based on criteria set by leaders, which are also sometimes based on the leaders’ personality, perceptions, and sometimes personal goals thus in-group and out-group are formed. In-group members are those that who passed the criteria set by leaders. For example, a leader in the R&D department may want his members to be highly-skilled, intelligent and capable of providing new ideas then the followers whom he felt passed these criteria will be the in-group members and those who did not pass these criteria belong to out-group. Therefore, followers can be categorized as in-group and out-group. Basically, leaders choose members that they can trust and whom they share the same perception in order to have better rapport and teamwork.
The second stage of relationship development between leaders and followers is development of trust which is a stage for in-group members only. These members are given challenges and opportunities that when they have performed well, leaders develop trust on them. In return, in-group members demonstrate loyalty to the leader.
The last stage is the creation of emotional bond. This is the stage where the in-group members have well-established relationship, and have strong bond, emotionally thus they have high commitment to the leader’s vision.
On the other hand, the out-group followers do not progress and is expected to be stagnant in the stage of weighing their leader’s attitude and knowing how to get along with the other members of the group. The out-group members are not necessarily those who are not needed anymore by the team but are usually those whose potentials are overlooked by the leaders or those whose abilities did not surfaced at the first stage of the relationship development, or may be those who have different culture and work attitudes that other team members, even the leader cannot understand. There are also instances when highly qualified and capable followers belonging to the out-group followers are not trusted and given opportunities in the fear of outperforming the other members or the leader himself.
The concept of in-group and out-group can be perceived as violating the norm of equality (Scandura, 1999 on Nahavandi, 2006 p. 177). Ideally, an organization should work together with common goals, share knowledge in order to solve problems in the organization and create new ideas that can move the organization towards its goals. But in reality an organization is needed to be divided into groups or departments in order to organize tasks (e.g. Board of Directors, Management, Production Department, Research and Development Department, Human Resource Department, and others).
Aside from having defined tasks and roles, a group is also formed depending on four factors (Tosi et al, 2000 p. 233): personal characteristics, interests and goals, potential to influence, and opportunity for interaction. These factors greatly contribute to the formation of in-group and out-group within a department. For example, production department is form because their defined task is to conduct production operations but within the production department there are in-groups formed. Tajfel (1982) on Michailova and Hutchings (2003, p. 11) suggests that individuals form in-groups based on mutual interests and common traits since they are most likely to receive reinforcement for such traits form similar others.
In other words, in-group can be formed depending on two general factors: relationship of each member with the leader and relationship of each member with the other members.
Case Study
Engineer Anne Smith is a female American engineer who at the earlier stage of her career worked in the R&D department of an electronics company in Korea. Eng. Smith’s job, along with the other all-male Japanese members of the design team, is to proposed and design new products for the company. The R&D manager who readily noticed her ability of designing innovative products always praised her proposals but her ideas were always questioned by the other team members. They always had negative comments with Eng. Smith’s ideas like the idea would only add up to the total cost, her idea would be needing complex prototyping, or her design was applicable to the American market only and many other comments resulting to Eng. Smith having only little contribution to the design. Because of ideas, the department became slow in decision-making.
Although she felt uncomfortable with the way the other male engineers treat her, she still tried to interact with them aiming to get to know them and have good working relationship with them that may result to better design and integration of ideas. She also observed these male engineers and found out that they also treat other women in the company as they treat her. She realized that the male engineers have some sort of discrimination against women and they feel that they are more intelligent than women. One break time, she heard them talking about cars. She then approached them and pretended that she was planning to get buy a car and asked them for the latest models, features, and engines. She had some more conversation with the male engineer on the following days and after a period, the male engineers have changed in the way they treat her. After few moths they began recognizing her ideas resulting to faster creation of designs and better teamwork. After about 2 years and 3 months in that company, Eng. Smith was hired by Intel in the USA, her home country where at her first day, she was given warm welcome.
Implications of In and Out Groups
On the case study above, we can identify some reasons behind the formation of in-group and its implications. The in-group in the case is the group of male Japanese engineers who share the same culture (they are all Japanese), the same perception and treatment towards women because they are all male, the same interests like cars, and since they are all engineers, they basically have the same knowledge which they can share among each other. Anne Smith belongs to the out-group (all the women within the company); because she is a woman so she will not discriminate her own gender and she is an American so she has very different culture compared with the Japanese engineers. However, she managed to be in the in-group since she is an engineer, and she has interests in cars. In other words, one can be able to force himself into the in-group depending on his approach to the situation. Instead of resisting, one can try finding the common things even, those that are not directly related to the task in the company, between him and the in-group members in order to be accepted by the in-group. This does not mean that one would leave his own principles and perceptions; it is about trying to build camaraderie regardless of interests and perceptions for the sake of achieving the goal of the entire group/department and for the effective and efficient performance of the tasks.
In-group is important because it results to quick decision-making, harmonious relationship, sharing of knowledge, loyalty to the group, having one common goal and vision and a workable and manageable team. On the contrary, its negative effect is homogenous idea which means that a team that comprises of in-group only or those that share the same principles and knowledge can make decision faster but the decision can be limited and may lack creativity (Nahavandi, 2006, p. 178) because they have common views and similar backgrounds. This does not mean that there should be out-group makes decision-making slow, lack of unity and rivalry among the in-group and the out-group within a department.
Conclusion
To address the issue presented above, a leader must choose his members not based on personal criteria but based on the competence and ideas it can contribute to the department. The primary basis of choosing the members of a department should be educational background, experience, skills, potentials and ability. It is not necessary that the group members chosen should have the same ability, experience and skills because it may be better if they have different skills so that they still have the knowledge and skills to be shared and exchanged with one another. Another important criterion in choosing a group member is being a team-player. Having the attitude of a team player means having the ability to associate, understand, and work with different kinds of people even with those who have different interests.
However, in reality, in-groups and out-groups exists that even leaders can recognize and identify their in-group, or those they have confidence and trust thus it would be better if the groups in a department are not highly differentiated, have particular activities to perform and are evaluated periodically as suggested by Nahavandi (2006, p179).
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