This course focuses on understanding teams and team dynamics within organizational settings, with particular emphasis on how teams function, evolve, and make decisions in complex environments. Students will explore the nature of teams in organizations, including how roles, relationships, communication patterns, and coordination processes shape overall team functioning. A key component of the course is the study of team development stages, examining how teams typically progress from formation to high performance, and how dynamics such as trust-building, norm-setting, and role clarification influence effectiveness over time.

Building on this foundation, the course examines how team diversity influences team performance through different theoretical perspectives, highlighting both its potential benefits for creativity and problem-solving and its challenges for coordination and cohesion. It further addresses conflict in teams, including its sources, types, and effective conflict management strategies, emphasizing how conflict can be both constructive and destructive depending on how it is handled. The course also explores decision-making processes in teams, with a particular focus on how group interaction affects the quality of decisions. Finally, it critically analyzes groupthink and its impact on team decision-making, highlighting the risks of conformity pressures and reduced critical evaluation in team settings, especially when diversity is not effectively leveraged.

The theoretical and conceptual discussions will be backed by students' individual and team reflections. For group reflections, the students are required to form their group. Both individual and group reflections is carried out in written form and/or oral presentations. 

Learning Outcomes

After completing the course, students will be able:

• To understand team and dimensions of diversityin organization; 

• To explain how various dimensions of diversity influence team dynamics and outcomes; 

• To analyze concrete and real-life organizational cases using theoretical frameworks; 

• To understand conflict management and decision-making strategies in diverse teams. 

Examination-immanent courses (PI-LV), attendance is compulsory. If there is an important and legitimate reason , replacement work must be done from 2 hours of absence. In the case of cumulative absences of more than 4 hours, the course is judged "not sufficient" and must be repeated. Important reasons are, according to the examination regulations of the WU, any that are beyond the disposition of the student (illness, accident, death of a close relative). Vocational obligations are not considered an important reason in the sense of the examination regulations, since these are at the disposition of the students. 

The course is immanent in the examination. The grading consists of three
criteria:

• Individual reflection and participation (20%);
• Teamwork:  Analysis and reflection on certain dimension of team diversity and presentation (40%); 
• Examination on the topic (40%).  

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