International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

search-icon

Influence of Informal Groups on Productivity: A Case Study on Philadelphia Pharmaceuticals Company

Open access
In the contemporary context of human resource management, workplace performance is seen to have a greater impact on the productivity and sustainability of employees. Accordingly, one of the areas that have been noted to affect the workplace performance is inter-professional collaboration among the workers within companies. While much attention is given to the formal groups that affect the very context of productivity among the workers, little is known on the influence of the informal groups on workplace performance. This descriptive case study unveils some of the critical impact that engagement of workers in informal groups on their productivity. Instinctively, the analysis investigates 48 workers from Philadelphia Pharmaceuticals and uses both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect the data. The results shows that out of the 48 participants investigated, 54.17% of them agrees that the informal groups enhances communication among the members while 27% noted that they find it easy to express their grievances in the informal setting. The results also confirmed that informal groups have no rules (52.08%) hence high sense of autonomy is expected in an informal setting. Lastly, approximately 61.42% of the participants agreed to the fact that informal groups have a positive effect on the productivity of the members of staff with keen attention creating a high level of motivation among them. Those who did not support this fact noted that joining these informal groups could lead to strikes that might impede the proper functionality of the organizational structure hence would reduce productivity. It is recommended from this analysis that companies should encourage the workers' involvement in informal groups.
Barends, E., Janssen, B., & Velghe, C. (2016). Technical report: Rapid evidence assessment of the research literature on the effect of goal setting on workplace performance.(pp. 1-19). London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). See here.
Brown, S., Gray, D., McHardy, J., & Taylor, K. (2015). Employee trust and workplace performance. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 116, 361-378.
Cheavens, J. S., Cukrowicz, K. C., Hansen, R., & Mitchell, S. M. (2016). Incorporating resilience factors into the interpersonal theory of suicide: The role of hope and self?forgiveness in an older adult sample. Journal of clinical psychology, 72(1), 58-69.
De Vito, L., Brown, A., Bannister, B., Cianci, M., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2018). Employee motivation based on the hierarchy of needs, expectancy and the two-factor theories applied with higher education employees. IJAMEE.
Dweck, C. S. (2017). From needs to goals and representations: Foundations for a unified theory of motivation, personality, and development. Psychological review, 124(6), 689.
Friebel, G., Heinz, M., & Zubanov, N. (2016). The Effect of Announced Downsizing on Workplace Performance: Evidence from a Retail Chain.
Hall, A. T., Frink, D. D., & Buckley, M. R. (2017). An accountability account: A review and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical research on felt accountability. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(2), 204-224.
Harris, T. E., & Sherblom, J. C. (2018). Small group and team communication. Waveland Press.
Hughes, M., Rigtering, J. C., Covin, J. G., Bouncken, R. B., & Kraus, S. (2018). Innovative Behaviour, Trust and Perceived Workplace Performance. British Journal of Management.
Jackson, D. (2018). Challenges and strategies for assessing student workplace performance during work-integrated learning. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(4), 555-570.
Kohli, A., Blitzer, D. N., Lefco, R. W., Barter, J. W., Haynes, M. R., Colalillo, S. A., ... & Zink, C. F. (2018). Using Expectancy Theory to quantitatively dissociate the neural representation of motivation from its influential factors in the human brain: An fMRI study. NeuroImage.
Kukenberger, M. R., Mathieu, J. E., & Ruddy, T. (2015). A cross-level test of empowerment and process influences on members’ informal learning and team commitment. Journal of Management, 41(3), 987-1016.
Lloyd, R., & Mertens, D. (2018). Expecting More Out of Expectancy Theory: History Urges Inclusion of the Social Context. International Management Review, 14(1).
Locke, E. A. (2015). Theory building, replication, and behavioral priming: Where do we need to go from here?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(3), 408-414.
Ma, J., Batterham, P. J., Calear, A. L., & Han, J. (2016). A systematic review of the predictions of the Interpersonal–Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior. Clinical psychology review, 46, 34-45.
Marsick, V., & Watkins, K. (2015). Informal and incidental learning in the workplace (Routledge revivals). Routledge.
McClelland, D. C. (2015). Achievement motivation theory. Organizational behavior, 1, 46-60.
Mueller, J. (2015). Formal and informal practices of knowledge sharing between project teams and enacted cultural characteristics. Project Management Journal, 46(1), 53-68.
Parijat, P., & Bagga, S. (2014). Victor Vroom’s expectancy theory of motivation–An evaluation. International Research Journal of Business and Management, 7(9), 1-8.
Peacock, J. (2015). Gamification as a Means of Workplace Performance Improvement.
Thibaut, J. W. (2017). The social psychology of groups. Routledge.
Van den Broeck, A., Ferris, D. L., Chang, C. H., & Rosen, C. C. (2016). A review of self-determination theory’s basic psychological needs at work. Journal of Management, 42(5), 1195-1229.
Weller, J. M., Castanelli, D. J., Chen, Y., & Jolly, B. (2017). Making robust assessments of specialist trainees’ workplace performance. British journal of anaesthesia, 118(2), 207-214.
Abbas, A. A. (2018). Influence of Informal Groups on Productivity: A Case Study on Philadelphia Pharmaceuticals Company. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(7).386-395