Week #3 Cohesiveness

Cohesiveness “is the extent to which members are loyal and committed to the group” (Griffin, 2005, pg.629) creating a “force that binds group members together” (keyton&springston, 1990, p.234). This is very important in small groups because without cohesiveness it makes projects harder to get done. While working in a group project there is a lot of interaction and importance that each member has to accomplish to get the project complete. However, if one member of the group doesn’t want to fulfill his duties it makes everybody else in the group job that much harder. Yet, when everybody wants to put their input in and get the job done it makes the project flow so much smoother. Cohesiveness describes a set of influences and reasons that keep members in a group and keep them motivated and willing to contribute extra time and effort to help the group complete its job (Witteman 1991). Therefore, Groups that have positive group experiences their attitudes are more in a positive direction working with a person than a person who had a negative experience. We see cohesiveness plays a factor in groups on how group norms change when a person is putting in effort and when there not putting effort in.