One group which I dedicate a large amount of time to is the Cornell Bowling Club. For me, there are two parts of Bowling Club. The first is league. Teams of three compete once a week for fun. This competition is friendly. The other is the tournament team. A few people who participate in league also bowl in tournaments. Although these two groups seem to be similar, they have a completely different input-process-outcome models, the tasks are different, and league is loosely coupled as opposed to the tournament team, which is tightly coupled.
The inputs for each group are different. The personnel for league could be anyone. The only thing each club member shares in common is the enjoyment one gets from bowling. The members of the tournament team bring more experience and skills. The tournament team members also own more bowling equipment than the average member of league. The main difference is goal. The league's goal is about having fun. If your team wins along the way, great. The prizes at the end of the semester are not worth putting in the effort to making the games extremely competitive. On the other hand, the tournament team's goal is to win. This ties into the quality of the tasks that each group faces. Both tasks are in the “Execute” quadrant, according to McGrath's Task Circumplex. However, the difference is in level of competition. Within league, the tasks are competitive tasks. Although we are all in the same group, we compete against each other. The tasks that the tournament team faces are more psycho-motor.
The league is loosely coupled. Currently, the league is composed of 14 teams. Since there are 14 weeks in the semester, each team faces every other team once. Your team within league however is tightly coupled. You bowl on the same lane as two other people for 14 weeks, as opposed to bowling on the same lane as 3 other people for only a few hours. The tournament team is tightly coupled, much like the team within league. Once or twice per semester, the team goes on a trip to another college. Not only do we spend either an entire day or two days at a bowling alley, but we sleep in the same hotel and drive in the car together, spending a great deal of time not concentrated on the task.
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When first looking at the title I figured since everyone plays as individuals the relationships are loosely coupled but you brought up a very good point that as a team within the league it is tightly coupled. The goal to every team is ultimately to win so it is good that you put in the portion on having fun since in sports the competitive drive sometimes removes that idea. Would the tasks also include improving on technique and things of that nature.
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ReplyDeleteWhat about internal/external representations and the transformations those representations go through? Internal representations could be your bowling knowledge/previous scores and external could be training etc.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, your post relates more to the readings of 2 weeks ago rather than last weeks.
I do agree with the poster above me about how bowling can be a tightly coupled activity when performing on a team basis rather than an individual one.