d buck the system then I have seen them let go for not following the company rules. With the few companies I have been with, they had strong values built into the rules they asked us to follow, so in general I really never saw values affect the workings of a small group.Sex, or communication between the sexes, is probably the most interesting of the background factors. From day one of our life we are bombarded, or should I say programmed, how to act as a man or a woman. Some common stereo types of this are little girls play with dolls and little boys play with trucks. Women cry when they get mad and men become more assertive or aggressive. Therefore women and men often act differently to the same situations. While these differences do affect the workings of the group, I believe they are easily overcome. On the more interesting side of sex is the attraction between males and females. The office cubical was actually invented because company supervisors noticed that when an attractive female walked by a room full of desks, all the male workers quit working until she passed. In a group I was in, we had a similar circumstance. All five members of the group were male and around 25 years of age. We were all hard working and were there to complete the task at hand. As production increased we needed another person. Our new group member was also around 25 years of age, except she was a very, very attractive female. As 25 year old males we should have been able to control ourselves, but the group was never the same again. I noticed the serious work nature of the group declined and we all wanted to talk to her more than we wanted to do our work. Eventually she left the group because she found a better job within the company and the group returned to normal. “Over eighty-six percent of the employees whom were interviewed had been aware of, or had been involved in, an office romance.” (2) The simple fact that men and w...
