Ans: It is well known that human beings tend to like some people more than others. While this may sometimes be due to unique features of other individual’s personalities, very often this may simply be a gut reaction. For example, it has been documented repeatedly that individuals tend to like others who are similar to them. In the work place, we can see the same process in operation, whereby supervisors may tend to feel an affinity for some members of their team and not others. As noted earlier, this could be due to other individuals’ background performance or other personality traits.

Ans: If a subordinate believes that he/she is a member his/her supervisors’ out-group, the individual is likely to withdraw and work just hard enough not to get fired. In other words the individual would do bare minimum requirement of his/her job, since he/she has come to believe that the supervisor does not like him/her anyways. In such cases, the organization suffers as overall productivity level will go down. On the other hand, an individual who perceives that he/she is in the out-group may decide to attempt to move into his/her supervisor’s in-group by engaging an upward influencing tactics.

Ans: Such a program would require several key pieces. First, I would make managers aware that everyone is prone to create in-groups and out-groups. As such, they need to consciously avoid engaging in behaviors that may be perceived as creating in-groups and out-groups. For example, is a supervisor consistently spends more time with one group of subordinates over others this is likely to create the impression of creating in-groups and out-groups. Accordingly I would urge the supervisor to consciously spend roughly equivalent time with each group.