Mad Men and Group Dynamics

Reflecting on last week’s post on gift exchange and team productivity, I wanted to go back to some ideas I did not originally address in my post. An interesting factor that was present in all three articles that I did not consider was the fact that they all used young children. As discussed in class, different reasons for this could be to generate unbiased results, but more accurately to generate no socialized results. Children learn behaviors through socialization from their parents, teachers, and friends. At young ages, they are taught to share and obey authority. To avoid tainted outcomes, the situations used young children in the hopes of getting a raw and honest outcome of how children would react. In addition, if the children were older factors like the number of siblings they have, their understanding of opportunism, the value of the reward, and their preferences would drastically impact the design of the experiment.

Overall, the take away from all three articles was the idea that contributing leads to sharing. This coincides with the fact that there needs to be reciprocation for the gift exchange model to work. Sharing, contributing, and reciprocation all lead to an investment between employees. This can result in the continuation of gift exchange over a period. However, the circumstances that sharing will happen between what kinds of people is arguable. The articles suggest that similar people in background, age, or skill are more likely to share together. A possible explanation for this is the understand between parties that each person contributed to the outcome and should benefit. An individual is less likely to share the reward with someone who was a free-rider or invested nothing.

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A fictional situation in the form of a show that immediately comes to mind when thinking about group dynamics is the TV show “Mad Men”. The show aired from 2007-2015 and is based on an advertising company in the 1960s. The work place is made up of office staff, which were all women, account managers, copy writers, creative design workers, and building staff. The building staff is mainly African American men and all the copy writers, account managers, and creative design workers were men. This was true until the end of the second season, when Peggy Olsen becomes the first female copy write at the firm or few in the country at the time. The workplace is riddled with sexism from hyper masculine men that think all women are good for is looking pretty and handling minor tasks like getting coffee or making phone calls. Most women in the office conform to the norms of the 1960s and promote these ideas about the capabilities of women. Peggy Olsen is the stand out character that strives to break the gender mold of the time and never conserved herself with becoming a housewife or secretary.

There are many group dynamics in the show: all staff at the firm, the women staff of secretaries, the account managers competing to bring in the best accounts, and the creative design department. There are many fights throughout the seasons, between different departments at the firm, between members in the same department, and the higher ups at the firm and the different departments. Although, the most enlighten conflict was between Peggy Olsen and the entire firm. She was fighting for the opportunity to have a copy writer position and make something of herself at the male dominated firm in a male dominated time. She received back lash from female coworkers that were jealous and thought she was fighting a lost cause. The men made it difficult for her and did not respect her.

From the beginning, Peggy was different from the rest of the staff and one could argue because of this a conflict was inevitable. Peggy’s background was different from the rest of the staff. We know from Bolman and Deal that, “the socializing effects of family and society shape people to mesh with the workplace” (B &D p162). This illustrates the concept that people bring their individual background and identity, which was molded by their interactions from family and friends, to the work force. For example, Peggy was raised by a single mother in a catholic home with her sister. She had a strong sense of independent women combined with the idea that a man made life easier and more comfortable. Peggy locked onto the independence that a woman could have and abandoned the idea she needed a man to complete her. In conjunction, the male coworkers grew up to believe they were the backbone of America and needed to run the country because women could not be left to make decisions. They were taught to be hyper masculine and assert their dominance to get far in life. The female coworkers mainly came from average households of the time where they learned to do housework and the expectations of women in the 1960s. The different personalities in the firm were bond to collide and sure enough this put Peggy on a one-person team against the firm.

The women in the firm ostracized her and the men tried to bully her into submission. The women’s jealousy and insecurities fueled their dislike for her and the men shift from disrespecting her to feeling threatened by the thought of her becoming more than a secretary. In the beginning of the second season, Peggy earns the copy writer position and begins to make a place for herself at the table of men. She demonstrates aspects of exhibit 8.1 (B & D p165) in her efforts to achieve her goals. She took ownership of her ideas and contributions to the firm. She wanted everyone to know that the praise was because of her work. She also shielded herself from in genuine critics (B & D p165) and did not let them derail her progress.

Bolman, Lee G., Deal, Terrence E., Reframing Organizations Artistry, Choice, & Leadership Fifth Edition, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.