The Super-chicken model refers to a manner of team recruitment that favors bringing together highly driven overachievers. It is argued that this can be counterproductive because of the negative effects of hyper-competitiveness on a group's dynamic, and that recruitment that emphasizes collaboration over individual excellence can result in greater productivity. [1] The name makes analogy to the interactions among chickens observed in a study by Purdue University evolutionary biologist William Muir. [2]
Purdue University biologist William Muir conducted an experiment using chickens. Muir segregated chickens based upon their egg production. He grouped average egg laying chickens together. And he grouped together a prolific egg laying flock: he called these "super chickens". Muir kept these chickens in their groups for two generations and he found that the average chickens were doing fine and they consistently produced eggs. In the super chickens group, Muir found that only three survived as the group had pecked each other to death. [3] [4]
In business applications, employees work to become a "Super-chicken", and at times they keep their colleagues down so that they stay on top. According to Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, people do not all have the same views on success. Some people try to prove they are smart, and others believe that they just need to work harder. Dweck claims talent should not be praised. She claims organizations which are thriving do not label employees: Dweck's research has shown that this method fosters collaboration and cooperation among employees. The concept is that in business everybody has value on the team. Employees need social support, and they need to go to each other for help. The model suggests that choosing the "supermen or superwomen" can create harmful competition which does not benefit the organization. [5] [6] [7]
Margaret Heffernan gave a Ted Talk in 2015: she tied the Muir super-chicken research to employee behavior in a business setting. Heffernan said when employees collaborate rather than compete they create "social capital." Teams working together for the good of the business develop trust in each other. She claimed that one company that synchronized coffee breaks to allow employees to talk to one another and the companies profits increased, while employee satisfaction went up 10 percent. [8] [9]
The Super-chicken mode of operation has produced adverse results in both sports franchises (comparing Real Madrid and Barcelona soccer teams) [upper-alpha 1] and other businesses. Survival of the fittest employee hiring models create adverse performance issues. This is a consequential synergy between individuals and group dynamics. Stack ranking can encourage antisocial behavior, and have deleterious effects upon group outcomes, citing Microsoft, Enron, and Amazon's experience. [10]
Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology.
Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
The chicken is a large and round short-winged bird, domesticated from the red junglefowl of Southeast Asia around 8,000 years ago. Most chickens are raised for food, providing meat and eggs; others are kept as pets or for cockfighting.
A mindset is an established set of attitudes of a person or group concerning culture, values, philosophy, frame of mind, outlook, and disposition. It may also arise from a person's worldview or beliefs about the meaning of life.
Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss. Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, etc. The rivalry can be over attainment of any exclusive goal, including recognition.
Debeaking, beak trimming, or beak conditioning, is the partial removal of the beak of poultry, especially layer hens and turkeys, although it may also be performed on quail and ducks. Most commonly, the beak is shortened permanently, although regrowth can occur. The trimmed lower beak is somewhat longer than the upper beak. A similar but separate practice, usually performed by an avian veterinarian or an experienced birdkeeper, involves clipping, filing or sanding the beaks of captive birds for health purposes – in order to correct or temporarily to alleviate overgrowths or deformities and better allow the bird to go about its normal feeding and preening activities. Amongst raptor-keepers, this practice is commonly known as "coping".
The domestic turkey is a large fowl, one of the two species in the genus Meleagris and the same species as the wild turkey. Although turkey domestication was thought to have occurred in central Mesoamerica at least 2,000 years ago, recent research suggests a possible second domestication event in the area that is now the southwestern United States between 200 BC and 500 AD. However, all of the main domestic turkey varieties today descend from the turkey raised in central Mexico that was subsequently imported into Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century.
In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person or organization to alter their behavior to produce the desired outcome. The laws of economists and of behavior state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of effort and therefore higher levels of performance. For comparison, a disincentive is something that discourages from certain actions.
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene.
The Hawthorne effect is a type of human behavior reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed. The effect was discovered in the context of research conducted at the Hawthorne Western Electric plant; however, some scholars think the descriptions are fictitious.
Trimble Inc. is an American software, hardware, and services technology company. Trimble supports global industries in building & construction, agriculture, geospatial, natural resources and utilities, governments, transportation and others. Trimble also does hardware development of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers, scanners, total stations, laser rangefinders, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), inertial navigation systems and software processing tools.
The study of memes, units of cultural information, often involves the examination of meme complexes or memeplexes. Memeplexes, comparable to the gene complexes in biology, consist of a group of memes that are typically present in the same individual. This presence is due to the implementation of Universal Darwinism's theory, which postulates that memes can more effectively reproduce themselves when they collaborate or "team up".
Carol Susan Dweck is an American psychologist. She holds the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professorship of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck is known for her work on motivation and mindset. She was on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Harvard, and Columbia before joining the Stanford University faculty in 2004. She was named an Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow in 2013, an APS Mentor Awardee in 2019, and an APS William James Fellow in 2020, and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2012.
Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion chickens are killed for consumption annually. Chickens raised for eggs are known as layers, while chickens raised for meat are called broilers.
Change management (CM) is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization.
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker. She is currently a professor of Practice at the University of Bath School of Management in the UK.
Feather pecking is a behavioural problem that occurs most frequently amongst domestic hens reared for egg production, although it does occur in other poultry such as pheasants, turkeys, ducks, broiler chickens and is sometimes seen in farmed ostriches. Feather pecking occurs when one bird repeatedly pecks at the feathers of another. The levels of severity may be recognized as mild and severe. Gentle feather pecking is considered to be a normal investigatory behaviour where the feathers of the recipient are hardly disturbed and therefore does not represent a problem. In severe feather pecking, however, the feathers of the recipient are grasped, pulled at and sometimes removed. This is painful for the receiving bird and can lead to trauma of the skin or bleeding, which in turn can lead to cannibalism and death.
Abnormal behavior of birds in captivity has been found to occur among both domesticated and wild birds. Abnormal behavior can be defined in several ways. Statistically, 'abnormal' is when the occurrence, frequency or intensity of a behaviour varies statistically significantly, either more or less, from the normal value. This means that theoretically, almost any behaviour could become 'abnormal' in an individual. Less formally, 'abnormal' includes any activity judged to be outside the normal behaviour pattern for captive birds of that particular class or age. For example, running rather than flying may be a normal behaviour and regularly observed in one species, however, in another species it might be normal but becomes 'abnormal' if it reaches a high frequency, or in another species it is rarely observed and any incidence is considered 'abnormal'. This article does not include 'one-off' behaviours performed by individual birds that might be considered abnormal for that individual, unless these are performed repeatedly by other individuals in the species and are recognised as part of the ethogram of that species.
Cannibalism in poultry is the act of one individual of a poultry species consuming all or part of another individual of the same species as food. It commonly occurs in flocks of domestic hens reared for egg production, although it can also occur in domestic turkeys, pheasants and other poultry species. Poultry create a social order of dominance known as pecking order. When pressure occurs within the flock, pecking can increase in aggression and escalate to cannibalism. Cannibalism can occur as a consequence of feather pecking which has caused denuded areas and bleeding on a bird's skin. Cannibalism can cause large mortality rates within the flock and large decreases in production due to the stress it causes. Vent pecking, sometimes called 'cloacal cannibalism', is considered to be a separate form of cannibalistic pecking as this occurs in well-feathered birds and only the cloaca is targeted. There are several causes that can lead to cannibalism such as: light and overheating, crowd size, nutrition, injury/death, genetics and learned behaviour. Research has been conducted to attempt to understand why poultry engage in this behaviour, as it is not totally understood. There are known methods of control to reduce cannibalism such as crowd size control, beak trimming, light manipulation, perches, selective genetics and eyewear.
Workplace democracy is the application of democracy in various forms to the workplace, such as voting systems, debates, democratic structuring, due process, adversarial process, and systems of appeal. It can be implemented in a variety of ways, depending on the size, culture, and other variables of an organization.