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The case ‘Managing Dynamic’s New Melbourne Team’ is all about understanding team development, team roles, task interdependence, groups dynamics, team effectiveness, and potential issues among team members that may arise with the passage of time. The case exhibits an example of a London-based global media agency named Dynamic, which is operating across all the major geographical locations including Europe, United States, and Asia Pacific. While perpetually expanding to Asia Pacific regions such as Singapore, India, Japan, and Taiwan; it has now chosen Shanghai as its new corporate destiny. With the aim of Chinese expansion, the agency hired some Chinese nationals through its offices in Asia-Pacific so that they can be well-trained before the full-fledged launch in Shanghai. Additionally, in the array of its business expansion in Australia, it took over an agency named MediaHype in Melbourne and settled on retrenching some of its employees in order to accommodate Dynamic’s employees in Australian corporate culture. At Melbourne, Jeff Tan was assigned to lead a new team for Digital Strategy, who has members from multicultural and professional backgrounds including two Chinese employees from their Singapore office, and the rest four were the retrenched Australian employees from MediaHype (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013).
The case represents that the team went well in its initial days; however, later they came up with some communication, feedback, understanding, behavioral, and task interdependence issues that not only affected their individual work performance, but also brought an impact to their group productivity and performance that is now on the verge of influencing their ultimate customer service as they seem to defer from their committed delivery time. It is also analyzed that since the team members are from different cultural backgrounds and differentiating experiences of distinctive organizational settings, workplace environment, and organizational culture; therefore, they are facing issues in understanding each other’s way of communication and corporate practices. It is also analyzed that the members are not well aware of each other’s work nature, job roles, and standard cultural work practices. The entire situation is actually causing discontent and fuzziness among team members. In my opinion, the situation needs to be looked after from the fundamental perceptive of team building so that the impending conflicts and discontentment could be minimized and their declining motivation level can be revived for improved productivity. The case shows that if team role and team dynamic are not timely and effectively addressed, then they could result in deteriorating outcomes at the individual, collective, and organizational levels (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013).
Some of the most significant concept and theories applicable to this situation include group dynamics, team building, team cohesiveness, Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development, and task interdependence. The term ‘Group Dynamics’ is referred to a system of psychological and behavioral processes that takes place within a group. It is imperative to understand the group dynamics of a group in order to determine the distinctive decision making, as well as, performing capability and behavior of a group. The concept lies at the core of comprehending gender, cultural, racism, discrimination, and social prejudice issues (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013).
Likewise, ‘Team Building’ collectively defines a number of activities that are used to improve working and social relations defining team role including collaborative tasks. Team building trainings are necessary to develop and improve efficiency and interpersonal relations among team members. I believe that Jeff needs to work on team building and should focus on improving interpersonal relations among them while addressing their concerns (Miner, 2015).
Another factor to work on is team cohesiveness. Team cohesion or group cohesiveness is referred to the actions and processes that keep all the team members associated and connected. It includes solidarity, attraction, and morale among team members. Cohesion is the most significant factors associated with group performance and conflicts within the team. Groups that are more cohesive tends to post constructive outcomes than those that are loosely connected (Miner, 2015).
In order to resolve these issues, I would recommend Jeff to undertake Bruce Tuckman’s stages of team development that motioned different stages of group development i.e. forming, storming, norming, and performing. With respect to their stages of development, Jeff would be better able to understand their team roles preparing them to face challenges, tackling problems, finding creative solutions, planning work, and delivering end results (David & Fahey, 2012).
Levels of the Organisation That Will be Affected
Group dynamic and specifically team cohesiveness can affect an organization at three level i.e. individual/personal level, leadership/managerial level, and environmental/organizational level. The similar is the case with Dynamic’s Melbourne team. The lack of team cohesiveness and effectiveness could bring detrimental effects not only to the individuals who are directly involved within the team but it could be also be expanded to managerial and environmental/organizational level as discussed below in detail (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013).
For instance, on the basis of ‘Social Identity Approach’, which suggests that a group bring into being when a collection of distinctive individuals perceived that they actually share similar social/professional/psychological/behavioral category. This actually causes interpersonal attraction while enhancing association among them. In the give case study, the team member is yet unable to develop cohesion with their inter-cultural counterparts; whereas, those who belong to a similar culture or organizational culture are found to be in consensus with each other (Judge & Robbins, 2015). For instance, Amanda Cohen and Franz Bauer who are from Dynamic’s Sydney office are found to be in consensus with each other while following similar work practice. Likewise, Wen and Yachu who are Chinese representative from Dynamic’s Singapore office were in agreement, but not in consent with Amanda and Franz. They seem to have communication and understanding issues while also facing problems in sharing similar work practices. Since the communication and feedback between them was vague; therefore, they were also unclear about their performance and outcomes. This caused a delay in other work procedures and affecting the working capacities and productivity level of other individuals.
Similarly, lack of association and belongingness between the team members tends to affect their morale and team productivity, efficiency, and overall output. As in this case, due to communication and feedback failure between the members, two weeks out of total four weeks were already gone and the team was still figuring out what they need and what is inappropriate, which shows that their performance is not enough efficient enough with respect to their deadline. As this is just the beginning, the situation is not that intense but consistent circumstances could lead to intergroup conflicts. Apparently if these conflicts were grown further, it could lead to confrontation between different work teams, department, and units. Lastly, this tends to bring impact to a larger scale as well. For instance, if there will be conflicts among the employees and within the operation units of the firm, it will affect the overall working environment of the company while affecting its business performance, organizational productivity, profits, and customer service. All this will eventually hurt the business image on the whole (Miner, 2015).
References
David, W., & Fahey, L. (2012). Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management. The Academy of management executive, 14(4), 113-127. Retrieved on August 31st, 2016
Judge, T. A., & Robbins, S. P. (2015). Essentials of organizational behavior. Pearson. Retrieved on August 31st, 2016
McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2013). Organizational Behavior. Emerging Knowledge. Global Insights. Asia Pacific Edition. 5/e. Retrieved on August 31st, 2016
Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge. Retrieved on August 31st, 2016
