1. 1
CASE STUDY – 8
THE NEW-PRODUCTS TEAM
Submitted to,
Professor Abhilash G N
On
July 20, 2014
In partial fulfillment of the requirements of
the course
Principles of Management
By
Nivin Vinoi
P14199
PGDM-B
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………3
Situational Analysis………………………………………………………………….4
Problem Statement………………………………………………………………….4
Action Plan…………………………………………………………………………4
Exibit-1……………………………………………………………………………..5
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This case tellsabout KarenSmith and her struggle to get involvedwithher team. The team
was formed for the market introduction of company’s new product. But due to personality
conflicts and ego clash the team became inefficient and there progress for output went very slow.
(Word count: 47)
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SITUATION ANALYSIS
As a team member Karen Smith faced a lot of difficulties getting mixed with others in her team.
The team was formed to design the market introduction of company’s new retail product. This is
an example for formal team. Formal teams or groups are created deliberately by managers and
charged with carrying out specific tasks to help the organization achieve its goals.
Karen and her group were charged with producing recommendations for advertising and
promotion, product distribution and rollout. This is called Forming, the first stage of B.W
Tuckman’s team development. Forming means the initial stage of the group, where it forms and
learns what sort of behaviour is acceptable to the group.
It was a large undertaking, so Karen and four others were given several months to come with a
new plan for the product. All four group members were on the same level in the company, and no
one had been designated the leader. The early meetings were mostly a struggle for leadership. This
is an example for Storming, the second stage of team development. In storming group members
become more comfortable with one another, they may oppose the formation of a group structure
as they begin to assert their individual personalities. Members often become hostile and even fight
ground rules set during the forming stage.
Ben, James and Charles were the teammates of Karen. Ben was a navy veteran, very religious and
also a male chauvinist. He strongly believed that the place of woman was at home, raising children
and not in business. There were a lot of people inside the company who doesn’t like his attitude.
Karen extremely struggled to get along with him. And also he had a big ego that he was the only
person capable of leading the group. James was only slightly more open-minded than Ben. Usually
two of them forms team and come with a joint decision. And they consider it as team’s final
decision and it was really tough to get them to consider anyone else’s opinions. Charles on the
other hand was more willing to listen to others, but had a tendency to show up armed with so
much data rather than coming with ideasand decisions. Often the group spent allof its timetrying
to understand how the data had been derived rather than making decisions.
Many of these issues and tense atmosphere pervaded in their meeting made slow progression in
their project. Actually the third stage of team development called as Norming doesn’t take placed
here because the conflicts aroused between them doesn’t get solved.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How to make Karen’s team more effective?
ACTION PLAN
To an extent lack of leadership was the main cause for all this problem. At the starting
itself if the company assigned a disciplined and open-minded person as the leader, all this
problem can be resolved.
Karen and his teammates could have consider Shea-Guzzo model (Exibit-1) in which it is
stated that group’s effectiveness is function of three variables.
1. Interdependence: It is the extent to which a group interact with each other.
2. Sense of dependency: It’s the shared belief of the group that it can be effective.
3. Outcome Interdependence: Degree of which the consequences of the group’s
work is felt by the members.
(Word count: 542)
