Team work and organisational success - Essay Example

This Assessment Seeks to Test Slightly Different Knowledge and Skills and Concentrates More on Analysis Than Breadth of Knowledge. Task Your Task is to Read the Two Organisational Case Studies (Attached) and to provide a Comparative Analysis of Them Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Comparison of Approaches to Teamwork and Team Working 4 Comparison of Organisational Structure & Design 6 Comparison of Culture 9 Conclusion 12 References 13 Bibliography 15 Introduction Team work is widely considered as one of the essential factors for organisational success. Teams are especially created in organisations to achieve specified tasks. An organisation may work through different kinds of teams. A few of them include cross-functional teams, supervisor teams and management teams. One of the major features of a team is that all the members have common goal which needs to be achieved (Cardona & Wilkinson, 2006). Team work in an organisation may be highly influenced by the different structure and design practiced by the different organisations. Moreover, the organisational culture is influenced by its structure and its employees or team work in return. Thus, it becomes quite important to identify the way culture works in an organisation and how it creates an impact on the organisational process to control the behaviours of employees working in the organisation (New-Paradigm, 2008). The paper focuses mainly on the concepts and implementations of team work and team working, organisational structure and design as well as culture of the organisation. The objective of the paper is to perform a comparative analysis of the two organisations named Biogenia Plc and Sleepeasy Hotels on the basis of their approaches to teamwork, organisational structure and design as well as the culture of both the organisations. Comparison of Approaches to Teamwork and Team Working The team work in any organisation depends upon the organisational process requirements and organisational structure as well. Team can be classified into the major groups of self-managing teams, quality circles, virtual teams and cross-functional teams among others. There can be teams formed of specialised professionals within an organisation according to a specified task. However, it is quite essential that all the team members in a team should have a common goal (Cardona & Wilkinson, 2006). With regards to team work, certain aspects should be considered as vital by an organisation. The members of the organisation should attend meetings to make team goals and to discuss the problems associated with the targeted objectives. The personal goals of the team members should be achieved with the virtues of teamwork. Conflict should be avoided in teamwork. Notably, it is also essential for a team to work efficiently in terms that every individual member in the team should play a contributory role to assist the organisational growth or attainment of the determined objectives (Gibson & et. al., 1980). Team formation takes time and there are certain stages that a team should pass through such as ‘forming’, ‘storming’, ‘norming’, ‘performing’ and ‘dissolving’ that can be well observed from the diagram represented below (Gibson & et. al., 1980). Figure: Stages in the Formation of Team Biogenia Plc is an organisation which is engaged with producing crop protection products. The total workforce of the organisation is 15,000 employees and is scattered in over 80 countries. Biogenia recruits able and motivated employees to form a strong team. For the purpose of in-house training, the organisation often forms a team of the members which covers both technical as well as personal development issues of the employees. There is a team which handles community work as well. For international assignments, teams are formed for the specific tasks, for example, for the development of a new herbicide a team was formed in South Africa. The team members formed for the international assignment are from different backgrounds. The qualification of the members includes PhD in Chemistry, PhD in molecular biology, MBA and IT specialist among others. It can be observed that team members are from different academic backgrounds within the organisational structure. With this concern, Biogenia often promotes cross-functional working in the project teams. The teams formed in the organisation can be large or small. Moreover, the teams can be formed for short-term or for long period of time depending upon the task assigned. In the similar context, Sleepeasy Hotels is a hotel chain. Each hotel of Sleepeasy has a manager in its team work responsible to look after almost all the functions such as staff recruitment, selection and management with the assistance of central human resource function which also organises factors such as recruitment advertising. There is a team that looks after the regular performances monitoring and reviewing all the staff members. With due consideration to the essentiality of team work and team working as well as referring to the above case studies, it can be clearly observed that both the organisations are from different sectors. Thus, there is a vast difference in the team work and team working pattern between the two companies. Comparison of Organisational Structure & Design Organisation structure largely depends on the way tasks are divided according to the work flow structure in the organisation. The fundamental requirement of an organisational structure relates to the division of labour and coordination amid the team work. It is worth mentioning that division of labour leads to specialisation and coordination which can be formulated through formal hierarchy, informal communication and standardisation. There are four basic elements of organisational structure namely departmentalisation, span of control, formalisation and centralisation (McShane & Travaglione, 2003). Source: (McShane & Travaglione, 2003) Organisational structure and design is very important for an organisation’s growth and prosperity. Poor organisational structure leads to lack of coordination, excessive conflicts, perplexity in job roles, meagre work flow, hindered staff morale, wastage of resources and reduction in responsiveness. For an effective organisational design, there are five components which are interrelated to each other. These are leadership, decision making and structure of the organisation, people, work processes and systems and the culture of the organisation that can be well observed with reference to the diagram below (The Bridgespan Group, 2009). Source: (The Bridgespan Group, 2009) In this context, Biogenia has a vertical organisational structure as there are four major functional areas namely research and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing and the area which covers financial services, human resources and legal services. Hence, it is very important to have proper measures to control all the segments of the organisation for constant product improvement and innovation within the organisation. However, the controlling measures seem to be quite challenging for the company as it has a total work force of 15,000 employees in over 80 countries and has manufacturing facilities in 10 countries and four research and development hubs. Sleepeasy Hotels has a different organisation structure and design as compared to Biogenia. Similar to Biogenia, it does not have four functional areas. Rather, Sleepeasy has a manager for each of its hotel whose job description is to look after day-to-day responsibilities for operating the hotel and managing its staff members. The recruitment is done directly by the hotel manager with the assistance of Central Human Resources Department. Notably, the turnover rate of housekeepers in the organisation is high. There is an assistance of little training in the Sleepeasy; whereas, in case of Biogenia training is given extensively to the staff. Sleepeasy encourages the students for sandwich placements and short-term seasonal contracts while they are studying. On the contrary, Biogenia encourages employees to complete their studies and even fund them when necessary. Comparison of Culture Organisational culture refers to the environment of a workplace and is formed by the interaction of all the employees. Culture is made up of employees’ shared values, behaviours of employees, beliefs as well as symbols or organisational languages. Culture can be observed helping employees to guide decisions made by them, their actions and it results in the organisation’s well being and success (Fincham, n.d.). Organisation culture can also be referred as the base of the organisation. According to Deal and Kennedy, the four key dimensions of culture are the values of the organisation considered by its employees in each hierarchical level, rites and rituals of the organisation and the culture network i.e. the informal communication channel which is generally hidden in organisations. Different type of culture prevails in different organisations (Haworth Inc., 2008). It can be explained with the help of a diagram below: Source: (Haworth Inc, 2008) An organisation which gives more emphasis on team work prefers collaborative style because it requires its own space to promote interaction. A company which is based on the competition tends to describe continuity at different spaces. Similarly, the organisation culture which is creative fosters innovation and risk taking and requires minimum structural support. Hence, it can be observed that the culture within a company is not uniform and requires to be altered according to the situational complexities (Haworth Inc, 2008). The organisation culture in Biogenia differs to great extent as compared to the culture of Sleepeasy. In Biogenia, there is a mixed culture in the organisation. Employees from all over the world are recruited. The company recruits the brightest and the best of all the employees. For example, in one of the research and development hubs, the company has employed people of 20 different nationalities. The company also grants support to the employees for further education and training. The ambience of the company is light and pleasant to work. It also sponsors a lot projects regarding school in many countries for biological science. The culture in Sleepeasy is quite different from the culture in Biogenia. The functions for the staff in the hotel are distributed accordingly and explicitly. The company focuses on recruiting hard-working and reliable people who are committed to work and provides a high level of customer service. The employees of the organisation are expected to be smart and clean in appearance and should wear uniform in the working hours. In addition, part time work procedure is involved in the organisation. Recruitment with word-of-mouth is also conducted in the organisation. The maximum number of house keepers recruited is under the age of 30 where most of them are female. In a group, housekeepers of particular ethnic group are preferred. The company collaboratively considers labour regulations and minimum wage facility to the employees in which they operate. The company has no culture of recognising trade unions in any of the hotels. It is in this context that turnover in the company is more as compared to Biogenia. The company is highly competitive and it provided limited opportunity for growth of the employees to a certain extent. Conclusion Teamwork is a crucial part for accomplishing the goals of the organisation. Team working depends to certain extent upon the organisational structure and design. It is highly influenced by the organisational culture as well. In the paper a comparative analysis of two companies is conducted on the basis of team working approaches, organisational structure and design adopted by the companies and the culture through which organisation is influenced. Both the organisations are from different industries. Therefore, these have different team working patterns prevailing in the organisation, different organisational structure and design and different corporate cultures as well. The companies have their own priorities in terms of recruitment, compensation benefits and working style. Conclusively, it can be stated that organisational structure, cultural divergences and team work differ not only on the basis of organisational operations, but also due to the divergences in various industry patterns. References Cardona, P. & Wilkinson, H., 2006. Team Work. IESE Business School University of Navarra. Fincham, No Date. Organisational Culture. Chapter-15. [Online] Available at: http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/bt/fincham/Chapter15.pdf [Accessed February 27, 2012]. Gibson, T. L. & et. al., 1980. Teamwork in Cooperative Extension Programs. Planning. [Online] Available at: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/pdande/planning/pdf/teamwrk.pdf [Accessed February 27, 2012]. Haworth Inc, 2008. What is Organisational Culture — and Why Does it Matter? The One Page. [Online] Available at: http://organicworkspaces.com/pdf/What_is_Organisational_Culture.pdf [Accessed February 27, 2012]. McShane, S. & Travaglione, T., 2003. Organisational Structure and Design. Chapter 15. [Online] Available at: http://www.mang.canterbury.ac.ns/courseinfo/mgmt/mgmt206SU/MGMT206SUppt_ch15.pdf [Accessed February 27, 2012]. New-Paradigm, 2008. Organisation Culture. Organisation Culture - Links & Articles. [Online] Available at: http://www.new-paradigm.co.uk/Culture.htm#Intro to Culture [Accessed February 27, 2012]. The Bridgespan Group, 2009. Designing an Effective Organisation Structure. Effective Organisation Design Considers Five, Interrelated Components. [Online] Available at: http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=about%20organisational%20structure%20and%20design%20pdf&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CHYQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bridgespan.org%2FWorkArea [Accessed February 27, 2012]. Bibliography Alvesson, M. & Sveningsson, S., 2007. Changing Organisational Culture: Cultural Change Work In Progress. Taylor & Francis. Connolly, C., 2008. Organisational Culture: Is it a Plus or a Minus in Your Organisation? National Executive Institute Associates. [Online] Available at: http://www.neiassociates.org/connolly.pdf [Accessed February 27, 2012]. Smircich, L., 1983. Concept of Culture and Organisational Analysis. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28, pp. 339-358. Read More