Understanding Top Management Team Conflict

Process of Team Work

Discuss About The Understanding Top Management Team Conflict.

Reflecting upon the learning experience is one of the very important capability of all the professionals for developing better communication skills, enhancing the future performance and developing the skill of conflict resolution (Jackson 2015). This paper is going to critically elaborate on the process of team work, risk analysis, cultural differences, probability factor, environmental effects, valuation of assets, sustainability of assets and decision making; all the issues that are pertinent to the simulation program that was conducted in the class.

We had done a simulation program in our class and in that very program there was a task where we were considered as the owners of a fishing company. The scenario was such that we, being the owner of the company have to send our boats in different areas of the sea, which is divided into three parts such as the harbour, the coast and the deep. The harbour was considered to have less number of fishes in it and the coast was the one with more number of fishes present as compared to the harbour. On the other hand, the deeper part has huge number of fishes. We were taught how to assess the value of ships, the depreciation of the ships, the revenues that we eared. It was all given in the simulation program. We were also asked to assess how much fish we got every year and how much money we had earned every year as well.

Reflecting upon my role as a key negotiator, what I felt is that it did not suit my personality profile at all. According to Sendjaya et al. (2016), ensuring a close relations in between the real-life and simulation personality traits are more likely to give positive results. Perhaps the most challenging task for me of being assigned my given role was communicating and working effectively with my team mates in an assertive and clear management. Initially, I was feeling very uneasy while negotiating with my team mates who I felt to have their own individual agenda and were also very unwilling at several times to compromise in any way. It was really the biggest challenge that I faced during the entire activity. However, I also want to mention the fact that these situation of mine has also helped me in developing my knowledge, confidence and skills in several areas. For example, as I was involved in the simulation for many days, I interacted a lot with my team members and developed the skill of working as a team. I understood the value of team work in true terms. I realised that working as a team is both constructive and complicated in its own ways and I am sure that I would be effectively managing any team from now onwards as because this simulation program has implemented the right skills within me to do so. Each one of us was given equal opportunities to contribute our ideas and thoughts in the program and the main motive of ours was to produce as many ideas as possible. As there were many members in the team, there were many ideas as well. I listened to all the ideas of my team mates very carefully during the entire process on different topics and then mentioned all of them in a sheet of paper so that I do not forget them later. Through this approach I improved the team work a lot and made the necessary changes were it was needed. After the views and ideas of everyone was heard and noted down, all the points of the agreements as well as that of the disagreements were identified. My entire team had tried to arrive at an agreement which would be making sense to each of the team members. We finally made all the decision depending on all the inputs of my team members and mine. Furthermore in this program, there were many team mates of mine who belong to a culture that is different from mine. I have learnt many things from them and their culture as well. However, there were several challenges too that we as a team face because of the cultural diversity that our team was holding. Occasionally, I faced difficulties in communicating with some of the members and also due to this reason, at times, some of my team members also got engaged in certain kind of interpersonal conflicts as well. I myself resolved one of the conflict and tried to make them understand the importance of unity. It is a fact that if the team members in a team has any kind of grudges and conflicts among them, then the same could influence the production and performance of the entire time (Prasad and Junni 2017). I kept on telling one thing- “We are a team and we need to have unity”. Also,

Risk Analysis

I have gained knowledge about how to assess the probability factor through this simulation program (Phipps 2018). Our teacher had asked us to assess the probability factor of the boats that are to be send to the sea by us. I have learnt how to assess the value of the ships, their depreciation and to calculate the revenues that we eared. I have learnt that the first factor which influence the probability of an event is dependent or independent (Demir, Aytekin and Akgun 2015). I have also learnt that the probability of an event is whether the sampling is done with or without the replacement. The program has indeed benefitted us a lot. Apart from providing us knowledge about certain calculations through means of practical examples, it has also made me learn basic yet most important things that would be necessary and beneficial for me for my professional life in the future. I have also learnt how to do the valuation of the assets through assessing the value of our company. The lecturer taught us how to make cash flows. Furthermore, I have also learnt about the fact that the asset valuation or the valuation of asset is basically performed before the sale or purchase of an asset or before purchasing the insurance for an asset. It is also to mention that earlier I had a doubt about the asset valuation, which on what factor does it depends upon. Later, through the simulation program I understood that the asset valuation could be based on the cash flows or transaction value or comparable valuation metrics (Crosby and Henneberry 2016). One of my group member was finding it difficult to understand the chapter. I assisted him to learn after the classes. I used to take the notes on whatever my teacher used to teach. The simulation program was very helpful for me and I have learnt a lot through this. Furthermore, the program has also given me good knowledge about the asset sustainability as well. The asset management maintains a desired level of service for what a company owner wants his assets to give at the lowest life cycle cost. The lowest life cycle cost is the best practices as well as proper cost for the rehabilitating, replacing or repairing an asset (Francisque et al. 2017).  Moreover, there are several advantages and disadvantages with the team decision making. A team brings more varied resources and experiences to certain situation which are present to an individual. Through sharing their knowledge via group discussion, new ideas and thoughts could be generated that a person individually could not have developed (Scardamalia and Bereiter 2014). The team decision making also motivates the entire team members towards a better performance and decisions (Hoefer and Green 2016). My team members were also more committed towards the decision in which they were allowed to engaged and involved.

Cultural Differences

The simulation has changed my perception of both team work as well as group decision making. Earlier, I used to think that individual work is far more constructive and productive than group work as because I think that in a group, as because of the presence of many members, every work becomes complicated and it gives rise to conflicts among the group members. But this simulation program has just changed the way I look at the concept of team work. Group decisions are much more superior to the individual decision making process as because of the fact that when all the members in a group combine their resources for making decisions or for solving problems, it results in much better and creative outcomes (Baumeister, Ainsworth and Vohs 2016). A team can make better decisions through sharing their resources when there is any team with diversity in their viewpoints and communication. Also, I have learnt that there are many approaches that a team can make use of for making decisions. Basically, there are primarily three different approaches for decision making which a team could make used of and they are that of the consensus, democratic and consultative. In consensus, there is a complete participation. In democratic, there is a process of voting with majority rule and in consultative, the leaders consults with the team member and then decides. In our case, we implemented the consensus approach of decision making.

The simulation program has taught me many things and all of them are very useful to me as because each of the elements are important in professional life. I would surely be implement these knowledge that I acquired through this program in my professional career.

References:

Baumeister, R.F., Ainsworth, S.E. and Vohs, K.D., 2016. Are groups more or less than the sum of their members? The moderating role of individual identification. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39.

Crosby, N. and Henneberry, J., 2016. Financialisation, the valuation of investment property and the urban built environment in the UK. Urban Studies, 53(7), pp.1424-1441.

Demir, G., Aytekin, M. and Akgun, A., 2015. Landslide susceptibility mapping by frequency ratio and logistic regression methods: an example from Niksar–Resadiye (Tokat, Turkey). Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 8(3), pp.1801-1812.

Francisque, A., Tesfamariam, S., Kabir, G., Haider, H., Reeder, A. and Sadiq, R., 2017. Water mains renewal planning framework for small to medium sized water utilities: a life cycle cost analysis approach. Urban Water Journal, 14(5), pp.493-501.

Hoefer, R.L. and Green Jr, S.E., 2016. A rhetorical model of institutional decision making: The role of rhetoric in the formation and change of legitimacy judgments. Academy of Management Review, 41(1), accounting130-150.

Jackson, D., 2015. Employability skill development in work-integrated learning: Barriers and best practice. Studies in Higher Education, 40(2), pp.350-367.

Phipps, M.J., 2018. From local to global: the lesson of cellular automata. In Individual-based models and approaches in ecology (pp. 165-187). Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Prasad, B. and Junni, P., 2017. Understanding top management team conflict, environmental uncertainty and firm innovativeness: Empirical evidence from India. International Journal of Conflict Management, 28(1), pp.122-143.

Scardamalia, M. and Bereiter, C., 2014. Knowledge building and knowledge creation: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, pp.397-417.

Sendjaya, S., Pekerti, A., Härtel, C., Hirst, G. and Butarbutar, I., 2016. Are authentic leaders always moral? The role of Machiavellianism in the relationship between authentic leadership and morality. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), pp.125-139.