Case Study Report On Organizational Behavior And Team Management: Factors Affecting Group Effectiveness, Selection Methods, And Leadership Styles

Team Effectiveness and Recruitment

Question:

Discuss about the Organizational Behavior for Selection Methods and Leadership.

This case study report is a study of organizational behavior (OB) and how it can help in the management of contemporary organizations and push them towards reaching their strategic goals with the help of their people by means of understanding the way of explaining, predicting and influencing the behavior of individuals and teams. The case study deals with Australian-based Domino’s Pizza Enterprises and their upcoming recruitment drive. The organization has decided on upsizing the workforce and their remuneration packages. The organization is going to use their centralized recruitment website for bringing in the new workers, along with word-of-mouth and the local connections. Their already strong brand reputation helped in reducing the recruitment time for team members. The main areas that this report would be covering are team effectiveness and recruitment, organizational culture and leadership, and conflict and stress in teams. Factors affecting group effectiveness, selection methods, leadership styles/behaviors, types of group conflict and their impact would be discussed in details, with the help of academic literature and proper analysis, while addressing the main areas in the report. Recommendations of effective techniques would be provided for the proper management of teams, related challenges and conflicts, recruitment and communication challenges.

The most important factors that impact group effectiveness for creating a list of team-member selection criteria for selecting a Dominoid for Domino’s are discussed as follows:

Cohesiveness: The first important factor for consideration is the way members are cohesive with one another. A cohesive team pushes the members towards willingness and commitment for striving for excellence. Team cohesion influences the extent to which members get along with each other, like one another, and respects and trusts one’s opinions and abilities (Ohland et al. 2012).

Communication: Effective communication mechanisms are vital for the development of effective teams. For understanding the scope of a goal and agreeing upon a path for reaching that goals, it is necessary for teams to develop an effective communication method (Nelson et al. 2012).

Groupthink: Groupthink is the inclination in decision-making teams for suppressing contending viewpoints for preserving group harmony. This can occur as individual team members possess an overwhelming wish of being accepted and teams wish to reduce conflicts.

Homogeneity: Homogeneity is the degree by which team members are similar or dissimilar. At the time of evaluating team homogeneity, managers can consider similarities and dissimilarities in individual characteristics, skills, education, capabilities, cultural background, generational backgrounds and income levels. Homogenous teams have an inclination of being highly cohesive and can effortlessly develop effective communication approaches that help in reducing conflict. However, excessive homogeneity leads in the direction of greater examples of groupthink (Levi 2015).

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Role Identity: Role identity is the degree to which the members of a group have the capability of assuming different roles all across the team structure, therefore diversifying exertions and developing subject matter experts. The diverse range of knowledge and skills that each of the members bring to the team offer a large range of capabilities required for achieving goals.

Stability: The extent of stability amongst members and leaders largely impacts team performance. Managers get the option of evaluating the extent to which members are securely autonomous with one another that comes with steady and trusting relationships.

Team Size: By assessing team’s size, managers have the capability of maximizing productivity for ensuring high levels of team performance. For evaluating whether a team is extremely large or small, managers need to consider the effectiveness and harmony by which the team members work together and if the necessary tasks are getting effectively accomplished by every member of the team (Mueller 2012).

Selection or sourcing methods that can be used for selecting team members, making sure of validity and acceptability are as follows:

Internal sourcing: Internal sourcing the method of promoting a fresh or lately vacated position inside an organization for existing employees. This situation arises when the employees who are presently working in an organization are departed to another department or promoted to a higher position. If the performance of the employees is good and up to the mark they are provided with the opportunity of occupying a higher level from their current position. If additional skills are necessary, at times the organizations are prepared for providing training. It is one of the easiest way of selecting applicants as their performance is already under the notice of the senior management. Some methods of internal recruitment are promotions, internal advertisements, contract to temporary, temporary to permanent, and so on (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke 2015).

External sourcing: The external sourcing method of recruitment is the way of conducting employee candidate searching with the help of external recruitment tools, like newspaper advertisements, job boards and trade publication announcements. External employees always feel fresh, innovative and young for their new job, more motivated and active enough for finding any business issues and then fixing it. Even though recruiting external applicants might become difficult for the organization, however, that has more positive influence on the business in comparison with the internal source. External sourcing helps in creating better and new opportunities for the job seekers. It assists in externally increasing branding and in turn improves business strategy. The new innovative ideas and advancements helps in bringing high productivity (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke 2015).

Conflict and Stress in Teams

Interviewing: Interviewing is a selection procedure that is designed for the prediction of future job performances based on the candidate’s verbal responses to verbal inquiries. Interviewing method must only be used if it is known that there will be an uninterrupted time for reviewing the applicant’s resume and conducting an insightful interview. Interviews are useful in the determination if the candidate possesses the required communicative or social skills that might be necessary for the position. In this method the interviewer gets the option of obtaining supplementary information about the candidate. This method can be put to use for selecting amongst equally qualified applicants. It even makes it possible for the applicant to ask questions for additional information (Tarzia et al. 2013).

Today’s business landscape is defined by globalization and diversity. The intermingling workforce has made it necessary that the leaders have the capability of managing the culturally diverse workforce in an effective manner. In a succinct approach, leadership inside a culturally diverse workforce is a hurdle and it hard to mention any single leadership style or behavior that would be the most suitable (Bordas 2012). Therefore, an optimal mix of different leadership styles and behaviors would be discussed for finding what fits the atmosphere.

Transformational Leadership: Transformational or charismatic leaders have the ability of inspiring and motivating followers, not from exercising any authority but from the dint of their personality. That is why this style has been hypothesized by many as being universally effective across cultures. This form of leadership is encouraging, motivating, dynamic, confidence building, and excellence oriented. This hugely supports the transformational approach, completely substantiating it. The influence of charismatic behaviour has been proved universally positive across cultures. Cultures that are less traditional in nature are more receptive towards transformational leadership style, making the implication that some nationalities embrace this style more enthusiastically than their other counterparts (Avolio and Yammarino 2013).

Team-oriented Leadership: this form of leadership undertakes an organizationally competent leader who concentrates on the achievement of one common purpose and objectives tactfully. Team orientation is considered very vital for leadership effectiveness across a lot of nations. Team sense is largely entrenched in collective cultures, making the scenario that it might not end up as one separate element for being noticed. This form is more embraced by females than males at any workplace. There exists a negative correlation of this form inside culturally individualistic societies, and even after that this form is worthy of being given the vote in current day business scenario (Dorfman et al. 2012).

Factors Affecting Group Effectiveness

Participative Leadership: Managers across majority of the nations in this world espoused participative leadership, even though they have a small voice when discussing their subordinates’ capabilities of taking part in decision making. Even though this form is considered by managers as being suitable across some of the major cultures, its contribution towards effective leadership in an organization is different across cultures. The leadership form in itself is efficient in a culturally diverse setting. However, its functionality might lessen if the subordinates do not possess the necessary potential of taking art in decision making (Lam, Huang and Chan 2015).

Supportive Leadership: this form of leadership is positively associated with job satisfaction of employees along with their leaders all over the world. A supportive or humane-oriented leader displays the due significance towards the workers that they deserve and that matters, and its outcomes are displaying universal applicability. Humane-oriented leadership have strong and sharp cultural variations backing it (De Vries 2012).

Conflict and stress in organizations stop individuals from giving their best. Stress gets caused by a number of different factors and that can lead to serval consequences. Stress has become a frequent outcome of conflict and conflict increases stress. In case of workplace conflict, that can arise from different interpersonal relationships, from different intergroup relationships and among organizations and their environment. Workplace conflict is dangerous for people’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Conflicts in an organization brings in increased levels of stress for everyone who is contact with it, irrespective of whether they are directly or indirectly involved. With the increase in stress levels among workers, productivity suffers and absenteeism rises. Workers who are dealing with the impact of stress are more probable of fueling existing conflicts as their capability of objectively dealing with emotionally charged situations reduces (DeTienne et al. 2012). For further adding to the complexity, even intense conflict might become so much ingrained in the processes and the regular interactions of any organization that it might mix into the background, so that the steps for remedying the situation might not be noticeable amidst the pessimism. This continuous cycle of conflict and stress not just has an impact on the mind but also on the body and even contributes to injury rates. It has been widely understood that making the body suffer under extended or chronic stress might be leading it to illnesses like ulcers and heart diseases. However, the combination of conflict and stress could also put the body at the risk of injury. People get less focused on the mechanics of their tasks, make mistakes that can lead to injuries and this has led organizations in looking at “mind-body” programs as a broad way of preventing and managing conflict, stress and injury. Stress and conflict directly influences the organization, as a result of which performance declines and withdrawal behaviors like turnover and absenteeism occurs. People even start exhibiting poor attitude when they are under too much stress. Even burnouts happen from stress and general feeling of exhaustion that might arise when any individual is under excessive stress (Rubenfeld and Clément 2012).  

Selection Methods

It has been seen that workplace tension and disagreements happen from communication breakdown (Beheshtifar and Zare 2013). Poor ineffective communication, in which people send mixed messages, say something and do something else, or do not listen or follow results in conflicts. Conflict cannot always be considered as a negative force –  at times it helps push an organization towards findings solutions for something which they would never have come up with in any other time. Most of the time workplace conflict is all about innovation and creativity attempting at taking place (Serrat 2017). For solving conflicts that arise because of communication issues at Domino’s, the following recommendations can be followed:

Addressing issues openly and immediately: It is important that whenever any conflict arises amongst the team members immediate action must be taken up for resolving it quickly. With all the parties it must be addressed as soon as possible. If it is ignored by the leader it can aggravate and then corrode the reliability of the leader and the culture of the organization.

Setting clear expectations: Good management of expectations –  in terms of what is expected from others and what is expected from the leader –  is one of the most crucial thing that can be done by the team for facilitating better communication. Anything that is needed from one another needs to be properly defined and expressed. At times managers fail explaining or communicating clearly what is expected in terms of deadlines, format, quality or any other key factor.

Build listening skills: Listening is a very undervalued skill that can have an actual influence on the way conflicts arise and the way that can be avoided. Especially at times of conflict resolution, it is very important that communication is clear and honest, and what others are attempting at communication is listened to. There is a need of a culture that is created where people are actually listening to one another.

Conclusion

On amalgamating the discussion, analysis and synthesis of the ideas extracted from the report and case study analysis, it can be said that strategic goals can be met with the help of the people inside the organization by means of understanding the way of explaining, predicting and influencing the behavior of individuals and teams. Factors affecting group effectiveness, selection methods, leadership styles/behaviors, types of group conflict and their impact was discussed in details, with the help of academic literature and proper analysis, while addressing the main areas of organizational behavior.

References and Bibliography

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Beheshtifar, M. and Zare, E., 2013. Interpersonal conflict: A substantial factor to organizational failure. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 3(5), p.354.

Bordas, J., 2012. Salsa, soul, and spirit: Leadership for a multicultural age. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Brunswicker, S. and Vanhaverbeke, W., 2015. Open innovation in small and medium?sized enterprises (SMEs): External knowledge sourcing strategies and internal organizational facilitators. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(4), pp.1241-1263.

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DeTienne, K.B., Agle, B.R., Phillips, J.C. and Ingerson, M.C., 2012. The impact of moral stress compared to other stressors on employee fatigue, job satisfaction, and turnover: An empirical investigation. Journal of Business Ethics, 110(3), pp.377-391.

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Tarzia, L., Bauer, M., Fetherstonhaugh, D. and Nay, R., 2013. Interviewing older people in residential aged care about sexuality: difficulties and challenges. Sexuality and Disability, 31(4), pp.361-371.