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The Virtual Environment Work Team Case Study

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Case 1 The Virtual Environment Work Team (Summary) T.A Stearns was a national fax accounting firm whose main business was its popular tax preparation service for individuals. The work as carried out in a virtual environment by four programmers in the greater Boston area. Tom Andrews is a tax lawyer, a graduate of the University of Maine and a former hockey player there. At 35, Tom has worked on the programs for six years and is the longest-standing member of the team. Along with his design responsibilities, Tom is the primary liaison with Stearns. He is also responsible for training new team members. Cy Crane, a tax accountant and computer science graduate of the University of Massachusetts, is 32 years old, married, with two children …show more content…

Illusion of invulnerability . There is excessive optimism and risk taking. As we can see here there is excessive optimism and risk taking behavior shown by the team as they kept the innovation to themselves having optimism regarding that the management won’t easily find out about it. Also the risk taking behavior can be seen when they ignore the company policy for their own benefits. rationalizations by the members of the group to discount warnings. This can be seen when the members ignore the threat of being caught and when Dave hinted Tom he rationalized thinking if everything’s all right why does Dave has to worry. An unquestioned belief in the group’s Inherent Morality . The group ignores questionable ethical or moral issues or stances. Here the group ignores the moral issues and stances by keeping the innovation to themselves knowing about the company policy of suggested rewards. Working for Stearns for a long time they should have been more loyal. Self-censorship of any deviation from the apparent group consensus. This can be easily seen in this case as no one person came out with the truth unless it was finally out Illusion of unanimity – silence is interpreted as consent. Here Cy and Tom swore the other members to the oath of secrecy thinking what they thought was everybody’s thinking but this actually might not have been the case. Self -appointed mind guards who protect the group from adverse information. In this case study Tom was the self-appointed mind

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