The Shipping Industry Accounting Team Case Study

According to the video, the characteristics of an effective team are, “size of the team, diversity of its members, and roles. Teams of seven or less are generally more effective. Smaller teams: reach agreement, share opinions, and ask more questions. Larger teams: disagreements, less participation, and more demands on the team leader. Successful teams require a diversity of knowledge, skills, perspectives, and experience.” (Chapter 18 Teamwork at Cold Stone Creamery)

From my experience at Managed Water Services Ltd a benefit from working in a team is creativity. Being in a team means we can brainstorm ideas as a group. Combining everyone’s ideas creates a more effective solution. Individual experiences are completely different to those of others so teamwork also maximizes shared knowledge and helps you learn new skills.

Teams have become very common and effective since they have proven to be effective in areas as cost reduction, developing new and innovative products, and improving quality (Effective Human relation, 2008). Team development is supported, in fact, required by almost all managements today, but still it may take quite a long time for the members to learn the task and activities and to fit themselves in the particular environment. Team work may vary as the organization or company varies. Team work involves a lot of important aspects such as relationships, cooperation, learning, leadership etc. since a team works together in

Part I. As a manager of a virtual team, what team characteristics would you be especially concerned about so that the team’s work would be exceptional?

In the article of Polzer (2003), it was stated that choosing the appropriate team members could be the trickiest part of designing a team yet it is also of great importance. For a team to work, the right mix of individual should be selected. There should be a right mix of technical and interpersonal skills between team member together with the right level of diversity, and everyone’s roles are clearly differentiated (Polzer, 2003). Team size, individual skills, diversity, defining formal roles, and formal leadership should be taken into consideration during the selection process. Team size is the “most fundamental starting point for choosing team members” (Polzer, 2003, p.7). It is not always the more, the better in this case. The leader during selection should consider the task they need to accomplish, the skills of the members, and the deadline of a task. As an example, it will be easier to relay information to five people than twelve people as it could take twice the effort in doing it. However, as mentioned earlier, it always depends on the project, task, goal, time, and the people involved.

Kreitner and Kinicki (2013, pp. 307, 323) also wrote that effective teamwork depends on clear purpose, informality, members’ participation, listening, civilized disagreement, consensus decisions, open communication, clear roles and responsibilities, shared leadership, effective external relations, style diversity, and self-assessment, while high-performance teams are created through participative and shared leadership, alignment on purpose, effective communication, future-orientation, task-focus, creative talents, and rapid response. In addition, some industry articles suggested the following criteria for effective teams: diversity, clear goal, effective communication, trust, ownership, job competencies, leadership competencies, morale, and operations metrics (“Characteristics,” n.d.; “Evaluation criteria,” n.d.).

After quitting this job, she joined Hermitage Capital Management as a trader. There she conducted portfolio analysis, executed U.S equities, and produced commission reports. Later she served as the director of trading and institutional sales at Terra Nova Institutional in Chicago. There, she handled hedge fund accounts and investment management.

To have a high-performance team excel at teamwork, they must have open communication. Communication within high performing teams proposes new ideas and feedback that are expressed across the organization. High performance teams frequently review their team objectives to ensure they are on track of achieving their goals. By doing this they are also able to effectively manage any difficulties that arise and plan additional resource to achieve the goal. As well as it is purpose that provides the reason for people to commit to a team. The diversity of skills, experience, and knowledge are needed in a high-performance team, which is most often based off the way people think, interests, or beliefs. We find that the more differences that are on a team, the smarter it can be. A team whose members differ in gender, ethnicity, personality, and perspective has more of an advantage. The diverse group will be able to surround problems, decisions, and

In spite of all the benefits of teamwork that already noted there are some challenges which affect the teamwork,

All with differing skills and levels of experience, to allow a service to be provided efficiently and effectively. Each member of the team has a purpose and a function within that team, so the overall success depends on a functional interdependency. There is usually not as much room for conflict when working as a team. The team also does not rely on groupthink to arrive at its conclusions.

-Maintained 100% on-hand accountability of 6,668 principal end item held on the MAL and 18 consolidated memorandum receipts valued in excess of $68 million.

In my organization teams serve several purposes. The workload is not only divided between capable members, also allowing new ideas, and a steady stream of how things will be complete. In a health care office setting, inside may be three to four individuals, which these three to four people make a team. An office that has a team have a much better chance of finding errors or data entry mistakes, which may only have been overlooked once with one individual in that department.

Teamwork is essential to the smooth running of many projects, organisations and companies. Much research has been conducted into the effectiveness of teams and their contributions to organisational success.

Most recently, Amy worked as a Title Curator at RAS Title. Here, she was responsible for monitoring foreclosures and taking corrective actions when dealing with obtaining foreclosure properties. She was there for 2 years until the company decided to downsize earlier this month.

Question 1: The situation in this case study revolves around Sally, a member of the Board of Sally Susie's Donut Shop, Inc. (SSDS). SSDS uses an accrual method of accounting and over the past three years has seen volatile sales. Sally is unhappy with her previous tax advisor and wants new advice. Our task is to outline a preliminary interview with Sally to ensure that we ask the right questions.