MBA full-time
Assessment 2 (of 2):
IN-Class Test: CASE STUDY
Marie is the new Learning Director at a large, multi-national pharmaceutical firm, based at its headquarters in the UK. The firm operates widely in Europe, the USA, South America and across southern Asia and China. One of her responsibilities is to manage a team of five Learning Managers who are responsible for the design and delivery of cross-cultural training programmes for the extensive numbers of staff who are expatriated from their home country to work abroad.
Marie’s predecessor believed strongly in the benefits of diversity amongst teams. For this reason, when he set up the cross-cultural training team, he deliberately made sure that it represented the
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At her last performance review Caroline told Marie that she was concerned about how quickly her career was progressing. She felt that she was falling behind her graduate friends, who all seemed to have more challenging and higher status roles, with more authority and responsibility. Caroline also complained about the fact that there is no “line of sight” between individual performance and reward. Instead, all staff receive an annual inflationary pay increase and a length of service rise for each of their first four years in post. Caroline has been in post five years. Caroline has now formally asked to be given a team leader role within the team because she claims that “I’m the only one with any ideas, I’m the only one who makes a decision and really drives things forward.”
The other four have all mentioned difficulties in working with Caroline. Ding, Ilisha and Ricky all find Caroline very dominant in meetings and too quick to come to a decision. Ilisha gets particularly frustrated because she often has new ideas which Caroline dismisses as too complicated or not properly thought through, whereas Ilisha wants to use the meetings to explore them with her colleagues. Ding feels that, as the longest serving team member, Caroline should give him and his views more respect, and is too direct in her criticism of him. Eric is supportive of Caroline’s drive to get things done, but finds that Caroline does not appreciate his
Diversity is a wonderful asset to an organization and brings with it many benefits. Employees bring in their own personal experiences and knowledge to the team (Burns & Kerby, 2012). Having diverse teams allows for the possibility to fix a problem or perfect a process by using different employee’s experiences and past knowledge to find solutions. A diverse workforce can drive economic growth and capture a greater share of the consumer market (Burns & Kerby, 2012). With diversity as a core value, the recruitment pool is widened to find the most qualified candidate and reduces employee turnover as a result. An organization can be highly competitive with a diversity initiative by adapting to a changing environment (Burns & Kerby, 2012).
Competing in global markets entail many factors and centralization of its human resource practices is certainly vital to improve global competitiveness and empower employees for global assignments. To achieve success in global marketplace, the challenge of all businesses regardless of their size is to understand global corporate cultural differences and invest in human resources which includes selecting and retaining talented employee, training and development whilst encouraging employees to be innovative and creative. Employees selected to work in foreign locations should be prepared beforehand with adequate cross-cultural training. For an organization to be successful in the international marketplace, it must be concerned with this fit from both an internal and
The positive impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can contribute creativity to a high-performance team. Membership diversity offers a rich pool of information, talent, and varied perspectives that can help improve team problem solving and increase creativity (Hunt, J., Osborn, R., Schermerhorn, J., 2005). Cultural diversity contributes various group input and group dynamics to the team. These two factors are essential in the high performance of a team. Cultural diversity can develop a high-performance team by allowing the diverse potentials of a team to operate. The negative impact of cultural diversity on group behavior can develop numerous of conflicts between team members. Conflicting interaction can limit or decrease the effectiveness and efficiency of productivity. There should be an awareness of the diverse culture values in order to prevent these conflicts.
The culture of team is weak, as there are no established norms and values or ground rules. As such, there was a discrepancy in the development of the team during the norming stage, as discussed previously. The team also engaged in a cultural clash in terms of industry areas, country/ethnic differences, and subcultures. The MGI founders related to a creative and artistic industry, while the students were business focused. The cultural differences manifested themselves in terms of language and expectations. And finally, within the subgroups were individual subcultures, which lead to a difference in values, roles, purposes, and goals especially when disagreements between these subcultures occurred (Hofstede, 1998). Multicultural teams can be more
Marie is the department manager at Verve, Inc. She has been working in the position for five years. Marie starts every Monday morning with a 60-minute department meeting where each member in the department gets five minutes to report progress, share stories of success and failure, and seek general input, advice, and information. Jeremy is responsible for sharing an anecdote, an
One of the objectives that the team discussed was diversity in the workplace. Major corporations have encountered issues concerning diversity in the work place. Our team can directly relate to this subject in the workplace since all of us are diverse minorities in our individual work place. It was discussed in the group that diversity in the workplace is the manager’s responsibility to insure that the workplace is a diverse environment. Managers in most companies are required to hire a diverse staff. Managers have the ability to use race, religion, and tenure as qualities to inspire success and
At the age of 13-years old, a boy named Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for bringing a homemade alarm clock to school, and later accused of the alarm clock being a bomb. Mohamed’s father filed a lawsuit against the school located in Texas, and also to media companies for telling lies to the media stating that he and his family members were basically terrorist. Even though such media companies such as Fox news, TheBlaze, and other people found out that it wasn’t a bomb, but they still kept picking at the situations stating that Mohamed’s father used his son as a political game and it was a tactic. Guerra explains how the incident occurred during the day Ahmed Mohamed was arrested, “had developed a love for robotics and was known for creating elaborate
Discuss the varied challenges faced by leaders or managers concerning teams made of a diverse workforce; which include team members that are from different countries or virtual.
Mzayyan, the Arab immigrant Rana meets during her volunteer work at the women’s shelter, starkly contrast the Rashids and the Altonjays. She has only been in the United States for a short period and is fully Arab. One proof of this is her delicious spiced chicken, which she brings into the shelter on an inviting platter. After everyone has eaten, Mzayyan sends some of the food home with Rana. When Rana’s husband, Emad, tastes the spiced chicken with “its juices dripping over heaps of steaming rice,” he is full of compliments. 108 Rana, however, quickly becomes irritated with his obvious enthusiasm for the food. She angrily retorts: “You want me to give up nuclear physics and cook for you?”109 Rana’s response displays her stereotypes towards the Mzayyan and the world she comes from. Her words imply that a woman cannot be both a good cook and a professional at the same
This course is designed to equip students with the knowledge, understanding and skills required for success in current and future employment or for progression to an undergraduate degree. It aims to provide an educational foundation for a range of administrative and management careers in business, specialised studies directly relevant to individual vocations and professions in which students are working or intend to seek employment and enable students to make an immediate contribution in employment.
For the 4WC we were put into teams and given tasks to complete each week. My team consisted of 6 members, including myself. The teams were decided based upon a test that each member took. Using the results of the test each member was assigned a role from Belbin’s Theory of Team Roles. This was done to ensure that all the teams where balanced as the theory of building a team with Belbin’s Team Roles is that one person weakness is another person’s strength. Belbin (2010). On the second week of the challenge I took up the role of leader of the group, a position that I was very unsure about. Within the following report I will reflect on my development as leader, what I learnt and the effects that my leadership had on the team and tasks.
Multicultural teams have become more common in our organizations, and contemporary international management literature has identified that the management of multicultural teams is an
Diversity in culture and demographic characteristics can be a negative impact or be one of the team's greatest strengths, depending on how the team as a whole functions and applies these different “routes to success”. A group can become a high performing team by understanding how cultural and demographic differences influence group behavior. The groups must realize that they can benefit from their diversity to their advantage and into a high performance team.
Although Mary Ann did not want to waste time with this open communication process, she would have realized that Mike and Jeanine work better together when each subordinate individually feels useful and important. Mary Ann got the results out of Jeanine that she expected because she made her feel useful and important. If Mike was properly motivated and given
Businesses are recognizing the need and importance of investing in diversity and addition as part of their inclusive talent management practices and to frequently challenge their organizations to make the connection between those values and their group performance.. Diversity is especially fundamental in today’s global marketplace, as businesses cooperate with