Week 5 Update

Communication for week 4 was 99% group discussion board. Everyone tried to participate, but because of fragmented work schedules, our interaction seemed to be less coordinated than earlier weeks. Regardless of our conflicting schedules, each group member contributed to the final assignment. We were able to complete this week’s assignment by using Group Task Behaviors such as proposing how we approach the assignment and building on that idea.

There are a couple of minor roles starting to develop. Kara has taken the lead on editorial functions and Simon has been uploading the edited blog entries. All other roles are dynamic. We have moved into the norming stage of development. If all goes well over the next several weeks, we should move into the performing stage.

All of our companies appear to have similar espousal values such as integrity, commitment and citizenship. Other espousal values that were not shared by our companies included accountability, compassion, customer service driven, service level excellence and ethically minded. We all feel that the enacted values are different than the espousal values. For example, in one company, organizational leaders valued citizenship, excellence and commitment as these values contributed to the financial bottom line. The employees at this same company valued compassion, integrity and excellence which were more in line with job satisfaction. Another company’s espousal value of integrity may not be enacted since some decisions are made by focusing on the smaller picture, not the bigger picture causing integrity to be lost.

The majority of us had many old pictures and representations of how our businesses have progressed over the years including documents, awards, plagues and pictures of former presidents. These artifacts are key in showing the sustainability of many of our companies.

We all feel that our companies have strong corporate cultures based on the fact that our companies have been in existence for many years. For some companies, our corporate culture has been re-shaped through the acquisition of other companies. Our success is based on our culture being dynamic and changing based on current business environments. We all believe that an adaptive culture is most effective in creating member expectations because it is flexible and allows employees to define their roles within the organization. It also helps the company to be more competitive.

Third week update

Our team met once face to face (f2f) at USM’s Portland campus where we got to know each other pretty quickly. We all turned out to be team players. Each of us brought our winter survival practice answers with us. Sitting in a conference room without any threat of survival, it was easy for our team to make rational choices based on concepts outlined in the Rational Choice Decision-Making process (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 199). We know “…that emotions also influence -- perhaps even dominate -- the decision making process” (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 200). We discussed how and why we would use the item and as a team we agreed on the ranking that we would assign for each item. We all had the opportunity to justify our individual rankings if different from other team member’s rankings. Through this open dialogue approach, we were able to work as a team to come up with the best choice for our team’s ultimate survival. When we sat down and discussed it logically, we were almost on target with the expert. Our team score was 20. The lowest individual score was 22.

During week 2, our team met f2f. We found this extremely useful to meet our teammates and to be able to have this verbal connection to collaborate as a team to come up with our first blog. The team meeting was a more efficient use of time. We were able to complete our assignment in an hour and a half.

During week 3, our team’s only recourse of communication was the Team 3 Group Discussion Board up until Friday. On Friday, we met via teleconference. Blackboard gave us the opportunity to collect our thoughts before our teleconference. The teleconference provided us with the opportunity to collectively discuss the content of our second blog.

At this point in time our team has all the components of Team Competencies (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 244). We are in the forming stage of team development as it relates to the Stages of Development (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 246). We are working on Team Cohesion (McShane & Von Glinow, 2010, p. 250). This will be accomplished when we finish this week’s blog. Along with holding a f2f kick-off meeting, we are also using information and communication technologies (ICTs) as recommended in ‘Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork’ (Dube’ and Robey, 2008) to continue to develop our team relationship and to complete team assignments. Everyone has been posting thoughtful ideas concerning how best to complete the assignments on Blackboard. Given the early stages of our team and having a successful f2f meeting in Week 2 and teleconference in Week 3, we don’t feel at this time that there’s anything that’s not working. Everyone is participating as a cohesive team. We all appear to be playing similar roles at this time.

References

McShane, S. & Von Glinow, M (2010). Organizational Behavior (5^th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Dube’, L., & Robey, D. (2008). Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork. Information Systems Journal; January 2009, Vol. 19 Issue 1, p3-30.