Self Managed Team Environment example essay topic

Question 1 Redesigning business processes and the associated systems and organizational structures to achieve a dramatic improvement in business performance. The purpose of the progress is to organise the division in a decentralized, self-managed team environment that will increase customer responsiveness and enhance productivity and profitability. Progress Extrusion and Compression are behind schedule, while injection really picked up and is actually leading the implementation progress. Why are the outcomes so different among three departments? Since Codan is about building work team, it will be nice to introduce a model on work team effectiveness.

This model portrays work team within an organization environment. Since work teams functions within an organization, so it is important to have an organization context that nurture and support work team process. There are 6 critical organizational context variables: First, the team purpose needs to be in concert with the organization's strategy. If the purpose and strategy diverge, the team will hardly gain any support from the organization. Secondly, both the physical and organizational structure should foster team development. Physical proximity enhances group interaction and horizontal structure promotes open communication.

Team members also need appropriate technological tools and training for improvement and to manage changes in business environment. Also, an organizational culture should value team participation and autonomy, otherwise the team will not make suggestion or don't have a sense of responsibility to contribute to company. Teamwork needs to be reinforced by the organizational compensation system that reward teamwork as opposed to individual performance. Finally, administrative supports and management skills should be supplied so that the team can focus on production, not paperwork. The interactions between the work team and organization will give two outputs and they are performance and viability. Performance is the team's productivity and viability include both member's satisfaction and willingness to contribute.

The outputs of the model are virtually the goal of Codan 2000. Based on this model, we have set some criteria to evaluate the departments in order to explain why the outcome among three departments are so different. Injection Department The managers of Injection department are very aggressive and willing to take risk. They also demonstrated their commitment to Codan and kept measure very consistent.

These helps them gain support and trust from workers. The goal and purpose of teams are well-communicated. If any worker is in doubt, the management provides many information and discusses with them. The leadership style is very decentralized and each self-managed teams full autonomy in assigning roles and responsibilities. Self-managed team are formed in the department and teams are grouped together physically. Assistant Managers are eliminated and a horizontal structure is resulted.

The culture of the department encourages participation and self-management as mentioned. They set up own schedule and divide works. Team also volunteers trouble problem and perform quality control within team. Communication is two ways. For example, the weekly progress meeting provides a forum for review and suggestions for further improvement. And finally, the production target is set to team and reward system is team-based as opposed to individual-based.

Compression In contrast, compression department has very conservative managers that resist to change and give up control. They are very cautious in the implementation progress, and they want to settle in the new location before stepping forward. There is also hidden agendas from the management because the program will mark the end of Jesper's family The managers have not communicated the plan to their workers since they don't have a faith in the program. They also believe that the workers don't have the skilled to understand the project. business. The leadership style is centralized management where workers don't have any control on their work and assignments.

The management believe that the worker don't have the knowledge and skill to run self-managed team. It divides the departments into two functional teams which are production and trimming. The culture is fairly formal and the management do not value worker's comment. The managers views employees in the department work for their pay.

Communication is top-down and there is no system to give suggestion. There is no incentive on the part of the workers to contribute to department success because they are paid base by the number of product produced. Extrusion The change in managers is really hurting the Extrusion department and causes disruption in the implementation progress. The former management are not cooperative creating a bad corporate culture. There are many unknowns and ppl are searching for the management and leadership style. How do they fit into the new management.

There are competing goals in former management: sales try to optimise sales with no consideration on part of production. There is no shared leadership with a vertical structure characterised by the position of Assistant Managers. Because Industrial extrusion department shares facilities with Auto extrusion department, the department does not establish an identity as being part of Industrial department. The culture of the department is suffered from bad former management and workers are not willing to voice up because their comments are not respected in the past.

Extrusion department doesn't have a system or incentive for the workers to make suggestion. In many case, the workers also have solutions to problems but are not willing to voice up until they are asked. Thus, there is only one way communication within the department. Finally, the reward system is unknown, and hence we don't know how do the management promote team-based improvement. Conclusion From the analysis of departments, we can see that Injection department works really hard to build an organization context that fosters work team development and fits well in the ecological model. On the other hand, Compression and Extrusion departments do not fit into the ecological model really well whether because they have no initiative to implement the plan or the change in management.