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... BACKGROUND OF THE CASE
TA Stearn is a national tax accounting firm. ...
Four programmers carried out the work in a virtual environment in the greater Boston area. Four work sites were connected to each other and to the company by email, telephone, and conferencing software. ...
The virtual work team was composed of:
· Dave Regan, manager of the work group. ... SYMPTOMS OF THE PROBLEM
· Camaraderie among the team -- In the course of their work, the four agents exchange email messages many times every day, and it is not unusual for one of them to step away from guests or children to log on and check in with the other members of the team. Often their emails exchanges are not only work-related but also personal. ... Although they were required to check in regularly during every workday, they can do the work whenever they wanted to.
· Creating macros -- When programmers were asked to make a major program change, they often develop programming tools called macros that will help them to do their work more efficiently. ... They also believed that their group could suffer if management will learn about the macro, one of them will probably lose their job, the remaining workers will have more work thrown at them. ...
· Initial suspicion of Dave Regan – Several weeks after it was first implemented, Dave Regan, the manger of the work group, picked up on the innovation. ...
· Whistle blowing of Cy – When Dave heard that Cy bragged about his “trick” to a member of another virtual work group in the firm, he invited Cy to lunch and asked him to explain what was happening. ... STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
How could TA Stearns prevent the phenomenon of groupthink from happening in teams working in a virtual environment? ... GROUPTHINK – A phenomenon that needs to be addressed in a virtual team as well as any team is groupthink. ... The team cohesion becomes so unified that members tend to want to work so well together that they stop challenging things they don’t agree with. ... TA Stearn should be able to able to identify, establish and instill values in their virtual work environment. ... If it is already in place, it should be implemented strictly, not only to regular office workers but also to virtual teams as well. ... WEAK LEADERSHIP – Virtual team leaders are operating within a different framework. Some of the behaviors considered good management practices are changed, or even eliminated, because the team is physically separated. ... Being the leader of the work team he should have been on top of everything. ... ILLUSSION OF INVULNERABILITY – Since the firm treats virtual teams differently than the other employees in the firm, they feel indispensable. Virtual teams would always feel that everything would work out right because they are a special group. ... The firm’s reward system is no longer effective because virtual teams are no longer motivated to share their discoveries with the other employees of the company. ... 1: Maintain virtual work teams but improve the control and monitoring processes and reward system of the firm, and establish corporate values and code of ethics.
PROS:
Organization:
· Maintain the firm’s competitive advantage of using virtual work teams to deliver excellent services to their clients. ...
· Improved employee morale
· Long-term impact on the firm’s profitability
Virtual work team:
· Team leader’s role in monitoring and controlling the activities and output of the teams will be emphasized.
· Virtual teams will be motivated to create innovations in work processes. ...
Virtual work team:
· Adapting to changes in systems and processes may cause some resistance from the employees.
Approximate Word count = 2894
Approximate Pages = 11.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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