TEAM CULTURE AND TEAM BEHAVIOR

MGT 680 -ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR

Victor Gutierrez

Niketa Parikh

Vincent

Srilakshmi

Mesut Ozcan

GROUP CULTURE IN ORGANIZATIONS

Organisational culture can result from the internal structure of an organisation and from the type of people it employs. The determinants of organizational culture are presented in the cultural web, which includes routines and ritual, stories, symbols, power structures, organizational structures, control systems. All these determinants will have an impact on the type of place an organisation is to work in.

According to Deal and Kennedy, there are 4 organizational types described as follows:

Tough Guy Macho Culture: The tough-guy macho culture is where staff takes high-risk decisions and receive rapid feedback on the effectiveness of their actions.

Work/Hard Play Culture: The work hard/play hard culture is found in organizations in which decisions are routinely low risk and feedback quick, which is often the case in sales-orientated companies.

Bet Your Company Culture: The bet your company culture organisation takes big risks and feedback takes a long time. This is typical of companies which build aircraft or undertake oil exploration.

Process Culture: Is low risk with slow feedback, which is typically found in the civil service and public-sector organizations.

How a company manages and behaves in the international arena can be influenced by many factors. The key issues which need to be examined as they are influenced by differing global, national and local cultures include how success is measured, communications with consumers and the marketplace, human resource management, communication with overseas managers (locally based and international managers), and contract negotiations. Managing culture and understanding its relevance to business requires a number of issues to be addressed. These include leadership, the role of symbols, and the use of time, communications and meetings in day-to-day organisational life.

Every organisation has its own unique culture even though they may not have consciously tried to create it. Rather it will have been probably created unconsciously, based on the values of the top management or the founders or core people who build and/or direct that organisation. Over time individuals (particularly the organization’s leaders) attempt to change the culture of their organizations to fit their own preferences or changing marketplace conditions. This culture then influences the decision-making processes, it affects styles of management and what everyone determines as success.

When an organisation is created it becomes its own world and its culture becomes the foundation on which the organisation will exist in the world. People's actions in organizations are not always 'their own' but are largely influenced by the socialization processes of the specific culture to which they belong. Organisational culture is often referred to in the same breath as organisational change - and you will often see the process of developing a new culture or changing the existing one linked into the transition curve.

People in every workplace talk about organizational culture, that mysterious word that characterizes a work environment. One of the key questions and assessments, when employers interview a prospective employee, explores whether the candidate is a good “cultural fit.” Culture is difficult to define, but you generally know when you have found an employee who appears to fit your culture. He just "feels" right. Culture is the environment that surrounds you at work all of the time. Culture is a powerful element that shapes your work enjoyment, your work relationships, and your work processes. But, culture is something that you cannot actually see, except through its physical manifestations in your work place.

In many ways, culture is like personality. In a person, the personality is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, interests, experiences, upbringing, and habits that create a person’s behavior.

Culture is made up of the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people. Culture is the behavior that results when a group arrives at a set of - generally unspoken and unwritten - rules for working together. An organization’s culture is made up of all of the life experiences each employee brings to the organization.

Central Concepts about Culture

Culture = Behavior: Culture is a word used to describe the behaviors that represent the general operating norms in your environment. Culture is not usually defined as good or bad, although aspects of your culture likely support your progress and success and other aspects impede your progress. A norm of accountability will help make your organization successful. A norm of spectacular customer service will sell your products and engage your employees. Tolerating poor performance or exhibiting a lack of discipline to maintain established processes and systems will impede your success.

Culture is learned: People learn to perform certain behaviors through either the rewards or negative consequences that follow their behavior. When a behavior is rewarded, it is repeated and the association eventually becomes part of the culture. A simple thank you from an executive for work performed in a particular manner molds the culture.

Culture is learned Through Interaction. Employees learn culture by interacting with other employees. Most behaviors and rewards in organizations involve other employees. An applicant experiences a sense of your culture, and his or her fit within your culture, during the interview process. An initial opinion of your culture can be formed as early as the first phone call from the Human Resources department.

Sub-cultures Form Through Rewards: Employees have many different wants and needs. Sometimes employees value rewards that are not associated with the behaviors desired by managers for the overall company. This is often how subcultures are formed, as people get social

rewards from coworkers or have their most important needs met in their departments or project teams.

Cross Cultural Model

There have been some recent models created to attempt to study and classify cultural diversity in relational to organisational needs. One model, based on the work of Geert Hofstede (more detailed information and links on this page) classifies cultures based on where they fall on a five item continuum. Hofstede likens culture to a 'collective programming' of the minds of one group that differentiates them from other groups. He believes this programming derives from one’s social culture. He puts a different slant on culture, as Hofstede talks of it as 'software of the mind'. Culture is "the collective mental programming of the people in an environment". Criticism of his views arises as he suggests less of a role for individuals in developing culture, instead they are seen as rather passive - simply the recipients of culture and his views appear to ignore diversity within national cultures. It depends how inclined you are to individualism, remember Hofstede is European and most other writers/theorists are American. The legacy of different social contexts is important.

1. Individual vs. Collective Orientation

2. Power-Distance Orientation

3. Uncertainty-Avoidance Orientation

4. Dominant-Values Orientation

5. Short-Term vs. Long-Term Orientation

Fons Trompenaars undertook research to identify and model the source of national cultural differences alongside corporate culture. He also identifies a number of dimensions in which cultures can differ.

Universalism v pluralism ( rules and procedures or relationships)

Individualism v communitarianism (me or the group)

Specific v diffuse (superficial or deep relationships, are bits of life kept apart or brought together

Neutrality v affectivity (conceal or show emotions)

Inner directed v outer directed (the environment around)

Achieved status v ascribed status (from who you are or what you do)

Sequential time v synchronic time (one after another or all at once)

Components of culture within the team in an organization

After conducting research and taking surveys among teams in organizations, the following characteristics were observed among the team members:

Domain Relevant skills and attitude of the members: The members perform within the team according to the domain in which they have to work. They perform according to the level of their work within the organization. The other members learn and communicate according to the domain relevant skills of each other.

Humanistic abilities: The people with these abilities perform according to what level of skills they possess. The normal humanistic abilities, like good communication, listening, encouraging, motivating etc.

Intrinsic motivation: These people have the motivation to do work as it is interesting, engaging, or challenging in a positive way. These people are likely to be creative since they are passionate about work.

Team coordination: These people are very good coordinators. They see to it that everyone in the group understands each others view point and the ideas are spread across the team in an equal manner and conflict management is also done by these kinds of people within the group.

The above components along with others like self actualizing abilities of a member in the team, ability to motivate others and the ability to convince the members of the team etc are all some of the important components in an organization. These help in increasing diversity within the organization and thus, help in promoting more business. Therefore, the ultimate goal is to spread creativity by having diversity within the organization and it can be implied the vice-versa as well. By having a diverse culture in an organization allows creativity to flourish.

HYPOTHESIS FOR THE SURVEY TO BE MADE IN THE ORGANIZATION

Here are the assumptions we made on the behavior of the different teams in regards to group culture, before giving out the surveys:

Support engineering team : support engineers are expected to have a high level of knowledge sharing and to be open to the points of view of the different team members. A high level of team work behaviors is expected overall. We also predict that support engineers have a high level of humanistic abilities as they are a support team; they are good listeners, good at encouraging others and at working with others in general.

Performance engineering team : the members of the performance engineering team have a great sense of achievement, they like working on challenging tasks and work to obtain a feeling of accomplishment. They also have good self actualizing abilities, they like working, they are conscientious to perform even simple tasks at a high level.

QA Work teams : The QA team is expected to also have great self actualizing abilities, they are very conscientious and pay good attention to all types of task. They are also very affiliative, they are open and deal with others in a friendly manner. As they have many individual tasks to perform and less group oriented tasks, they are expected to have lower levels of team oriented culture.

Project managers : project managers are expected to have a high level of team work behavior. Since part of their job is to coordinate the group effort and to make people work well together. They also have a good sense of conflict management and know how to show concern for people to resolve conflicts.

Development team : the development team is expected to have a very high level of group culture and team work behaviors. Developers are typically the type of group to manifest group culture; they have their own jargon people outside the group cannot understand. They are also used to helping each other to solve problems and generally work well together to achieve their goals.

HIJK CORPORATE PHILOSOPHY (Not real name of corporation)

Our Mission is to add value to our clients by making available a broad range of premier, mission-critical, cost-effective transaction processing and information-based business solutions in selected markets on a global basis.

OUR VISION:1. HIJK's business is based on the belief that: Each client and prospect counts; each person counts; each deed counts; and each contact between a client or a prospect and an associate counts. Each client and prospect is either prospective future business or a prospective loss.depending upon the quality, reliability, and responsiveness of our products, services, and associates.2. We are committed to providing world class service levels that exceed our clients' requirements and expectations with solutions that enable them to succeed in their businesses. We define service broadly - from initial contact with a prospect, to product and process quality, to anticipating client needs and preferences, to overall client satisfaction. It requires associates to treat every interaction with a client as an opportunity to enhance that client's perception of HIJK. We are committed to advancing a world class service vision in the belief that service quality is the ultimate competitive advantage for our businesses. We see world class service as a journey where, whenever we approach an identified destination, we increase our objectives and raise our goals in order to become even better.3. Outstanding associates are the key to our success. We cannot succeed as a world class service company unless we globally attract, motivate, empower, and retain exceptionally knowledgeable, talented, committed, and engaged associates. Our associates have a strong work ethic and results-orientation, believe in and support our core values, and reflect the diverse business environments in which we operate. We will offer our associates challenges, opportunities, advancement, competitive compensation and benefits, and personal training and development in an informal, fast-paced, non-bureaucratic environment that is sensitive to work/family and flexible schedule issues. We will provide technologies that enable our associates to meet our clients' ever-changing product needs and preferences. We want each associate to feel like an integral part of a team that is making discernible positive contributions to both HIJK's and our clients' success. Our goal is to be the clear employer of choice for our current and future associates. 4. We are committed to product leadership. To meet that commitment, we shall deliver the best products and services to the market ahead of our competition on a consistent basis. Continual, high quality, rapid development of new products, services, and internal systems is central to maintaining and enhancing our competitiveness. We must stay in tune with unmet client needs and proactively address them. We must explore the latest innovations so that we are the market leader in all our businesses. 5. HIJK seeks to achieve and maintain market-share leadership, primarily through internal growth of its core businesses. Internal growth will come from further penetration of our existing

markets, extending our market opportunities through broader product offerings, increasing our client retention rates, and continuing our global expansion. We seek acquisitions and alliances to supplement our internal growth whenever we can effectively telescope time and/or reduce risk in the pursuit of new markets, products, services, clients, and technologies. We will continue to look for entry into new markets that capitalize on and leverage "Our Special Strengths." We want to be the market leader (in terms of our product and process quality, client-service levels, revenues, and earnings) in each market we serve. 6. We are committed to maintaining the highest level of financial and corporate governance controls, integrity, and transparency. Financial statements are much more than accounting documents. They require considerable effort to be accurate, timely and concise, with clear displays of trends and comparisons that help managers understand, control, and manage the risks and opportunities surrounding their businesses. We will immediately focus on any ethical issues that may arise. HIJK's Code of Business Ethics (which may be found on HIJK's Web site at www.HIJK.com) expresses our commitment to the highest ethical standards and to conducting our business with the highest level of integrity. We are committed to setting a standard for Corporate America by always making the ethical choice and by not getting even close to crossing a line of impropriety. 7. Our Shareholders expect and deserve growing profits and returns from their investments in HIJK. We are proud of our record of consistent earnings growth. We seek to maintain this consistent growth without sacrificing our other important principles. 8. Success is measured by increasing numbers of extremely satisfied clients, higher client retention rates, broader client relationships, increased market share, higher associate satisfaction, engagement and retention rates, and consistent implementation of our values and corporate philosophy, resulting in ever-increasing revenues, earnings, and shareholder value.

OUR SPECIAL STRENGTHS

We have a number of strengths which we capitalize on and leverage to aid our growth, including: being in transaction processing and information-based business solutions businesses; a leading market-share position in each of our core businesses; a powerful financial position from which to compete; solid, time-tested "Operating Principles"; a strong client service orientation; a superb direct sales capability; robust, powerful and well-controlled operations, production, and communications capabilities; a strong commitment to world class service, being an employer of choice, and product leadership; and a clearly articulated corporate philosophy and set of core values. Our most critical special strength, the key element in our success, is our global team of associates. They share "Our Vision" and help us succeed in the marketplace.

AN IMPORTANT CHALLENGE

Our business team needs to respond to constantly changing client needs, and changes dictated by the marketplace. Past successes do not ensure a successful future. Nothing can be taken for granted. Complacency is a powerful enemy. We must continuously anticipate, and adapt to, changing conditions. We must seize and exploit new market opportunities, and aggressively and consistently seek to implement "Our Vision" 100% of the time.

OUR BUSINESS CULTURE

Our core values are the foundation for all our activities. Our ever-evolving culture is guided by our core values and motivated, results-oriented associates.We must nurture a culture of ideas, questions, challenges, feedback, and prudent risk-taking without the fear of occasional failure. Learning must be a continuing process. On-the-job development of each associate must be supplemented with suitable training. We recognize the benefits of cross-training to provide additional perspectives and skills. It is important for each associate to participate in self-development and aid in the development of others. This continuing learning, cross-training, and development will significantly contribute to better "career paths" for associates. We must maintain an environment for top performers to progress as rapidly as they can effectively do so. We are a meritocracy where advancement is based on ability. We try to fill most new career opportunities by internal promotion, while also supplementing our environment with external hires. Involved, knowledgeable, "hands-in" management is a desirable style. Each manager should regularly spend time talking to and visiting clients, prospects, and other associates to get first-hand insights from them. To encourage an open, honest and informal flow of communications, we support an apolitical, candid environment that quickly responds to constructive input. We encourage lateral and vertical communications, both inside and outside of formal reporting relationships. We discuss challenges openly and support an environment where constructive differences of opinion are encouraged and welcome. After differing viewpoints have been clearly registered in interactive discussion, we also recognize the need for final decisions with effective communication and implementation. We ask each associate for more than a usual amount of conscientiousness and flexibility. We must always do what it takes to suit client convenience because HIJK is a critical information lifeline to most of our clients. While doing so, we should also try to minimize avoidable inconveniences to our associates and their families. Associates are expected to respect the rights of fellow associates and others. Our actions must be free from all forms of prejudice and discrimination, libel, slander, or harassment. We are committed to offering each person equal opportunity regardless of age, race, sex, sexual

orientation, color, creed, religion, national origin, marital or veteran's status, handicap or disability.Our commitment to the highest ethical standards is supported by effective enforcement mechanisms, including a company-wide ethics program and an ethics hotline. These ethical standards are more fully articulated in our Code of Business Ethics.

OUR ASSOCIATES -HIJK'S SUCCESS IS DUE TO YOU

We thank each of you for your talent, dedication and efforts, and for the superior results you have helped HIJK achieve. Your efforts and contributions make HIJK what it is today and what it will become in the future. It is your continued dedication that will ensure our success.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES

As a supplement to our Corporate Philosophy, we have evolved a number of operating principles. While they are not cast in stone, we feel that the following principles are critical to our ongoing success:

1. PLANNING GROWTH

Strategic Directions: We are singularly interested in products, services, and marketplaces of substantial potential, where we can be an ever-growing leader and industry standard through offering superior business solutions and providing world class service. We prefer markets where our solutions have significant value-added uses to clients (not mere commodity-like offerings), or where we are well equipped to outshine competitors so that our success cannot be easily emulated. We most favor directions where we have the greatest chance of becoming the market leader, because a casual or small participant seldom can maintain an adequate return on managerial and financial resources.

Innovation - Selectivity and Focus: New ideas, products, and services are exciting. We need a continuing array of new ideas, and must recognize and reward associates who produce them. At the same time, it takes focus and self-restraint to maintain the discipline of thinking and researching very broadly, while implementing more narrowly. Many organizations tend to pursue more projects than they can effectively handle. We must balance reward and distraction. Nonetheless, we will try more new directions than we need in order to leave room for the inevitable disappointments. And since major new projects or directions are especially difficult and uncertain, we aspire to focus our best associates on these newer opportunities, as full-time champions.

Unless regularly challenged, many organizations tend to allocate resources by inertia and

tradition rather than by priorities and results. Resource optimization requires sunsetting lower priority projects to make room for more promising opportunities.

Business Plans: Good plans help maintain consistent growth with fewer surprises. The specific objectives, priorities, strategies, and processes in strategic and operating plans should be initially guided by senior management, and then be directly created in more detail by each manager who must ultimately own responsibility for the results. The planning processes should be interactive and responsive to differing views.

Associate Development: Associate training and learning are critical components to our being an employer of choice and for realizing consistent revenue and earnings growth. We are committed to providing each associate with 40-hours a year of consistently high-quality training through classroom and e-training courses. This training will be specific to each position within the company. Each associate will, therefore, have the ability to gain access to the training resources required (i) to succeed in his or her current position and (ii) to acquire the skills necessary to achieve a future position. To that end, we are committed to continuous associate development, succession planning, career-pathing, and recognition of superior performance.

2. ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

In our business environment, the best decisions, best attitudes, and best efficiencies are usually attained through substantial delegation, empowerment, and self-sufficiency. We encourage operational decentralization to the fullest practical degree as is consistent with world class service, efficiency, highly automated and standardized systems, and centralized Corporate Headquarters oversight. While each business unit must inform Corporate Headquarters of important issues, decisions and problems, each business unit is responsible for making all day-to-day operational and client decisions, consistent with Corporate guidelines.

We recognize that certain policies and functions should clearly be and remain centralized "shared services" to varying degrees, depending upon the need for uniformity, cost efficiency, and/or specialized knowledge. Regardless of location, all functions must cooperate and work together to achieve our common goals.

Excess layers of management increase costs and retard communication and responsiveness. We aim to keep working units lean, small, and cohesive enough to empower associates and to give them a clear sense of their mission, their accomplishments, and their accountability.

3. RISK MANAGEMENT

Risk vs. Reward: We want to pursue substantial long-term revenue growth while preserving, to the fullest degree reasonable, HIJK's history of consistent revenue and earnings growth. This

consistency is worth protecting because it enhances our financial standing and predictability, and is an important component of shareholder value.

Evolution vs. Revolution: In HIJK's businesses, most improvement is best attained in manageable increments by evolutionary change, to ensure continued world class service to clients as change is implemented. Conversely, big successes in new directions, or urgent quantum gains with existing clients, will occasionally necessitate revolutionary strategic leaps. We favor the incremental approach where large numbers of decentralized activities and clients are involved, but only to a degree that does not unduly sacrifice our competitive position. We must continually challenge our activities and methods so that we aggressively upgrade our technologies, products, services and processes, and minimize the need for a catch-up revolution.

Role Before We Roll: Since many new ventures will fail, we will generally try to minimize the cost of failure to a manageable level by not acting on an unnecessarily large scale too soon. Changes that involve many clients and associates are particularly difficult and error-prone. As we change processes, we must minimize the risk of a poor transition. We should role-model, inspect, and stress-test new products and approaches before we roll them out to many locations, clients, and/or associates, without forfeiting windows-of-opportunity that require fast time-to-market.

4. SPECIAL OUTSIDE RELATIONSHIPS

Business Friends: Many prospects and clients are introduced to HIJK by third-party recommendations from accountants, trade associations, franchisers, and bankers. We must maintain effective and proactive communications and relations with our business friends.

Suppliers: Suppliers are good business partners and are critical to our success. We expect suppliers to earn our continuing relationship, as we must with our clients. We expect the best service and prices that a supplier is offering to any equivalent customer. We, in turn, will fulfill our obligations promptly and deal in a forthright, open manner. We should always have back-up sources.

Community: We support worthy sectors of our society with both effort and money. Our pro bono activities encompass financial support (through the HIJK Foundation), and contributions-in-kind. Our primary areas of philanthropy and leadership are education, health, the arts, and social welfare.

HIJK, Inc.

One HIJK Whocares BlvdLostn, New Jersey, 00001

Teamwork Behaviors

Please rate on a scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) the following items.

1. Team members acknowledged conflict and worked to resolve issues on the team.

2. Team members helped others on the team by sharing knowledge and information.3. Team members encouraged diverse perspectives and differing points of view from others on the team.4. Team members demonstrated interest and enthusiasm during team activities.5. Team members acknowledged the contributions made by others on the team.6. Team members were working together toward a unified goal.7. Team members would freely share information (technical, market, etc.) with others on the team.

Alpha = .93

Result of survey:

Team Work Behaviors

Team-Oriented Culture

Maximum Score 35 Maxium Score 15

Raw Data

Support Engineering 32 13QA 32 12QA 30 8PM 27 9PM 17 9Performance Engineering 30 11Development 34 14

Combined like work domains and average score

Support Engineering 32 13Performance Engineering 30 11QA 31 10PM 22 9Development 34 14

Team Work Behaviors

Team-Oriented Culture

normalized with multiplication factor of

2.3

Support Engineering 32 30Performance Engineering 30 25QA 31 23PM 22 21Development 34 32

Conclusion:

Result of case study demonstrates that Project management team is a least culture oriented team and development team is a highest culture oriented team.

Team Work Behaviors findings compared to Team-Oriented Culture findings

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Support Engineering PerformanceEngineering

QA PM Development

Work Teams

Team Work BehaviorsTeam-Oriented Culture

Second conclusion from the study is, overall culture is low compared to team work behavior (see chart).