National Institute of Technology 2009 M.B.A Finance Organizational Behavior - Question Paper

4. Reward them with training and educational opportunities, which would allow them to update their knowledge and keep up with times.
5. Reward the employee with recognition.
6. Provide them with option career path, which would allow them to increase their prestige and status.
Q.6: A) Identify 5 roles you play in your organization. What behavior do they require? Are any of these roles in conflict? Is it so, in what way? How do you resolve these conflicts?
ANS:
The 5 roles that I play in my organization are:
Employee of my organization
Member of middle management
Sales Manager
Sales Trainer
Brand Manager
As an employee of my organization, I am responsible to convey management’s communications to my team reporting to me. Even if the communication is negative. I need to communicate in a very professional manner. I need to keep certain matters confidential and even if am friendly with my team and we meet on a personal level. I should keep the matter confidential.
As a sales Manager, it is my responsibility to achieve the targets set for my team. I need to motivate and challenge my team to achieve or overachieve the set targets. I need to act firmly with members of the team who are not performing according to plan. Reducing attrition is 1 of my other responsibilities. People development is also anther responsibility. I sometimes require to be tough and sometimes a good friend.
As a Sales Trainer, I need to train members of my team in improving their skill sets with relation to sales and customer experience. I may have to train people who absolutely no sales skill sets. I may have to train people am improving their attitudes.
As a Brand Manager, I need to talk to the group about the best solution that a customer could get, about what is being marketed and which solution would provide the organization the maximum margins.
I don’t see any of these roles in conflict as they are perfectly aligned with every other. every role has a distinct responsibility although in a few cases there is overlapping of roles but that is absolutely all right as the roles are totally in tender with every other.
Q.6: B) What effects, if any, do you expect that workforce diversity has on a group’s performance and satisfaction?
ANS:
When a workforce is diverse in terms of personality, gender, age, education, functional specialization and experience, there is an in created probability that the team will possess the needed characteristics to complete its tasks effectively.
The team may be conflict laden and less expedient as varied positions are introduced and assimilated, but the evidence supports the conclusion that heterogeneous teams perform more effectively than do those that are homogenous, essentially diversity promotes conflict, which stimulates creativity, which in turn leads to an improved decision making.
The differences created by nationalities interfere with team processes, at lowest in the short, term. Cultural diversity seems to be an asset for tasks that call for a variety of viewpoints. But culturally heterogeneous teams have more difficulty in learning to work together and in solving the issues.
The good points are that these issues seem to get solved with time. Although newly formed culturally diverse teams under perform newly formed homogeneous teams, the differences disappear in 3 months of time. The cause is that it takes culturally diverse teams a while to learn how to work through disagreements and various approaches to solving the issues.
Conflicts and power struggles are more likely to take place in teams with diverse groups as every person would take sides and try to dominate the other team members. This would in indirect effect the decision making capability of the team and also would be a de-motivating factor for powerful in the group at that point of time.
All this would have a serious impact on the satisfaction levels of the team members. As every person strives to provide his best, any actions which negate the team member’s contribution would only raise the dissatisfaction level in team and this would further lead to conflict.

Q.6: C) When do groups make better decisions than individuals?
ANS:
Individuals think and cause before they act. It is because of this that an understanding of how people make can be helpful for explaining and predicting their behavior. Under a few situations people follow the rational decision making model. But for most of the people, this would be an exception rather than rule. It is a common belief that 2 heads are better than one.
Groups have their strengths they generate more complete info and knowledge, by aggregating the resources of several individuals, groups bring more input into the decisions making process. Groups can bring in heterogeneity to the decision process. They offer increased diversity of views. This opens up the opportunity for more approaches and options. The evidence shows that a group will always for more approaches and individual. Hence groups generate higher quality decisions. Finally groups lead to increased acceptance of decision. Many decisions fail after the final option as the people don’t accept the decisions. Group members who participated in making the decisions are more likely to enthusiastically support the decision and encourage others to accept it.
Thus in situations where in more info is needed more discussion is needed and the situation where in the decision needs to be made popular the group makes better decisions than an individual.

Regards,
Ratnesh MOghe

Earning:   Approval pending.