The Essay On Teamwork, Synergy, And Organizational Culture: A Critical Analysis.

a) Critically analyse is strong teamwork with high cohesiveness and comraderies always a competitive advantage to an organisation.
b) There is a new move in organisation's team building activities today which emphasises synergy effect. Critically analyse the importance of synergy effect to an organization
c) By its very nature, a multinational organisation is a single entity that faces a global environment, which means that it simultaneously confronts differing national environments. According to Ly Puick (1985) “Integration and control imperatives often place the multinational organisation in a position where it decides that the good of the whole is more important than one subsidiary's short-term profitabilityâ€Â. Critically analyse this statement.
d) Based on the learning in the class and further critical analysis/reading of at least ten (10) academic articles (i.e., textbooks, empirical studies and journal articles etc.), critically examine and analyse "the managerial implications of organizational/corporate culture.

The Benefits of Strong Teamwork

Team work is a crucial part of any organizations and numerous attempts are made by the managers and the other authorities to inculcate and promote the habit of team work in each and every organization. The rationale behind the concentration on a strong teamwork lies in the competitive advantage which it can garner for any organization. And if this strong teamwork is coupled with high cohesiveness and camaraderie, the growth of the organization can be boosted (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015).

Teams are the very fundamental structure for the tasks, projects and activities to be effectively organized and to be managed in the organization across the globe. The companies striving to attain a competitive advantage are using different business strategies for creating high performance teams. When the work is done by team, it can help in attaining different benefits and advantages. Some of these include the diversity in the tools, knowledge and the ideas which are contributed through the members of the team, along with the camaraderie amongst the members of the team (Mautz, 2015). The resource based theory has also suggested that the unique resources in form of teamwork, grant a sustainable competitive advantage to the organizations which cannot be easily imitated by the rivals. Teams are a source of cost and differentiation advantages, as it leads to increased productivity, along with reduced costs. Effective teamwork also helps the companies in differentiating themselves, in form of unique ideas and enhanced brainstorming (Boyes, 2011).

A common denominator in the high performing teams is the cohesiveness, which denotes the measure of the group’s attractive towards its members, along with their resistance in leaving the group. The ones who are a part of the high cohesive teams are more effective and more cooperative in attaining the objectives which have been set for them. Conversely, if there is a shortfall of this cohesion in the working environment of the team, it leads to the performance of the team being affected owing to the tensions and the stress amongst the coworkers (West, 2012).

The example of success attained through the effective teamwork can be highlighted through the examples of managers at Louis Vuitton and Nucor Corporation. The first one is a profitable luxury brand of the world and the latter is the largest producer of steel and is also the biggest recycler in the United States. In Louis Vuitton, the teams have been divided between 20-30 members, where the work is done with one product at each time. So, a team which had 24 members could produce 120 handbags for each day. The members of the teams are empowered to take the products ownership, are encouraged to suggest improvements and keep up to date with the major management facts. In the similar manner, the teams at Nucor Corporation are divided into teams between 8-40 members on the basis of the work being done by the team members. The informal rules for behavior of each member are also created, along with giving them the freedom to make their own decisions and in these tasks, the managers act as advisors and coaches (Jones and George, 2012).

The Significance of Synergy Effect

Cohesiveness highlights the extent to which the members of the team stay together and work towards the achievement of a common goal. When a team has high cohesiveness, the concentration is on the process, instead the same being on the person. Each and every member is respected and the proper objectives are worked towards. The morale is boosted in the cohesive teams which allows a full commitment towards the decisions and the strategies of the company; thus, resulting in an accountable and responsible team (Garner, 2012). A key issue which is often faced while creating an effective team is the sense of camaraderie, along with the building of trust amongst each other. In order to build an effective team, it is crucial that the members of the team are appreciated. There is a need to build camaraderie through planning of meetings and for reinforcing the organization commitment, by making them being perceived as a part of the company. In order for a team to work together, it is crucial that the camaraderie is built, there is friendship within the team members and the different viewpoints of each individual are respected (Molnau, 2017).

To conclude, a strong teamwork is something which motivates the members of the team to work together and work towards attainment of the common goals. And when these are coupled with high cohesiveness and camaraderie, they lead to competitive advantages for the companies.

The synergy effect has resulted in the creation of a new direction for change in the present day strategy management of the organizations. The synergy effect is characterized through the mutual interactions which are present in different forms of partnerships, companies and competitive struggle. The significance of discovering new approaches towards the management of already present organizations support the notion of synergy and its effects as being an object of consideration and study (Holub?ík and Soviar, 2016). In the present time, the team building activities of the organizations are emphasizing upon synergy effect.

Synergy is the combined and the cooperative action which takes place when the disparate or diverse groups or individuals come together for a common cause (Bryant, 2015). The key goal here is to increase the effectiveness, through shared experiences, knowledge, perceptions and insights (Moran and Harris, 2011). A synergistic working relationship is a strong phenomenon for witnessing the people working in a combined form, for consuming the fewest resources as possible, for getting the job done, and at the same time, getting a higher quality and quantity output in comparison to the work done by such individuals in an independent manner. The targets which are able to attain a higher level of synergy have a higher chance of achieving their objective due to the key organizational changes (Conner, 2011).

In a synergistic relationship, the equation given for effective teamwork is 1 + 1 > 2. Here, the total effective is greater in comparison to the sum of the independent production of each party. In simple terms, the operating synergistically denotes the effective teamwork. Management teams fuse the skills and knowledge of every member in the operation unit, which is more competent in comparison to the group functioning as composite individuals (Conner, 2011).

Implications of Organizational Culture

There are a range of management decisions which have an impact over the formation of an exceptional team, which not only drives results but can also execute flawlessly. The researches have revealed that critical leadership has the ability of creating synergies and also using the combined powerful effect of the group in a wise manner, so as to attain the objectives. There are two crucial implications for the creation of synergy for solving the issues. The first one is the need of the leader to be knowledgeable for effectively collaborating with the team for solving the problems. And if there is an absence of involvement with the team for problem sharing, passivity is encouraged for the team members (Federer, 2013).

The team synergy can be best captured through the three step framework, which results in effective teamwork. These three are diversity, creativity and focus. The team members come from different education backgrounds, geography and have distinctive set of experiences, which gives each member, a unique perspective to deal with a particular issue. The magic happens when these are uniquely blended in a co-creative environment of team. The sharing of such diverse experience provides a more nuanced analysis of a particular situation and also increases the ambit of ideas for the team (Lizoz, 2014).

Creativity is different from talent. Creativity is an intrinsic quality or every person, and upon the perception of each and every action of an individual, it is realized that creativity s not a gift of few. For unfolding the creativity in a team, there is a need to release the limiting perceptions and beliefs, along with the establishment of an encouraging and safe environment for the members of the team to drive their ideas, and to think out of the box (Lizoz, 2014).

“Like attracts like” is a metaphysical law of attraction. As per this, the longer the focus is placed on a particular idea, the higher is the expansion of such idea. So, by focusing the attention on a particular topic, a power momentum can be created for the attraction of information, people and knowledge, which allows the team to evolve in the desired direction. When the focus is placed on the objectives, creativity and diversity, the co-creative environment of the team helps in breeding synergy and also gives rise to the innovative ideas which ultimately lead to success (Lizoz, 2014).  

A multinational can be defined as being a single entity which faces the global environment, i.e., it is constantly confronted with different national environments (Armstrong, 2014). The strategic position of an MNC can be transnational, international or global, on the basis of its geographical dispersal, size and industry. And the strategic decisions are made on the basis of political and economic imperatives. In this context, there are certain expectations from the foreign affiliates with regards to the contribution to total profits and in terms of market performance. Though, when the performance of the subsidiary is evaluated against these expectations, it becomes crucial to identify the different constraints which have an impact over the achievement of objectives. And due to this, the control and integration imperatives are quite often placed in such a position where a decision has to be made regarding the good of the whole, which is deemed as more significant in comparison to the short term profits of the subsidiary. The consistency in the enhancement of higher performance has to be the multinational companies’ philosophy. So, it is crucial to make certain that the overall profitability of the subsidiaries instead of having to bear an exponential profit in one of the subsidiaries and a loss in the other one (Pattanayak, 2014).

Three-step framework for effective teamwork

Certain expectations are drawn from each of the multinationals for the foreign affiliates in terms of contribution to total profits, market performance and competiveness. When the performance of the subsidiary is evaluated against these expectations, the recognition of the constraints in the attainment of goal becomes important. And whole versus part is a crucial aspect in this regard. An MNC, being a single entity, has to bear different international environments. The good of the entire MNC, is often placed over the short term profitability of a subsidiary of the MNC when it comes to the integration and control imperatives. Ly Puick has provided an example that the MNCs create the operations in specific markets where the company has its major global competitor and the same has a prevailing position (Dowling, Festing and Engle, 2008).

The major objective of entering the market stems from the need of challenging the cash flow of the competitors’ by the use of pricing policy, which can be easily deemed as aggressive. Puick has explained that such specific subsidiary’s balance sheet could be continuously being shown in red. However, this strategy would allow quite higher returns in other market, as the resources of the competitors would be tried up. In the other conditions the multinational companies form a joint venture in a particularly identified market so as to get their presence in such market, even when the expectations are very low for this market in the short term. Further, this market could provide minimum resources for the venture. And without a doubt, the result of these decisions taken in global environment, for the management of subsidiary has to be taken into account for the evaluation of performance (Rao, 2008).

The international environment has volatility and turbulences, due to which, the long term goals are made flexible, so that they can be modified for responding to the possible contingencies in the market (Gupta, 2010). This approach also means that the subsidiaries could be opting for the strategies which do not fit the new environment any longer. Events like the Persian Gulf War of the year 1991, the handover of Hong Kong of the British Colony to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 and the economic downturn are some of the events, which had a profound implication over the strategies of the MNCs in such nations. Owing to such fluctuations and volatility, the long term goals have to be tailored in specific situations of a particular market (Rao, 2008).  

In short, the performance of the subsidiaries of MNCs has to face a range of constraints and apart from the global events impacting the strategies of the MNCs, the integration and control imperatives lead the MNCs to put the good of whole before the short term profitability of the subsidiary.

The culture of the organization denotes the beliefs, values and the assumptions which govern the behavior of the people of the organization (Driskill and Brenton, 2010). These shared values have an impact on the manner of performing the work. Each of the company has its own organizational culture, irrespective of the fact that it is small or big. A culture can be informally developed in a business without the management or the company’s ownership acting as the guiding hand, or the culture can be created by the company by using a system of performance standards and values. The role of the manager in the culture of the company is dependent upon the choice of the business to ask the manager to interact with the employees of the company and the magnitude of authority given to the manager by the business (Lister, 2017).

The managers act as a disciplinarian for the employees. In a small business, the organizational culture has the capability of forcing the manager into the disciplinarian role and to correct the behavior of the employees. When the manager acts as a disciplinarian, he has the authority to issue both written and oral warnings to such employees who fail to operate in accordance with the mission statement of the company, or the operation standards of the company (Wicks, et al. 2014). The manager can also take steps conducting the performance reviews of the employees, so that they can be made aware about the areas which require improvement. Upon undertaking the role of a disciplinarian, the manager often faces difficulty in establishing the interpersonal relationships with the other employees, due to the fact that the manager is being viewed by the employees as an authority figure, before being viewed as their coworker (Lister, 2017).

This situation can be reversed in such cases where the organization follows a disseminated leadership culture in which every employee takes part in the business strategy of the company and the managers are given the roles which are not very distinguishable from the floor level employees. This is accomplished easily in the small businesses where there are only a handful number of employees. This kind of disseminated leadership culture makes it easy for the managers to create better working relationship with the employees, when the employee performance continues to be supervised and being reported to the owners of the company. Under this model, the managers are able to obtain a more casual kind of interactions with their subordinates due to the manager being perceived as an actual human being by the employees, instead of the employees simply fulfilling the wishes of the employer (Lister, 2017).

Irrespective of the organizational culture which is adopted by the company, a manager is required to serve as the model for the culture to be emulated by the other employees. For instance, when a small business owner wishes to see the employee teamwork, there is a need for a manager who can directly work with the employees and who can foster the environment of a team. As the business culture can shift over time, there is also a need for the manager to be easily adaptable to change and be versatile. The faster a manager is able to illustrate the proper model of the desired culture of the company, the quicker would the employees of the company be able to adopt it (Lister, 2017).

In the culture of a small organization the role of the manager also requires him to reward the employees who display the desired qualities of the company. The reward can be simple praises in the office or it can include high grades on the performance review of the employee, which can translate into higher pay grade and even promotions. By rewarding the employees for achieving the required organizational culture depicts that the management and the owners of the company value the work and place of the employee in the company, along with highlighting their commitment towards the maintenance of standards (Phillips and Gully, 2011).

The corporate culture is priceless and intangible for each and every business. For any enterprise, especially the big ones, the workforce diversity in terms of educational level, awareness level, ideological culture, qualifications, and social and geographical characteristics are the differences which create complexities in the diverse working environment (Schein, 2004). The cutthroat competition in the economy of the market and the trends of globalization forces the businesses to explore new things again and again and to boost the creativity, along with the adaptability to change for survival and development (Giri and Kumar, 2007). For these purposes, there is a need for the businesses to build and maintain such routines which are culture-specific, in order to promote the contribution of everyone and the capacity, so that he overall objective of the company can be attained, which is the corporate culture. Owing to the increased attention of the concept of corporate culture, a number of studies are being conducted by the practitioners and the academicians. One of such study was conducted on the Vietnamese enterprises, for obtaining the competitive advantage, along with managerial effectiveness. A structural model of relationships was proposed in this study and the hypothesis was test. Ultimately it was shown that there was a strong relationship between the corporate culture and the managerial effectiveness in the conducted study. And it was also highlighted that the managerial effectiveness could be improved upon by using the corporate culture (Phuong, Vinh and Anh, 2015).

The managerial effectiveness is very crucial in the developing nations. In case the inefficient managers are kept at the top of organizational affairs, the growth of the company would be slowed. Zhang (2010) conducted a research where the characteristics of the organization culture were investigated, along with the effects of it over the organizational variables. This research highlighted that the organization culture had a major impact over the effectiveness of the human resource management, for instance, on work efficacy, turnover intention, job satisfaction and organizational culture, along with the collective identity and the organizational commitment of the staff members. It was revealed by Catherina and Cherly (2007) that the organization culture is perceived strongly as being related to the personal effectiveness and leadership effectiveness. The organizational culture aspects promote the satisfaction and fulfillment of the employees and these are positively related to personal effectiveness and leadership.

This perceived relationship between the leadership effectiveness and the organizational culture has been stronger in comparison to the one between organizational culture and personal effectiveness. The importance of organizational culture stems from the shared norms and beliefs which have an impact over the emotional responses, perceptions and behaviors of the employees at the workplace. A leading example of this can be seen in the ability of the culture to influence the climate of the organization, along with the work attitude (Aarons and Sawitzky, 2006). The study conducted by Phuong, Vinh and Anh (2015) confirmed the presence of relationship between corporate culture and managerial effectiveness, along with the ability of the former to improve the latter.

There is also the managerial implication of the climate of the organization for the effective dealing of the balance between the adaptation and integration. Maintaining equilibrium between the organizational integration and the organizational contingencies adaptation is often presented as being a job of the manager. Some of the theories have suggested that the organizational climate helps the managers in carrying out the tasks in an effective manner (Håkonsson, Obel and Burton, 2006).

The corporate culture plays a subtle yet pervasive role in the organizational life and it has major implications over the managerial actions. The corporate culture has a major impact on the managers and the organizations and by understanding the culture of an organization, the management of such company can appropriately enter it, deviate from it and also change it (Sathe, 1983). The managers are given the duty of managing the resources of the company so that the objectives of the company can be attained. This ability of the mangers is greatly affected by the culture which is prevalent in the company. Any attempt to bring a change in the organization is the function of the environment of the business, which is being faced by the organization, in addition to the norms or behavior which is shared amongst the employees of the organization; the rituals and customs of the employees of the organization for reinforcing the norms or values of behavior the communication and the management of the cultural network which can sustain the environmental and the individuals which are identified and are deemed as being the heroes of the company. If the culture of the organization is properly understood, the managers or the leaders of the organization can use the culture of the company to their advantage and improve the performance of the organization (Maloney, 1989).  

The culture of the organization affects the work done by the employees and it depends upon the culture of the organization being strong or weak. A strong culture is one in which the key values are widely shared and are deeply held, which have a great influence on the employees of the company, in comparison to the one with weak culture. The higher the acceptance of the key values of the company by the employees, the greater would be commitment towards these values, and would ultimately result in a strong work culture. In the majority of organizations there is a storing or moderate culture, owing to which, there is a high agreement on the important things foe the business, and to define what is the right action. The stronger the corporate culture, the better planning, organizing, leading and control has to be carried out by the managers (Pfister, 2009).

A strong corporate culture can also help in substituting the rules and regulations which are required usually to guide the employees. Essentially, a strong corporate culture can help in creating an order, consistency and predictability in the organization, without the need of having written documentations. Hence, with a strong corporate culture, the need for the managerial personnel to develop formal rules and regulations is lessened. Conversely, if there is a presence of a weak corporate culture, the need for such formal rules and regulations to be properly codified and written is enhanced (Robbins, et al. 2009).

Even though corporate culture has positive managerial implications, the negative implications of the same cannot be ignored. A strong corporate culture creates a unified view, which can prove as an obstacle when a change is brought in the organization. A strong corporate culture has the power of creating rigidity and non flexibility towards a change, which can act as a barrier in the growth of the company. However, the chances of such occurrence is less, due to the fact that the strong corporate culture always favors the goals and objectives of the organization, and when the change is in favor of the organization, the rigidity is less likely to be faced in a strong corporate culture. Though, the same would always be true for a weak corporate culture (Shimasaki, 2014).

The corporate culture of the company has the ability of reducing the workload of the top management by fulfilling the objectives of the company without having the need to be specifically told about the same. In case of a strong organizational or corporate culture, the discipline and zeal towards the growth of the company is present, which makes it easy for the managers to lead the employees and to push them towards the goal attainment (Madu, 2012). Further, the organizational culture helps the managers in making a decision with regards to adoption of a disciplinarian approach or a friendly approach. By understanding the cultural factors of an organization, the same can be lead in an efficient manner, and makes it easy for the managers and the owners of the company to reach new heights. Even though, the corporate culture of a company has the power of having a negated impact over the functioning of the company, the pros of a strong corporate culture clearly outweigh its cons.

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