Organizational Behaviour-2

OB-2 | HRM – A | Group 3

Aakash Bhatt H20001| Abhimanyu Tomar H20003 | Akriti Jain H20006 | Chitrank Kaul H20018

Kriti Bharadwaj H20028 | Sanishtha Bhatia H20046 | Sanjeet Saluja H20047| Deepshikha Kumari FH20001

1. What are the causes and types of conflict evident in Project Aerial?

1. Mismatch between expectations of different departments with respect to the deliverables.

2. Lack of team Cohesiveness and common vision. Members were focused more on individual
goals/targets then on organizational goals. For example, Roth was eager to prove his readiness
to be the next VP of design and development.
3. No consensus, clear agenda, or goal.
4. Lack of motivation, enthusiasm, and interest to work on the project: Not all team members were
in favor of Aerial, they had more interesting projects at hand in which they wanted to work on.
5. There was a lack of communication among different teams involved as well as between
executives.
6. There was lack of proper research and innovation as they just redesigned the existing system
without proper research. They were in a hurry to just launch the project as soon as possible.,
they could have searched for new cost-effective technologies to make Aerial.
7. There were differences in expectations regarding tasks. For instance, the top management of
Terra Cog wanted to launch the Project Ariel as soon as possible whereas the product
development team members were not very enthusiastic with the launch as they believed that
redesigning of the product requires more time. Also, they had a lot of ideas with the new
product.
8. Tony Barren was more focused on his individual goal of survival in the company, than being
aligned to the team goals of producing the most cost-effective handheld device.
9. The team meetings were not run properly, Emma needs to take the lead here and ensure that
she can better conduct the team meetings as the leader of the group.
10. There existed a competition over the rewards system for the sales team and hence they were
pushing the production and design team.

2. Analyze the Project Aerial decision-making process.

The decision making in Project Aerial can be characterized as fragmented. The different teams
were working in silos and not communicating clearly on the requirements.
There were interdepartmental conflicts, with regards to pricing, timelines, and product
positioning. The decision making of each department was very department-centered instead of
focusing on the collective good.
 Quality of Decision Making: The decisions made by the team were poor and short-sighted. They
had not thought through the pricing and costs before venturing into the product and looked at
these at a later stage.

Speed of Decision Making: The team had made quick decisions in the beginning of the project.
However, while tapering towards the end these hasty decisions, led to further complications. A
lot of time was wasted while making the pricing related decisions.

Acceptance of Decisions: The decisions made by the different teams conflicted with each-other
and these rendered them to not be accepted universally.

Decision making in the organization was not based on proper research data and facts but was
rather based on assumptions which stemmed from the superiority complex and overconfidence
they developed after generating a dominant market share with their existing products. Decisions
were based more on the premise of saving effort rather than working on proper research to
know if the idea was good or not.

Decision Making in the organization were very hasty and it appears as though they were taken
to avoid immediate conflict, be it with the design team when they decided not to go ahead with
a product like BirdsI or later when they decided to go ahead with Project Aerial because the
Sales teams bonus was getting affected. The management could have channelized this task
related conflict into a healthy discussion to arrive at the best product for the market. There was
negative pressure on the team due to time constraints in redesigning and launch of the product
which led them to make quick and poor decisions.

3. What should Emma Richardson do?

1. She should start working one-on-one with team leaders to address the agenda along with trying
to focus on one of her tasks i.e., to create a common link of communication leading to increased
departmental cooperation.
2. She should try to keep employees working on one project at a time to get more focused inputs.
3. Try to check and rework on the timelines and reschedule the launch if needed instead of
launching products of inferior quality or with unjustified price range.
4. Try to come up with more specific customer needs in terms of product design rather than just
making assumptions (to trade speed with functionality) and adding anything and everything
which at the end is reducing the speed of the product.
5. She should motivate the production team by promising to support their preferred projects once
project Aerial is done and making those projects a priority.
6. To implement something like launching the Aerial project which was not supported by some of
the team members, she may choose an authoritative management style (such as cost cutting,
enforcement of unpopular rules, disciplines) as it is vital to organization’s welfare.
7. Rearrange the seating arrangement of meetings, an assumption can be made about Emma’s
avoidance of accountability. Traditionally, the vertically opposite positions are occupied by the
ones with power, but it was not the case here with Tony taking up one of these positions, which
also resulted in him being targeted. This can also be inferred from the beginning of the case,
when Emma feels annoyed when she receives a couple of messages after which she had to
assume the reigns going forward.