A Difficult Task Force1. Which characteristics of group behaviour discussed in the

chapter can you identify in this case?The concept of groups, teams and teamwork is a
very important factor for good performance of thewhole company. I have read in the
case about the group of professionals who had to control andserve the new joint venture
between companies from Japan, United States, and South America. Thisnew company had to
make, sell, and service pet caskets for the burial of beloved pets, mostly dogsand
cats. During the first month of work, each company had assigned personnel to
the task force.The members from every company were chosen to participate in the
joint venture. As chair of thetask force, Jose initiated a meeting of all the members of the
new company. He gave historicalinformation, and then he reviewed the market for the
innovations of their prospective product. Thetask force was to develop the initial design
parameters for the new product to meet increasingdemand around the world. Next part of the
meeting was opened to comments and suggestions.Mariana Preus, representative from
Argentina, the head of product design, said that the current
designs that they had in production in Argentina plant were just fine, and he didn’t
see any reaso
nsto innovate the design of their product. All other members of the meeting
agreed not to make anychanges in the design of the product. Jose reminded to all
of the participants of the meeting that
their task force’s purpose is to redesign the product and
 its manufacturing systems. Finally, Jose hadto agree with members of the meeting
and to write a memo to the council of presidents with therecommendation to use
existing designs and to begin immediately to design the plant and themanufacturing
system. The meeting adjourned,d and Jose returned to his computer and started
towrite the memo that, he knew, would anger the presidents. He wondered what had he done
wrongand what he could have done to prevent such result of the meeting.In my
opinion in this case study we see an example of the formal group that is formed by a manager
to help the organization to accomplish its goals. The group development process
wasn’t finished and
ended on the second stage
 –
storming. Analyzing the group member roles, in our situation Jose is theinitiator of the meeting,
information giver, opinion seeker, and orienter. Mariana Preus has a role ofinitiator and
information giver, because he insisted on the not redesigning of the product. The
othermembers seem to serve just as a passive audience
 –
followers, because they all agreed to the
Mariana’s suggestion, and didn’t give any other opinions. Also, there was no group
cohesiveness; a“we feeling” binding group members together to accomplish their
goal.
 2. How did the diverse natur
e of the group affect the committee’s actions?
 
The diverse nature of the group affected the committee’s action by not understanding and
participating of all members in the meeting.
3. If you were in Jose’s position, what would you have done differently? Wh
at would you do now?
If I was in Jose’s position, I would try to keep the group headed toward the stated
goal better, and
not to agree with the suggestion of one member, but to count the opinions of every member of
the
group. Also, it wasn’t right to adjou
rn the meeting before getting the result that would approach tothe goal of the whole
meeting.

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