People, Organizations and Management

People, Organizations and Management

Introduction

Business organisations vary not only by their area of operation and industry but also in terms of their approach to teamwork, their organisational structure and design and the corporate culture. All these characteristics of business entities distinguish them from each other and play an important role in success or failure of the organisation. The difference in these characteristics is a result of various factors including core values, area of operation, geographical location, size of the business, number of employees and many others. The given case studies of Oticon and Lola Print Ltd demonstrate how companies differ from each other with respect to the characteristics mentioned above and how these characteristics determine the fate of a business organisation. The paper will attempt comparatively analyse the two organisations' approach to teamwork and teamworking, organisational structure and corporate culture, exploring the factors responsible for these differences to determine the effects upon the performances of the said companies.

Comparison of approaches to teamwork

Cooperation matters. Even the smallest tasks of everyday routine can be optimised for best results by incorporating teamwork. There is no dearth of research available on the philosophical, psychological, formal and implementational facets of teamwork and cooperative behaviour and its impact upon the overall performance of the business organisations. There are variety of approaches to cooperative behaviour or teamwork and teamworking. But it is beneficial initially to investigate the nature of cooperation and teamwork and what it takes for the agents of teamwork to cooperate with each other. Several studies provide sufficient information on these topics. Some researchers suggest that agents working in the team and cooperating with each other must have joint intentions, goals and plans, mutual understanding and beliefs (Sonenberg et al., 1992, pp. 18-22) . Whereas Wooldridge and Jennings identify four stages in the formation of cooperative behaviour: recognising the prospect of cooperation and teamwork, actual formation of team, devising plan and finally the execution of the plan utilising the cooperation and teamwork (Wooldridge and Jennings, 1999, pp. 563-592).

There are several formal approaches to teamwork based on the theories presented by different authors and researchers in the field. Cohen and Levesque's Joint Intentions approach focuses on persistence of joint intentions and goals (Cohen and Levesque, 1991, pp. 487-512). The model of teamwork presented by Sonenberg et al puts heavy emphasis on team planning and groups devising complex plans in order to achieve a shared objective. The approach deals with issues related to the matters of finding suitable and adequate teams for specific tasks, identification of joint goals and shared objectives and assigning roles to different members of the team for execution of the plan. Grosz and Kraus based their approach of Shared Plans on the technique of fusing individual plans and group plans or shared plans. The model assumes that every individual have a particular set of intentions when he or she joins the team. So these individual plans must be incorporated in the shared plans collectively devised by the team formed to ...