• Describe the selection process and stressors of police officers

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ECOM201

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Virtual Team Successes and Stresses

A Case Study

8/8/2016

As widespread as diverse and dispersed teaming is these days, leading a virtual team can be a challenge. This case study offers ideas on making the best of diverse and dispersed team structures.

Virtual teaming, that is, working on teams whose members are not present in the same location, is a fact of our modern, globalized business world. Virtual (or diverse and dispersed) teams are prevalent not only in multinational companies with offices in different countries, but also in academic and non-governmental institutions with bases across the world. In such team structures, members often have to communicate and collaborate with others who could be thousands of miles and many time zones apart.

As widespread as diverse and dispersed teaming is these days, leading a virtual team can be a challenge. Team leaders need to not only account for practical matters such as scheduling across time zones, but also technical issues such as varying rates of connectivity and access to communication platforms. However, one of the biggest factors in creating successful collaboration among diverse and dispersed teams is culture – specifically, tailoring the team’s mission, plans and procedures to the preferences of the different cultures represented on the team.

The following is a case study provided by a Cultural Navigator subject matter expert in diverse and dispersed teaming:

“A virtual team leader named Rebecca, originally from the United States, recently led a virtual project team with members from Japan, Mexico, Germany, Korea and the US. Rebecca was focused on setting the team up for success, and although she deliberately used strategies and tools made available by her company, she learned some valuable lessons along the way.

“Before initiating the project with a kick-off meeting, Rebecca made sure that everyone filled out their Cultural Orientations Indicator (COI) assessment to get to know their own work-style preferences. She then invited all members into a team message board on the Cultural Navigator, and encouraged them to share their profiles to better understand each other’s work-style preferences.

“The team was not able to have a face-to-face kick-off meeting, so during their first virtual meeting, every team member took time to introduce him or herself. The members talked about the different preferences in their team using the non-judgmental vocabulary of the Cultural Orientations Approach. At the end of the call, the team agreed on some ground rules for their upcoming teleconference and then closed the call.

“As the project continued, the team leader noticed that key team members were regularly not sharing their sales pipelines during their calls as agreed upon. Rebecca used humor during their sessions to lighten the mood, thinking some of the team members were nervous. However, she noticed the same people began to skip the calls, and were reluctant to speak when they were in attendance.”

In the above case study, the team leader Rebecca had done her due diligence in preparing the team to accommodate different cultural preferences among its members. But then she hit a snag. What had she done wrong?

The subject matter expert offered this reading of the situation: “In retrospect, Rebecca realized that even though she had set ground rules, she could have had an individual talk with each member before finalizing the team structure and processes. Perhaps in those discussions she would have understood that Woo-jin, her Korean colleague, worked in a strict hierarchical office environment and had to clear most decisions with his direct supervisor before sending anything to her. Woo-jin had hoped his team leader realized he did not have this approval, however Rebecca was not aware of this.

Similarly, the Japanese team member named Kamiko was concerned about the strict data protection laws in Japan, so she did not feel comfortable sharing her sales pipeline information. Kamiko had tried to indirectly convey this limitation to Rebecca, who wasn’t able to understand this message.

As for Rebecca’s use of humor during teleconferences, she did not realize how many cultural references she was using in her jokes, which her colleagues from outside her own culture had little understanding of.”

In essence, while Rebecca began the team’s collaboration with most of the components necessary for success, throughout the project duration, she learned the hard way that cultural mishaps often stall even the best plan.

While cultural due diligence and careful preparation are necessary components of working with a virtual team, the team leader and members need to exercise cultural awareness and cultural competence all along the way.

Though there can be challenges to working in diverse and dispersed teams, they are a fact of modern work life. The good news is that, when managed well, virtual teams can be as effective and productive as their traditional equivalents.

Questions:

1. What did the team leader notice during the team meeting (calls) and what did she tried to do to enhance the situation?
2. What should Rebeca had to do for each virtual worker and why?
3. What were the special situations with the Korean and the Japanese workers?
4. What the virtual leaders and the virtual members need to exercise?
5. How can the virtual teams be as effective and productive as their traditional equivalents?

Price dispersion is measured as the distribution of prices for the same product/service across sellers at a given point in time.

Lower dispersion means that prices across sellers at a point in time are more similar to each other, i.e., there is less variability in pricing. Price dispersion is thought to be a good measure of information efficiency in a market. For example, when search costs for consumers are low (and consumers can easily compare competitive offers), price dispersion is expected to be lower (i.e., prices of identical/similar products should not vary much across retailers).

For this reason, common wisdom suggests that price dispersion should be lower on the Internet than for offline retailers. One implication of lower price dispersion is that competition among retailers would be more intense online than offline.

Do you agree with the “common wisdom” view that the Internet generates lower price dispersion (and hence, more intense retail competition)? Why – or why not?

What types of research projects can you think about the field of Cognitive Science (Cognitive Psychology and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence)?

Can you think of 10 research projects that are Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning research projects? Please include many details such as the name of the professor and the name of the university where the research project is being conducted.

Many organizations look for ways to promote diversity through family-friendly policies. Using the online library, your textbook, or the web, look for a company that is incorporating family-friendly policies into their human resource management strategy (motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training). Your initial post should answer the following questions:

1. What is the name company? List the company’s website.
2. What are its policies?
3. How do these policies attract and keep workers?
4. Do these policies interest you? Why?
5. How might they make their policies more attractive to workers?

• Describe the different theories of crime and the categories in which they fall

Describe some sociological, biological and social psychological theories of crime

Please find an emerging mobile app and analyze the app according to the following requirements. The app you group chooses to analyze must be published in the app market after January 1, 2020. If an app was published before January 1, 2020, but was updated after this date, you should not choose the app for analysis. For example, YouTube app was published in early 2010, and had a newer version after January 1, 2020. Then, you should not choose YouTube for analysis, because a version update is not considered emerging. The main purpose of this project is to discover an emerging app with potentials instead of analyzing an established app like YouTube, Facebook, etc.

In your analysis, please answer the following questions:

(a) The name, functions, and latest number of downloads of the app;

(b) The reason you choose this app. In other word, why you thinks this app is important;

(c) The strengths of this app, and why users like this app;

(d) The weaknesses of this app, and how you plan to improve it if you were the app manager;

(e) Excluding figures, data tables, and references, a minimum of 2 page analyses are required.

Explain the process of urbanization, U.S. urban patterns, and rural rebound.

Describe a business situation in which you would want to choose OLAP over OLTP or OLTP over OLAP. How would you describe the purpose and advantages of one over the other?

The nine (9) major organizing concepts and their influence on decisions are critical to understanding the dynamics of your organization. Think of a current situation in your organization and describe how each principle influences the organizational behavior

A 15 kW and 1200 r.p.m. motor drives a compressor at 300 r.p.m. through a pair of spur gears having 20° stub teeth. The centre to centre distance between the shafts is 400 mm. The motor pinion is made of forged steel having an allowable static stress as 210 MPa, while the gear is made of cast steel having allowable static stress as 140 MPa. Assuming that the drive operates 8 to 10 hours per day under light shock conditions and face width as 10 times the module, find from the standpoint of strength, 1. Module; 2. Face width; 3. Number of teeth and pitch circle diameter of each gear; 4. Check the gears thus designed from the consideration of wear. The material combination factor for the wear as 1.4 and the flexural endurance limit may be taken as 490 MPa.

Executives must consider the benefits and risks of competing internationally when making decisions about whether to expand overseas. Executives also need to determine the likelihood that their companies will succeed when they compete in international markets by examining demand conditions, factor conditions, related and supporting industries, and strategy, structure, and rivalry among its domestic competitors.

For these executives that may face many uncertainties in a global marketplace, assess the three possible risks that may be faced by decision-makes seeking to expand in global markets. Analyze all three risks listed below. In your own words, analyze what conditions may be present in a country that would cause concern for these decision-makers. Explain what political risks may be present. Describe the economic and cultural risks that may also be present. You do not need to select a country. Your responses to all three risks can be a general overview of potential problems that executives want to review and assess the potential negative impacts.

Political risk refers to the potential for government upheaval or interference with business to harm an operation within a country.

• In extreme cases, a company’s assets in a country are seized by the national government. This process is called nationalization.

Economic risk refers to the potential for a country’s economic conditions and policies, property rights protections, and currency exchange rates to harm a company’s operations within a country.

Cultural risk refers to the potential for a company’s operations in a country to struggle due to differences in language, customs, norms, and customer preferences.

Your response should be around 150 to 200 words.

These wildlife mounts were the gifts of Mrs. McCaffrey, the widow of Ronald E. McCaffrey. Ron was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. Six years ago, he passed away. Because he and his wife had no children, Mrs. McCaffrey donated land and money to construct and maintain a nature center.

Mrs. McCaffrey had contacted you about a new nature center. Actually, it was a stretch to even call the old building a nature center, as it was hardly big enough to hold any exhibits and it was crowded with more than 10 people. On your first visit to the McCaffrey mansion to discuss the possibility of a gift, you noticed a few wildlife mounts and mentioned them to Mrs. McCaffrey. "Oh my," she explained, “Ronnie was so proud of these. And this isn't even half of them. There are twice as many in other rooms. They are important to me because I know what they meant to Ronnie."

Over the next 6 months an agreement was reached. The McCaffrey estate would donate $5 million and 50 acres of land for the nature center. It would be operated by your organization, and because Mrs. McCaffrey had known and trusted you from the start, you would continue as director. There was to be a plaque recognizing the donation and the McCaffreys' lifelong commit ment to outdoor conservation. Early on Mrs. McCaffrey stated that she would like to have several of the wildlife mounts in the new building for people to view. You recalled telling her that it would be impossible to display all of them. She had responded, "Well honey, I'm sure you could at least save one wall for them. Couldn't you?"

"Yes," you agreed, "we can put several of them up in a prominent place when we get the center built."

She went on to say that her husband had been especially proud of sev eral of the larger head mounts as they were in record books, and she would like to see them displayed. You had thought at the time that it was a mixed blessing. The heads might be a hassle to maintain but they did have some educational value and they were part of a deal that would benefit the entire community. There was certainly no other way a new nature center was going to happen.

The first 2 years of operation came off without a flaw, but there had been an increasing number of complaints about the mounts over the past year. Last week a family had stopped by the center and looked at the displays of animal tracks, discarded antlers, snake skins, and tree identifications. The mother and father complimented you on the nature center but asked about the appropriateness of displaying the heads of deer, elk, and other animals. You explained the educational value of the animal mounts. "Well, it just seems so contradictory to what the center is all about," the father answered. “How can you talk about caring for nature and educating people and then have a wall full of the heads of dead animals?"

Consequence-Based Questions

• What are the consequences of displaying or not displaying the mounts

(long- and short-term)?

• Who will benefit and who will suffer if the mounts are displayed (long

and short-term)?

Rule-Based Questions

• To whom do you owe an obligation in this situation?

• What are you required by law to do? ?

• What are you prohibited by law from doing?

• What are the expectations for directors of nature centers?

Virtue-Based Questions

• What virtues are relevant in this situation?

• How have you acted in a situation similar to this one? What did you

learn from that experience?

• What would the most ethical person you know (e.g., professional mentor,

community leader, religious leader) do in a similar situation? Final Questions

• What ethical theories are relevant in this situation?