Working as Part of a Team for the Individual - Assignment Example

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working as part of a team for the individual? Teams in the organisation have become a common phenomenon in modern day management. The concept of team orientation has become an essential aspect of the organisational culture with work activities continuously being developed based on team capacity rather than the individual’s potential. Organisational behaviour has therefore grown to be defined through the limits of the interactions between the individual and team as well as the interaction between teams and the individual. Groups differ sharply from teams due to the value and function. Groups are defined and identified by the primary purpose of interaction and sharing of information with the goal of helping the individual perform within their allocated individual areas (Scott, 2007). Teams on the other hand are defined through the efforts that result in performance that is better and greater than the sum of individual inputs. In effect an understanding of the group gives insight to an understanding of the individual. Teams have become more popular over the years for certain reasons. They often outperform individuals through natured competition and spirited inter group motivation. They also allow the individual to use their talents in a more efficient way. They have also been continuously associated with the ability to adjust and respond to changing environments. Team or group dynamics create a more democratised environment that increases the level of motivation among the employees. Work teams have certain benefits to the individual that accrue to the collaboration of the employees. They also have their share of disadvantages and over the individualised approach to work. To begin with, teams have a more creative approach to problem solving and are more thorough in the performance of their obligations and duties. This increases the quality of the work done. The various employees learn from the different perspectives and backgrounds on how to evaluate all pros and cons of the problem. Teams present and inter team competition which motivates the individual to perform better and emerge better. The interaction with the team also allows the individual to develop other skill sets besides the employment performance skills such as leadership, communication and association. It builds the individuals social and relational aspect through the team based interactions. On the other hand participation of an individual in a team has its challenges and disadvantages. The under-participation or over-participation of an individual in the team leads to uneven use of the individual’s potential which limits the performance of the individual. In case of team conflict the work environment created for the individual becomes more unfriendly and difficult (Scott, 2007). Team participation makes it quite difficult to motivate and acknowledge individual effort. Teams also limit individual’s creativity to the team level and it creates more bureaucracy in the work place. Further, not all individuals are comfortable working in teams and they actually work better when working individually. 2. ‘There’s no such thing as ‘stress.’...it’s all in an individual’s head and just an excuse to take time off work’ discuss There is no specific definition or explanation for job stress. It is a common phenomenon among most organisations and it occurs due to various reasons. It can however be expressed by the consideration of the internal and external circumstances and symptoms that are common with people undergoing stress. The most widely adopted explanation and definition of stress is one that expresses the circumstances that create the potential for stress. It can be presented as the result of a situation that creates demands that threaten to breach the individual’s capacity and abilities as well as the limits of the resources that are available. This therefore goes to the indifference between the rewards and costs of the obligations over the resources available. Subsequently the level of stress is pegged on the individual’s potential to embrace the demands of their immediate environment. As such, it can be said that it is dependent on the individual’s perception and confidence in their potential and capacity to perform. From a different perspective (Robbins 2004) stress can be expressed as the fear of the unknown and of new challenges within the work environment. This approach suggests that stress is inevitable since an individual encounters new situations every day that present a challenge to peoples’ contemplated means and resources. The difference between a stressed individual and one who is not is the ability to deal with the new encounters and situations. To one end therefore the suggestion that stress is nothing more than an individual’s perception is partially true. However stress can also be expressed as a bodily reaction to the environmental forces that cause the body to over extend its capabilities. It is a perfectly normal adaptive body reaction that is pegged on the individual physical potential. This definition suggests stress to be an impulse and bodily reaction to imminent or presumed threats. It is an uncontrollable reaction of the human body that is not related to the environment but more to the mental state of an individual. Therefore the level of stress presented by a certain environment does not necessarily depend on the environment its self but more on the perception of the individual of the situation and as such it is a relativist phenomenon. Other organisational behaviour scientists (Scott 2007) take an optimist approach to stress by suggesting that it is the necessary and fundamental drive towards the individual that keeps them motivated and operational. It is not necessarily bad since it has little to do with causing damage to the level of performance. It therefore is administered to every high performing individual in certain proportions. It however becomes ineffective if it remains below a certain level or exceeds a certain level. Subsequently stress is the neutral expression that describes the difference between distress and eustress which are the extremes of good and bad effects of perceived or actual pressure on the individual. In conclusion, there is no such thing as stress. It is just an excuse that individual use to get away from work for a while and cool off. It is created and enhanced in the mind of an individual and therefore cured by allowing the individual some time off. 3. Choose a major contemporary issue affecting organisational behaviour today. Discuss its practical implications for managing people. Organisational behaviour has a synthesis of numerous fields. It is a multidisciplinary subject that has an effect on research and management concepts and ideas. In the contemporary context it has drawn the attention of a variety of issues that dictate the length and amount of resources that the organisation is willing and able to separate for the particular purpose. With the onset of the globalisation process and the need to decentralise the organisation to fit into the dynamics of the contemporary context the concept of organisational behaviour has been polluted by the introduction of technological solutions in the form of information and communication technologies and alternatives (Sohrabi et.al, 2011). As such the traditional significations and conceptions of organisation behaviour have been rendered untenable by the virtual system of organisation that has new explanations and modifications that replace the individualistic interpersonal relations of the traditional age. The management of human resources has transcended the limits of departments and moved to electronic modes through virtual teams. The introduction of technology has presented the question of diversity. The virtual teams approach to organisational behaviour brings together individuals from different sexes, racial diversities, and different ethnic social and cultural settings. The heterogeneous nature of the social identities of the members of the teams makes it quite difficult to integrate the various backgrounds into a working organisation behaviour theory. The social identity of the individual for instance, indicates the ability of the individual to interpret the values of the group or team into one’s own values. It also expresses the individual’s role in the group and the ability to operate efficiently as part of the group. The social identity has a tremendous effect on the organisational behaviour variables such as the level of satisfaction the individual derives from the workplace, the level of involvement into the job as well as the level of commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour (Baron and Greenberg 2008). The influx of globalisation concepts has transformed not only the organisations culture but also the consumers culture the consumer now appreciates the selling process as the personal actual interaction between the seller and the customer about the product as opposed to the traditional interaction between the customer and the product through the seller. This has been made possible through the adoption of the appropriate technologies. Virtual organisations are in a constant state of interaction with the environment and as such it has a tremendous effect on the approach and outfit of the organisations behaviour. The geographical dispersal of the people utilising the virtual technology as the means to the performance of organisations tasks creates a rather difficult to implement a permanent organisational behaviour management mechanism. As such the modern day organisation has continued to suffer the lack of a solid method of management and supervision of the organisations behavioural trends. References Baron, A., and Greenberg, J., 2008, Behavior in organizations. Pearson Education, New Jersey. Robbins, P., 2004, Organizational Behavior - Concepts, Controversies, Applications. 4th Ed. Prentice Hall. New York. Scott, W., 2007, Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems Perspectives, Pearson Prentice Hall, New York. Sohrabi, B. Gholipour, A., and Amiri, B., 2011, “The Influence of Information Technology on Organizational Behavior: Study of Identity Challenges in Virtual Teams, International Journal of e-Collaboration, 7(2), 19-34. Read More