ob 2 paper - niranjan desai 2217375

8/7/2019 OB 2 Paper - Niranjan Desai 2217375

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Individual Assignment Organizational Behavior II

Niranjan Desai - 2217375 Page 2

WORKERS & MANAGEMENT

Workers and the Management have enjoyed the quintessential relationship

between a cat and the rat (each assuming one or the other role all the time).

The concepts of group dynamics, conflict, negotiation & power and politics are

displayed best in the relationship of workers and management and I amattempting to present the influence that these have on the day to day life of a

worker(s), through a short case below. I believe in collectivism (that groups

represent) and acknowledge that it has more merits than demerits, but Id like to

study the demerits of it and therefore have chosen likewise.

ABC Pvt. Ltd. is a computer manufacturing unit located at Hyderabad. The

company has been in existence for 4 years and is running well. Recently, Mohan

& Shankar joined the company as workmen (entry level job) and were assigned

to the assembling unit. As new comers with a lot of aspirations, both had great

amount of energy to exhibit their performance and talent through sincerity andhard work. They were part of the group which had 25 team members, some of

them were over 3 years in tenure while most of them had up to 3 years tenure in

this job. Mohan & Shankar were initially assigned to two of the most senior team

members so that they learn the ropes well.

The nature of the job that this team was required to do was to assemble different

parts of the computer and create one unit. Each member had an individual target

to achieve.

The senior workers (Ajay & Vijay), who were given the charge of training Mohanand Shankar, started teaching them the functional aspect of the job. Over a

period of time, however, they started feeling their role extended beyond being a

guide and at this stage they were more or less acting like Mohan and Shankars

manager. They started passing orders to both of them, which were readily

accepted because for both Mohan and Shankar, these two were extremely senior.

However, this was not taken too well by the other team members who started

feeling that these two senior members were exceeding the scope of role that was

given them. However, they also did not raise any voices thinking that this will

soon subside. But, as fate may have it, over a period of time coteries started

forming within this group. One coterie was led by the senior guide of Mohan andthe other by the senior guide of Shankar. These were two informal groups but the

tensions were developing between them in the sense that they started regarding

each other as separate teams within one formal team. The initial group started

forming with team members feeling the need of affiliation (because they felt

getting affiliated to one of the two informal groups may get them power of

representation with management as the factory had a weak union), but later the


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remaining members joined one of the groups for the fear of being left out and

ostracized.

Very soon, the differences between the two groups started surfacing on matters

like work distribution, leave approval & overtime allocation. From the

managements viewpoint, this was still one single team known as the assemblingunit and all the above matters becoming an issue were not relevant as they were

following usual procedure in managing these matters. But for the workers, they

started finding fault with everything. One day, the differences came out in the

open with both the senior workers almost coming to blows over the discussion of

a leave application of one of the workers, where the manager stated that the

work will have to be re-distributed among other workers and left it to the workers

to decide who will compensate for one of their team members absence of one

week (for genuine reasons). At this stage the management realized that

groupthinkhad strongly set in, because the fight between the two senior

members was seen as something like a personal quarrel between them but

surprisingly none of the team members spoke up, even though they were

comfortable with the idea of sharing the extra work load. They were all victims of

groupthink.

The management took notice of this and spoke to both the senior members and

counseled them to break the coteries and become one team again. But what

happened was far from their expectations.

A few days later, a fire broke out from a short circuit on one of the walls on the

extreme side of the assembling unit. Two workers were injured while running outof the floor but as such no one was directly injured due to fire. The management

provided necessary medical assistance and gave those two workers the

remaining day as off. The maintenance team also checked the remaining circuits

and gave it a safe to work clearance. Based on this, the management asked the

remaining workers to return to work immediately as operations were stalled for

almost 4 hours. However, Ajay said that he felt that place was not safe to work

and asked that the management conduct a full enquiry into why the fire broke out.

However, the management said that the maintenance team had given clearance

to it already and based on the same it was safe to continue working. However,

Ajay started arguing with manager and said he was inhuman and was concerned

only with getting work done. Hearing Ajay speak, the remaining workers of the

assembling unit also came there and immediately both the groups were present.

Ajays group (despite everyone not fully knowing the management side) started a

sit-down dharna stating that work will not presume until their demand was met.

The second group led by their unofficial leader Vijay, saw an opportunity in this

and took the managers side and said that they should continue working and trust


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the managers confidence that the place was indeed safe to work now. Ajays

group was a clear victim ofgroupshift. It took an exaggerated approach for no

significant reason and its members simply tagged along either because nobody

had the courage to speak differently or seek rational for the approach taken by

Ajay. Similarly, while Vijays group did not take the same stance, its approach

was not exactly taken because it believed in the right thing. The approach was

taken just to be seen as different from the other group and for opportunistic

reasons.

While the management decided to review the matter and constitute a formal

committee to look into the people issues that were emerging, I would like to

undertake a study myself and in the course of studying the above case, I can

derive the following as problems that existed:

a. The assembling unit has been functioning like a normal group for over 3

years (it is an assumption because no prior data is available). However,normalcy may be attributed to the fact that the company only was formed

4 years back and this team was perhaps hired at the companys inception

and has been the same since then. When two new people were hired into

this team after a gap of 3 years, and two senior members were asked to

coach and mentor the new team members, it seems to be the point where

conflict commenced. (may be it was born much earlier, but it got a reason

to surface at this stage). Ajay and Vijay both must have felt elevated,

which may have led to dissatisfaction among others as to why they were

not chosen for mentoring and that may have snowballed into creation of

informal groups (coterie). Once these informal groups were formalized

by workers themselves without any management approval, they started

competing with each other for power (intra-group power struggle)

b. Since these groups were born out of conflict, they also remained in that

state for too long giving rise to high amount ofgroupthink and some

amount of group shift. These started erupting for small and big issues

leading to a highly negative environment not conducive for work at all

We may utilize the following ideas to mitigate the problem and resolve the

situation:

a. The assembling unit needs to go through a formal exercise of setting team

norms for it, they need to place these team norms at a common board and

every team member needs to have a copy of these norms. Such an

exercise should be facilitated by an outside person (may be a senior

management member or if feasible an external consultant) so that it

remains free of bias and brings in a third perspective


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b. The management should evaluate why there was a coterie formation of

such type in the first place. Is it because workers did not feel represented

enough? In such a case some of the options are to strengthen the current

union or form a Works committee with equal representation so that

employee grievances may be addressed properly without having to go

through so much turmoil

c. The management needs to formally evaluate the power dynamics in the

organization. It seems there is absence of open relation with the current

manager which led the workers to form their own power structures. It may

warrant change in manager or change in reporting structure. The

management may also want to evaluate if the senior team members are

feeling stagnated in their current roles and if they want to do more. If they

are capable then they should be transferred to larger and more complex

roles, so that the need to enhance once role by oneself doesnt arise

because that can be detrimental to smooth functioning of an organizationand will violate the management function

This is a classic problem and has affected generations of the employer-employee

relationship (not just in factories, but also when kingdoms existed). The reasons

may have changed, perhaps even the environment may have changed but the

genesis of the matter is usually the same as we saw in the above case.

Reference:

The above case is drawn from the concepts of Group Formation, Group illnesses

and briefly uses Power and Politics concept

Acknowledgement:

I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Prof. MG Jomon for continuing our journey

into the world of Organizational Behavior, and this paper is an outcome of the learning from

same.

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ob 2 paper - niranjan desai 2217375

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