SIM BUS103 – Organisational Behaviour Assignment 2

BUS103eOrganisational BehaviourAssignment 2 – Group-based AssignmentJanuary 2017 Presentation BUS103e Assignment 2 Group-based AssignmentThis assignment is worth 30% of the final mark for BUS103e Organisational Behaviour.The cut-off date for this assignment is 20 February 2017, 2355hrs.This is a group-based assignment. You should form a group of 3 members from yourseminar group. Each group is required to upload a single report to Canvas via your respectiveseminar group. Please elect a group leader. The responsibility of the group leader is to uploadthe report on behalf of the group.It is important for each group member to contribute substantially to the final submitted work.All group members are equally responsible for the entire submitted assignment. If you feelthat the work distribution is inequitable to either yourself or your group mates, pleasehighlight this to your instructor as soon as possible. Your instructor will then investigate anddecide on any action that needs to be taken. It is not necessary for all group members to beawarded the same mark. SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 2 of 6 BUS103e Assignment 2 Important Note: Grading of TMA/GBA/ECA SubmissionsMarks awarded to your assignment are based on the following guidelines:1. 80% of the marks are allocated to the content of your answers: The marks awarded to what your answers cover depend on the extent to which theycover the key points that correctly and comprehensively address each question. The key points should be supported by evidence drawn from course materials and,wherever relevant, from other credible sources.2. 20% of the marks are allocated to the presentation of your answers:Wherever applicable, the marks awarded to how your answers are presented dependon the extent to which your answers: form a sound reasoning by developing those key points in a clear, logical and succinctmanner; provide proper and adequate in-text citations and referencing to content drawn fromcourse materials and other credible sources; strictly follow APA formatting and style guidelines1, in particular for: in-text citations and end-of-report references; the identification of figures and tables; use, wherever relevant, the specialised vocabulary and terminology commonly used indiscussions about the topic(s) covered by each question; provide a reference or bibliography at the end of the main report; include the less relevant details in an Appendix; use sentence constructions that are grammatically and syntactically correct; are free from spelling mistakes; present the workings, numerical formulations andresults in a logical manner that follows the APA formatting and style guidelines; design and present graphs, diagrams and plots that follow the APA formatting andstyle guidelines; are highly original; have proper formatting, which may: include a properly formatted cover page; respect the answer length/word count set out in the assignment guidelines, ifany is prescribed; present answers in paragraphs with proper spacing and page margins; include page numbers and appendices, if necessary.1 You can find a short tutorial on the APA formatting and style guidelines here: https://is.gd/mgEOnC .Additional details (pertaining to tables and figures) can be found here: https://is.gd/O4vDdT . SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 3 of 6 BUS103e Assignment 2 Case Study – Unusual Health ProductsBackgroundUnusual Health (UH) is a company that imports health products from different regions of theworld and sells these products to the local market. UH employs salespeople who sell theproducts at various locations and using different channels, through direct contact withcustomers.In the initial years, salespeople worked independently and looked for their own contacts.Business was good as the products were reasonably priced and the salespeople provided goodservice. However, in the recent years, demand for UH products decreased due to increasedcompetition offering a growing number of similar health products sold in the same market.Even UH’s regular customers were beginning to switch to competing products. The morale ofthe UH salespeople was low as they regularly failed to meet their monthly sales targets.Teams at UHThe manager at UH decided that the way to boost morale and sales was to have thesalespeople work in teams instead of individually, an idea that he decided to implement afterreading some management articles on the benefits of team work.To make it easier for him to manage the teams, he decided it would be best not to have toomany teams. Hence, the salespeople were divided into a few teams of 15 people. Heappointed a team leader for each team. With the new team arrangement, performanceevaluation and reward for each salesperson remained the same. Salesmen were rewarded withindividual bonuses based on individual sales targets. In addition, each month, the team leaderwas also rewarded with an individual bonus if his team achieved the highest level of sales.Albert was one of the team leaders. To improve the sales in his team, he decided that allsalespeople should share their customer contacts with the rest of the team. This way, if asalesperson was not available when the customer wanted to purchase products, anothersalesperson could easily take over and serve the customer, a policy that created tension withinthe team as some salespeople were being accused of “stealing customers”. There were alsosalespeople who were not motivated to look for new customers as they simply relied on thecustomer contacts from the other salespeople in their team. The high-performing salespeoplewere also unwilling to share their customer contacts as they felt that it would not improvetheir individual performance evaluation. They also felt that they had worked hard over theyears to establish regular customers and feared that their performance would be adverselyaffected if their customers were “stolen” by other salespeople. They were also unwilling tolook for new customers as this meant sharing the contacts with the other salespeople in theteam. There were also rumours that some salespeople were bad-mouthing other salespeoplein front of the customers.Ben was another team leader. Like Albert, he was facing various issues in his own team of 15salespeople. Although he tried to organize team meetings every week to share updates andsales tips, most of his salespeople were unwilling to share information. They did not reallyknow each other as they had worked independently before the teams were formed. Some ofthem did not enjoy working in teams and stopped attending team meetings altogether becausethey did not see the benefit of such meetings nor how they could help their salesperformance. For salespeople, team meeting attendance was a burden as it meant that they SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 4 of 6 BUS103e Assignment 2 had to be in the office for that day of the week. A few salespeople started taking medicalleave on the meeting days as they found team meetings to be boring and did not like to attendthe meetings.Caleb was another team leader. He was zealous about his new role. He decided that he shouldmanage his salespeople closely and in a systematic manner so that they could maximize theirsales. He developed a roster for the salespeople and also assigned them to variousgeographical regions. Each salesperson must follow the schedule and cover the region thatCaleb had assigned. In addition, all the salespeople must submit timesheets every week toindicate the hours worked and the progress made in their assigned regions. Some of thesalespeople were unhappy with the new arrangement, as they were assigned to regions thatwere far from their homes and their regular customers. Other sales people were also unhappyas they could not choose their working hours. They did not see the rationale of working fixedhours as they were doing direct sales. They started grumbling about Caleb. Some of themdecided to ignore Caleb’s arrangement and went back to their usual way of meetingcustomers at their preferred schedule.DilemmaAfter a few months of setting up the sales teams, the manager was dismayed to see that saleshad further declined instead of improving. Some of his best salespeople had also tenderedtheir resignation, especially those from Albert’s team. The manager did not understand whatwas wrong as he thought that teams should help improve performance. He did not know whatto do. Should he do away with the teams? If not, how should he improve team performanceso that overall sales performance improves? Question 1 (Word Limit: 1000)(a) What is the purpose of studying OB? Describe an example where knowledge of OBcan be applied in your workplace.(5 marks) (b) One of the ways to apply OB concepts in this case is to examine the job attitude ofemployees. List and explain the three (3) components of attitude, using examplesfrom this case.(12 marks) (c) Explain the four (4) major work-related attitudes that are relevant to organisationalbehaviour. Which work-related attitude is affected in this case? Explain your answer.(15 marks) Question 2 (Word Limit: 1000)(a) We have learned three contemporary theories of motivation. Explain one of thetheories which is relevant to this case and describe how it is illustrated in this case.(10 marks) SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 5 of 6 BUS103e (b) Assignment 2 Describe the Job Characteristics Model. Determine which job dimension was changedwith the team arrangement and explain how that dimension was affected.(18 marks) Question 3 (Word Limit: 1200)(a) State four (4) benefits of work teams compared to groups. Do you think the teams inUH demonstrate these benefits? Explain.(8 marks) (b) Identify and describe four (4) issues in the teams that affected performance. For eachissue, suggest solutions that are likely to make the teams more effective.(32 marks) —- END OF ASSIGNMENT —- SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 6 of 6