Question 1
Part of the process of building a successful team requires regular evaluation of the teams performance and processes. In order to evaluate your group's performance (for the group presentation and report), reflect on your group's strengths and weaknesses in terms of organizational behavior concepts covered this semester.
Consider: What did your group do particularly effectively? In what areas could your group have improved its effectiveness?
You could discuss, for example, decision-making processes, negotiation, task allocation and delegation, stages in team development, team cohesiveness, communication channels, meeting efficacy, conflict, power, politics, personalities, leadership styles and functions, roles, rules, and rewards.
Your submission is confidential.
Your answer should be in the range of 300-600 words.
Question 2
"You can dream, create, design and build the best, the most wonderful place on earth, but it requires people to make that dream a reality." - Walt Disney
Consider "The Smile Factory: Work at Disneyland" case study by John van Maanen (in the Class 12 Files folder) and analyze Disneyland's culture in terms of the seven primary characteristics that Robbins and Judge propose capture the essence of an organization's culture, as follows:
1 Innovation and risk taking
2 Attention to detail
3 Outcome orientation
4 People orientation
5 Team orientation
6 Aggressiveness
7 Stability
See details of these seven characteristics on page 269 of Essentials of Organizational Behavior 13e or page 465 of Organizational Behavior 16e. See also background articles in the Class 12 folder by Chatman & Jehn (1994) and O'Reilly, Chatman & Caldwell (1991).
Your answer should be in the range of 300-600 words.
Question 3
Consider the following excerpt from Forbes titled "Wells Fargo Scandal Gets Banks to Ask Employees What Makes Them Proud to Come to Work" (9/28/2016): (https://fortune.com/2016/09/28/wells-fargo-wall-street-culture/)
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the banking industry sought to address an ethics crisis with surveys, town hall meetings, appointments of overseers, and mechanisms for employees to report malfeasance.
Now, the high-pressure sales scandal at Wells Fargo provides more evidence that large U.S. banks may have little to show for the effort.
Bank consultants say tens of millions of dollars are spent each year on initiatives to build a culture of integrity, partly at the urging of regulators such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York(https://beta.fortune.com/fortune500/bank-of-new-york-mellon-corp-179 ) and the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Octavio Marenzi, co-founder of Opimas, a management consultant that focuses on the finance industry, said banks have spent a lot of money researching their culture and updating ethics handbooks-with little impact.
"A lot of what the banks are doing are superficial attempts," said Marenzi. "It's more window-dressing than anything else."
The continuing spate of scandals reinforces doubts about the effectiveness of such efforts. Wells Fargo‘s debacle-involving the creation of as many as 2 million accounts without customers' permission-is only the latest black eye for bankers.
Other recent lapses have included widespread rigging of benchmark interest rates by traders at several banks; reports that J. P. Morgan Chase hired children of high-ranking Chinese officials to curry favor; and allegations in a London court that bankers hired prostitutes for officials at Libya's sovereign wealth fund to win business.
In a statement, Wells Fargo spokesman Mark Folk said the bank takes responsibility for customers receiving products they did not request.
"Wells Fargo‘s culture is committed to the best interests of our customers, providing them with only the products they want and value," Folk wrote.
Workers have described a pressure-cooker atmosphere where they risked losing their jobs if they did not hit unrealistic sales targets. They say this pressure defined working for Wells Fargo and directly led to widespread fraud in the opening of bogus accounts.
Drawing upon the textbook, outline five ways that managers can create a more ethical culture within an organization.
Your answer should be 200-300 words.