Riordan Manufacturing: Groups, Teams, and Conflict
Team Strategy Plan
1. Complete the following table to address the creation of teams at Riordan Manufacturing.
Strategy Strengths Weaknesses
Problem-Solving Team
Members of the team work together to improve work issues and tasks. Do not usually have the authority to implement their suggestions.
Self-Managed Work Team Have the authority to solve problems and implement solutions to problems. Power struggles may occur which could lead to poor group performance.
Cross-Functional Team Information is provided from high levels of various departments. Team building could be delayed due to diversity.
Virtual Team Can collaborate international. Very convenient. Moral may not be strong due to lack of face-to-face interaction.
2. Identify the team formation strategy that is most suitable for Riordan Manufacturing, and provide the rationale for the decision. Your response should be at least 100 words.
A work team is a group of individuals coming together to perform collective work that requires joint effort in an attempt to increase outputs without increasing inputs. Work teams create positive synergy through coordinating efforts (Robbins & Judge, 2011).
The first task is to carefully select team members from the existing work force, or hire additional employees from external sources to ensure a balanced team. Assuming contextual and process factors are stable and adequate, the factors to analyze when delegating members to the teams are compositional in nature. That is, Riordan has a workforce comprised predominantly of Caucasian and African American men and women in the 18-29 years age group (Apollo Group, Inc., 2013). It is easy to create equally diverse work teams in the Pontiac, Michigan plant.
The next task is to determine the type of work team will be most effective for producing the CardiCare Valve heart valves. This is a new product for Riordan. As such, input...