Reflection on Group Project: Impact of Events on Decision Making

This report reflects on the key event occurrences that had a direct influence on the decision making powers and flow of autonomy in a group setting in which a presentation was prepared by a group. It provides a critical analysis of the group activities and approaches that were used to select the best possible decisions among many alternatives.

Individual
Reflection

Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY............................................................................................................................3
Events that occurred during the group project.................................................................3
Impact of the events on group decision making................................................................4
Critical Analysis of group activities....................................................................................6
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Whenever people are involved in a group project, there are multiple experiences that
are incurred from the entire duration that they spend working together that is both positive
and negative. There are a lot of dynamics involved in undertaking group projects as the direct
success and failure chances related to any task can be influenced both positively and
negatively by the behavioural traits of all the people involved (Servaes, 2020). Decision
making is also an important aspect of working in teams to accomplish one common goal as
there is existence of multiple opinions and difference in choices which have to be overcome
by applying proper concepts of conflict management and models of decision making and
teamwork.
This report will focus on the key event occurrences that had a direct influence on the
decision making powers and flow of autonomy in a group setting in which a presentation was
prepared by a group. There will be a reflective account which will be given using models
such as Tuckman’s stages of team development and Gibb’s reflective cycle.
MAIN BODY
Events that occurred during the group project
The group project I was a part of had a few more people including some which were
my friends and a couple were just classmates which I did not get along with particularly well
which made the entire experience a mixed bag. However the key learnings which we gained
thanks to this experience was immense and was related to various key domains such as
communication, teamwork and decision making along with financial simulation planning.
(Obsuwan, and et.al., 2021). These are all important skills to have for the future employment
chances of all of us. Over the course of the entire project, there are many events which
occurred which not only shaped the experience that each of us felt while undertaking this task
but also impacted the final result and overall flow and pattern of decision making that I
participated in. Some of these important events are listed herein.
 Deciding of topic and company to be simulated – The activity that this project was
a part of was a business simulation which is a popular and interactive way to teach
complex and practical business learnings by actively engaging with the organization
and its functions rather than doing rote learning through books. One major event that

occurred was that our group got into conflict and had trouble decision on which
company and topic was supposed to be simulated. We all had different ideas in mind
and all wanted to in separate directions as some wanted to simulate the business
operations of gaming company and one also wanted to do a retail firm.
 Choosing financial aspects to focus on in the presentation – After we had arrived
at the type of company to be selected and what sector to focus on for the business
simulation, events concerning what aspects to actually lay emphasis on started to
occur as it was tough for us to decide on just a few factors to focus on our
presentation from so many alternatives. Ultimately a few common topics were
decided upon which in trend such as finance optimization, technological development
and business sustainability. The reasons these topics were chosen is also because
when it comes to future developments, businesses around the globe which are
focusing on product technology optimization and expansion will need to focus on
these three departments majorly (McComb and Kennedy, 2020).
 Financial Reviews – Since business simulations are not based on knowledge from
books but our reflections of practical business activities that take place in daily life,
our presentation was supposed to have many graphs and analysis of critical business
operations. We had trouble deciding what exactly to review and ultimately I
convinced the team to focus on production, logistics and research and development as
these areas were found to be every important for the functioning of the company and
without proper production and supply chain activities, businesses cannot function
properly and struggle to meet demand no matter how good their products might be.
 Conflict in recommendations – This event occurred when most of our presentation
related work was over and we were supposed to give finishing touches to our business
simulation after thorough analysis and brainstorming was performed on its financial
condition, logistics operations along with research and development. Our group
members including me wanted to give different recommendations as some of us
wanted the company to focus on focusing on developing better products and raise the
prices rather than go with cost leadership approach and we were also divided on the
markets the company should further expand it if at all (Salinas, and et.al., 2021).

Impact of the events on group decision making
The events which occurred at different stages of the business simulation did have
quite an impact on the overall decision making that happened over the course of the group
presentation and the entire final layout and flow of the project was changed during the
process of addressing the potential conflicts of interest that occurred frequently. The various
impacts that each event had on our decision making is listed below.
 Company and its sector – The first step of the business simulation begins with one
of the most important steps that end up defining the structure and content of the entire
project and the presentation which is the company name and its market segment
(Lynch, Lynch and Clemens, 2018). We all had difficulty in choosing one topic which
was getting unanimous votes for the best one as all of us were bent on going our
desperate directions. Ultimately to reach a conclusion, we all took extensive
secondary research online for our choice of topic and the option with most content
and scope available was decided to be taken. After due analysis, my topic was
selected and the company was named RedMi which was a multinational firm
specializing in cutting edge products with focus on technological innovation. This
decision was easily accepted as it was taken using common grounds and goals as
nobody wanted to work on a project where secondary data was not available to further
our knowledge on.
 Financial analysis – The bulk of the content that was supposed to go in our
presentation was related to all the financial and operational considerations that our
chosen company was supposed stimulate and the type of data that would go alongside
it in the form of graphs and charts. We used the Belbin’s team role model to divide
group members into different taskmasters based on their behavioral traits as me and
my friend were great at collecting data and doing lots of researches (Stepanova,
Rozhkova and Grishina, 2020).
We were given the role of resource investigators which are team roles concerned with
acquiring ideas and data and we brought ideas of focusing on logistics, research and
development along with financial feasibility. The data was then interpreted by other
people in the group who were specialists as they possessed deep knowledge of
concepts such as supply chain management which directly connects to logistics which
was an important coordinative step in the success of the project.

 Recommendations – The decision making process which was initiated during this
part of the project was very important as all our efforts hinged on the final part of the
project as business simulation has recommendations as one of the most important part
as it helps chart out the future events of the company. The tricky part about
recommendations is that they cannot be planned far out in advance and as such cannot
be subjected to strategy formulation because they encompasses the entire project and
must be given on the basis of the entire presentation. Rather than one specific topic
being highlighted, they contain many alternatives where one advice must take priority
over another with research backing our choices. Every member gave slightly different
recommendations and we could not gel well as a unit during this event as everyone
wanted to end the project on their terms. I proposed using frameworks to eliminate
recommendations by grading them against set criteria’s to arrive at best possible
recommendations which were agreeable by all. This type of decision making using
frameworks was a success as we were able to choose the best possible option from
many alternatives and avoiding conflict in the process.
Critical Analysis of group activities
The group presentation was success for each one of us at the end of day both on a
professional and personal level as we all took many pieces of critical learnings about
communication, teamwork and decision making which is sure to help us become capable
employees and business owners in the future. There were various ways in which we
performed group activities and took part in decision making which was critical to the project,
some of which are stated herein.
 Brainstorming – I will be the first one to admit that we as a group did not possess the
perfect means of coordination and proper flow of information was not there during the
initial days of starting the project but we did come on the same page together
whenever the situation was dire and no other way was possible. The process of
brainstorming was instrumental as debating and discussing various topics with my
fellow team embers not only allowed us to make tough decisions in the nick of time
such as naming the company, RedMi and charting it’s multinational operations but
also helped us in knowing each other and our behavioral traits better which helped
apply models like Belbin’s team roles.

 Rational decision making – This is one of the most popular models of decision
making which we applied a steam to get through and navigate through tough spots
where our coordination was tested and multiple people were on different boats
regarding the direction in which to take the project (Robb, 2022). In this method, the
problem are identified and various criteria’s are set which help in evaluating the
various solutions and alternative pathways that can be taken to avoid the problem.
Using this approach, we decided upon which aspects of the business we wanted to
simulate and dozens of alternatives were found and evaluated using criteria’s such as
importance in international expansion, budgetary restraints and amount of secondary
data available.
 Bounded rationality – Since we were an imperfect team whose decision making
process was not smooth and multiple conflicts and disruptive events kept on occurring
where use of separate models and theories became necessary, we were running low on
time. In order to make due the project in the set deadline, bounded rationality
approach was used where the analysis is short and only small amount of alternatives
are found. This model was very effective in allowing up to function as a team more
efficiently and save time on choosing which operational areas to conduct graphical
analysis on which were logistics and R&D to name a few.
 Use of management theories and frameworks – As a team, we successfully
completed this project using a lot of management theories and models which were
useful in allowing us to select alternatives and avoid conflict as soon as it occurred.
Some group activities where such models helped us include the John Adair Lobster
pot framework which is a decision making framework within which solutions are
graded according to criteria’s and we move from multiple alternatives to select few
best ones. This method was used to select recommendations for the simulation project
and in order to control conflicts, Tuckman’s team development stages were also
studied where we minimizing complex tasks in storming stages and did maximum
work in the performing stage which helped boost our group efficiency (Aljandali and
Tatahi, 2018).
CONCLUSION
The above finished report went into detail regarding the various complexities that
people face when they are teamed up with other individuals and asked to complete complex

projects such as business simulations which are interactive methods of learning built to teach
and demonstrate practical learnings regarding the workings of a business company through
virtual reality and presentations. Various events were included that occurred and disrupted
the group’s presentation making and the effect it had on their overall decision making. The
report was concluded by providing a critical analysis on the various group activities that were
performed and approaches that were used to select the best possible decisions among many
alternatives.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Servaes, J. ed., 2020. Handbook of communication for development and social change (pp.
1471-1482). Singapore: Springer.
Obsuwan, S., and et.al., 2021. Does cultural diversity matter for team performance in
multinational companies? An analysis of conflict, communication, social integration,
creativity and satisfaction. International Journal of Innovation Management, 25(07),
p.2150082.
McComb, S. and Kennedy, D., 2020. Polyphony in Team Communication. In Computational
Methods to Examine Team Communication (pp. 105-129). Springer, Cham.
Salinas, O., and et.al., 2021, November. Can Analytics of Speaking Time Serve as Indicators
of Effective Team Communication and Collaboration?. In X Latin American Conference on
Human Computer Interaction (pp. 1-4).
Lynch, D.S., Lynch, M.J. and Clemens, C.M., 2018. Belbin Team Roles. The Handbook of
Communication Training: A Best Practices Framework for Assessing and Developing
Competence.
Stepanova, E., Rozhkova, A.V. and Grishina, I.I., 2020, June. Team Building as a Method of
Teaching Students and Group Cohesion. In Proceedings of the European Conference on
Research Methods in Business and Management Studies (pp. 276-83).
Aljandali, A. and Tatahi, M., 2018. Economic and financial modelling with eviews. A Guide
for Students and Professionals. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Robb, M.A., 2022. Stages of Group Development and Group Preparation. Group Art
Therapy, pp.107-115.