People and Global Organisations Reflection

People and Global Organisations Reflection
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People and Global Organisations Reflection
1. INTRODUCTION
The use of PPD simulations for team learning has been very interesting for me and my team
because of its user-friendly interface, ability to make accurate forecast and suitable for all
management level. As a team, the experience i had from the use of simulation makes me feel and
assume that I and my team were in a real world situation. Our company was named 3rd Mobile, it
was incorporated and as a team, we make decision that impacts the business. Our team consist of
a diversified group of individuals from different culture and nation who has different beliefs,
culture, ethics, religion, traits and gender. Working as a team at the early stage, we experienced a
lot of back lashes and conflict which arises from inequality, communication barriers, resentments
from individuals, risk associated with decision making, absenteeism, personality traits that
affected inter-personal relationships and disunity that existed amongst us, this therefore affected
the pace in which we make decision. Later on, to enable us resolve the conflict and disunity
amongst us, we were able to set out some certain rules and objectives to help us achieve our aim.
We also adopted distributive leadership style and we were also able to tackle the issue of
inequality that exist amongst us. This report will depict the challenges we faced as a team in our
decision making process, how we were able to resolve such conflict and challenges, the theories
we adopted in resolving it and also recommendation on the best fit to resolve organizational
conflict in a situation of diversity.

2. FACTORS AFFECTING TEAMWORK
a. Team Working Across Cultures
Our company 3rd Mobile was made up of individual from different nation, culture, traits, ethics
and belief making business decisions that affects the profitability and productivity of the
business. According to o Hofstede et al. (1997), “a multicultural team is a team whose members
have different cultural backgrounds”. at the early stage of the business inception working as a
team, we experienced a lot of conflicts as a result of communication barriers. This
communication barrier was as a result of ineloquence in English language amongst some team
members also some felt that they do not have great accent to communicate thereby making them
give ineffective feedback. Also, the emergence of Covid 19 pandemic abruptly limit our meeting
thereby limiting how often we meet for discussions and decision making. According to Pincas,
(2001), “the use of English as a second language and the lack of paralinguistic cues in cross-
cultural communication cause many difficulties, e.g. using conventions of mother tongue,
politeness, modes of emphasis, ways of referring back to previous messages, use of netiquette
rules, and the perception of relevance, which is reported as the most difficult aspect of cross-
cultural discourse”.
We were also faced with the issue of inequality resentments amongst team mates, inequality here
does not ponder only on the issue of gender inequality but also on the issue of cultural
supremacy. Some individuals feels that coming from a particular culture or being from a
particular race places some certain team members above others especially towards decision
making. Some team members were made to feel that they do not have much to contribute
because they come from a developing or under develop nation that might limit their mental
capacity in making decisions that deals with business management especially in a business that

deals with technology, the affected individuals was not cool about such treatment and thereby
they started harbouring resentments this therefore affected the effectiveness of their feedback
especially when given a task. “When two people with different perception and value systems
meet, it is almost inevitable that each party misunderstands the behavior and motives of the
other” (Robinson, 1997).
In order to resolve this conflict and challenges arising from communication barrier, I made my
team to understand that we need to tolerate each other culture to enable us achieve our
objectives. Pauleen & Yoong (2001) advise that “cultural tolerance and empathy are basic
conditions for communicative openness”. We were able to subject our meeting to online which
we felt was easier and more productive because some of the team mates that absconded from the
physical meeting as a result of some personal and social factor can now attend the meeting at
their convienience. Also, the issue of inequality was addressed with the introduction of
distributive leadership which enhances creativity amongst teammates and also giving individuals
the power to influence an event or a situation. According to (Uhl-Bien 2006), he suggested
“distributed leadership is a systemic perspective, whereby leadership is conceived of as a
collective social process emerging through the interactions of multiple actors”.
Diversity
3rd Mobile was made up of board of directors from various socio-cultural backgrounds.
According to Wentling & Palma-Rivas (2000) Organizations with a diverse workforce can
provide superior services because they can better understand customers’ needs. The challenges
we experienced was not only limited to differences in race, gender, age, colour, physical ability,
ethnicity, etc, we also experienced a situation whereby some individual feels that their work
ethics and beliefs might not be in line with other person view or opinion. Research indicates that

greater diversity can create higher levels of dissatisfaction (Miliken & Martins, 1996). Also some
female individual feels that they might not give opinion on situations that requires decision
making simply because their culture does not deem it right to make suggestion in the midst of
men, this is perceive as a sign of disrespect in their culture. Talking of ethics, we experienced a
situation whereby there was a conflict associated with the decision of proceeding with sales
without market research as a result of covid 19, though some were for and against. I discovered
that the ones that were against it was simply because their work ethics does not allow them to
make assumption on business without getting the necessary information from the target market
before proceeding with sales, to provide solution to this, I suggested that since there is covid 19
and restriction to visit the target market, we should make decisions based on the available
published market data from reliable sources like marketline, passport, knoema etc. Organisations
that develop experience in and reputations for managing diversity will likely attract the best
personnel (Fredrick, Omboi & Francis 2012).
Change management
Today, organization are facing a lot of change as a result of globalization, one of the problem
that pose as a challenge to us during our simulation work was how 3rd Mobile will adopt
innovative changes to increase productivity. According to Mutihac (2010) “Organizations today
are facing more change than ever before”. Though it was very challenging for some of my team
mates to adapt to these technological changes because they feel that they are being mandated to
accept such changes of programs which did not correspond to their own contributions or views
this therefore, discouraged some individuals not to participate actively to achieve the
management aim and result. This also leads to no sense of ownership being generated amongst
the team which then delayed the pace of decision making due to lack of commitment from some

members of the team. Ansoff & McDonnell, (1990) cited that “it is even more astonishing given
that it is well recognized that the success of organizational changes often rests on the motivation
and commitment of employees themselves” . To proffer solution to this perceived challenge, we
agreed to implement the GE Seven Step Change Acceleration Model (2000) built by Lewin.
According to Lewin (1947) he suggested that “successful change has to go through three phases;
unfreezing, moving to a new state and refreezing”. Adapting this model pacified our decision
making process because w were able to integrate leadership, engagement, communication and
commitment feature frequently which enabled us to affect change in the management. We did
not only at affecting these change, we also implemented them for every member to follow.
Conclusion and Recommendation
It is very important to note that an organization should always consider its employee opinion or
their diversified status whenever there is need to adapt any plan to effect any change because
employees may feel that work might be shifting environment. It is important to be aware of what
other changes are also occurring and acknowledge the risk that one set of changes may be
overwhelmed by the combination of other changes taking place. Change is an initiative that
every organisation has to take to sustain and compete in changing environment and to be flexible
in all aspects. The organisation and people in it have to be committed to change process
successfully and take positive steps towards new heights, sustainability and profit. It is believed
that organizations should put in place strategies to enhance workforce diversity. Managing
diversity in organizations is absolutely dependent upon the acceptance of some primary
objectives to which employees are willing to commit, such as the survival of the firm. In today's
fast-paced work environment a successful organization is one where diversity is the norm and
not the exception (Lawrence, 2001).