Organizational Behaviour Case Study: Teamwork Failure at Big Market

This case study examines the organizational behavior issues within Big Market, an Australian department store chain. The core issue revolves around a conflict within the marketing team, where senior members favored traditional marketing methods while newer employees advocated for modern, technology-driven approaches. This disagreement led to a divided team, biased decision-making, and ultimately, the failure to meet marketing objectives. The case highlights the negative impacts of workplace conflict, biased organizational structures, and the importance of valuing diverse perspectives. The study also explores the consequences of employee dissatisfaction and turnover, illustrating the financial and cultural costs associated with poor teamwork and ineffective leadership. Two key questions are posed to analyze the case further, prompting readers to examine the biased nature of the organizational structure and the reasons behind the marketing team's failure. The assignment includes references to relevant academic journals to support the analysis.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Organizational Behaviour
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

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Teamwork in Big Market
Organizational Behaviour refers to study of the manner how people carry out
interaction within the groups. Organizational Behaviour plays an important role in the
creation of an organization that is efficient. Organizational Behaviour refers to a scientific
approach that can help in maximising output from that of the individual group members
(Dekker 2018). Big Market is the name of a department store chain within Australia that
offers products ranging from women, men, baby, children’s clothing, computer, furniture,
toys along with the travel goods. The case study talks regarding how the marketing team of
the organisation called Big Market failed in meeting the objective. The case study elaborates
on how some members of the marketing team wanted to opt for a particular method that can
help in the marketing of the retail store as opposed to some other members of the
organization.
The problem in the organization arose due to the fact that there were some senior
members of the marketing team who wanted to make use of traditional means for marketing
the website. There were people who were serving the organization for around 2-3 years who
wanted to opt for different methods of optimisation as compared to the employees of the
present generation. The names of the senior members of the organization were Alex Thomas,
Kate Williams and Matthew Francis. There were also some new members who had joined the
organisation who wanted to make use of the modern tools that can help in drawing customers
to the website. The senior members in the marketing team of Big Markets wanted to optimise
the performance of the website by taking recourse to HTTP request reduction, file
compression, web caching optimization and code minification. Requests pertaining to HTTP
makes the web page slower to load. The number of the individual pages are reduced by
taking recourse to resource consolidation and the smaller files are bundled together in a single
file. The construction of the web pages are done with the help of code files like Java Script
along with HTML. The web pages are growing in complexity in the present age along with
the code files. File compression can play an important role in reduction of the code files that
can help in improving the site responsiveness (Warrick 2016). Web caching optimization
plays significant role in reduction of server load along with bandwidth usage. CDN makes
use of web caching software that can help in storing copies of the documents that are passing
through the system. Code minification helps in distinguishing the discrepancies that lies
between the codes that is written by the web developers. It can help the network elements in
the interpretation of the code.

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The new members in the organization like Tom Howart along with Samuel Thomson
wanted to improve the website of the company by replacing the vector graphics and adoption
of website monitoring that was cloud-based. These members wanted to optimise the website
with the help of Hotlink protection and that of Data Base optimization. The innovative
members in the marketing team wanted to replace the vector graphics with that of the raster
graphics that is independent of resolution. They wanted to offload the website monitoring to
that of a cloud-based host. The young members in the organisation felt that hotlink protection
can restrict the HTTP referrers that can prevent the others from embedding the assets on that
of the other websites. It can help in saving the bandwidth by prohibiting the other websites in
displaying the images. Data base optimization is indicative of strategies that can reduce the
response time of the data base system. It was seen by me that Tom Howart wanted to protect
the hotlink by taking recourse to Hostinger control panel that can prove to be useful in
optimising the website. It was pointed out by him that it can block the direct access to the
extensions that can help in choosing the kind of files that should be protected. It can redirect
the blocked requests to that of the URL that can help in redirecting the blocked requests to
that of a specific page. Samuel Thomson talked about the fact that Hotlink protection can be
enabled with the help of cPanel. Tom Howart believed in the fact that image optimization can
play an important role that can help in the arena of optimisation of the website. He talked
regarding the fact how image optimization can act both as an art along with that of science. It
can help in the elimination of the unnecessary image resources. He talked about the
importance of leveraging CSS3 effect that can help in optimisation of the website. It was
observed by me how the using of the web fonts can prove to be more useful instead of
encoding the text within the images. It was witnessed by me that CSS animation was used by
these employees that can help in the production of assets that are independent of resolution
that looks sharply at the aspect of resolution (Katzenbach and Smith 2015). They talked about
significance of vector graphics that made use of lines along with points for the representation
of an image. They also stated how the raster graphics can help in encoding of the individual
values pertaining to each pixel in that of rectangular grid.
The members who had joined the organization was well aware of technology and they
wanted to use it for the betterment of the organization. Tom Howart and Samuel Thomson
has done post-graduation in social media marketing and they were confident regarding the
fact that the means suggested by them can help the organization in reaching the pinnacle of
success. It was seen by me that these members were protesting not because of the fact that

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they wanted to challenge the conventional notion of employees like Alex Thomas, Matthew
Francis along with Kate Williams but they ardently believed in the fact that their way of
opinion can prove to be revolutionary that can help Big Market in becoming a popular
organization in Australia. It can help the departmental store chain in evolving as the number
one in the country.
It was seen by me that in Big Market the senior and the confident employees felt that
the methods suggested by them can help the organization in earning profits. The management
of the organization had more faith in these employees as they had been with the organization
over a long course of time. These employees had been able to win the confidence of the
senior management owing to their prolonged period of stay at the organization. The new
members who had just joined the organization were more conversant with technology and
their means of optimising the website was different from that of the older members in the
organization (Ramdhani, Ramdhani and Ainissyifa 2017). It was observed by me that there
arose confusion in the organization owing to the fact that the marketing team had been
divided into two factions. It was having a detrimental effect on the overall performance of the
organization. It was having an impact on the profit that was being earned by the organization.
The morale of the employees were being destroyed owing to the fact that the organization
was being divided into two factions.
The human relations behavioral theory believes in the fact that the organizations can
perform the best in the event of the employees feeling valued. It helps in studying the
productivity of the employees under that of various work circumstances. The employees can
increase the productivity in the event of feeling satisfied along with validated at the
workplace. The organizational conflict taking place in Big Market was going against the
behaviour theory pertaining to human relations that was crippling the status of the
organization (Tjosvold and Tjosvold 2015). It was seen by me that the work culture of Big
Market was being destroyed owing to the conflict that was taking place in organization. The
differences arising among the employees was destroying the atmosphere in the organization.
The organizational behavioural problem in Big Market took place due to the fact that
there existed senior members in the marketing team who preferred the traditional methods of
marketing. The experienced employees who had served organization for some years wanted
to take recourse to different optimisation methods from that of the younger generation. The
impact of the discord was felt severely in the organization and it was jeopardising the future

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of the organisation (Rahim 2017). Big Market was suffering losses due to the fact that there
was differences in opinion among workers that was destroying the workplace culture. The
individual workers had been left distraught by the fact that the management of Big Market
was preferring the senior employees over the new employees in Big Market. Big Market had
lost the work culture due to the fact that there was disagreements among the employees and it
has resulted into increasing the employee turnover. The employee turnover taking place
within Big Market was causing the organisation to incur losses that was costing a lot of
fortune for the company. Big Market had to suffer loss of around AUD 20, 000 on account of
the differences of the team members of the Marketing team.
Question 1
Was there biasedness in the organisational structure of Big Market?
There exists biased mentality in the organisation called Big Market and this was
evident in the fact that the voice of the senior employees were listened to instead of the
younger employees who had joined the organisation. An organisation should have a balanced
view so that it can help them in looking at things from in a neutral manner. The younger
employees in an organisation can help to a great extent in bringing about innovation in an
organisation. They can prove to be crucial factors that can help in the developing of an
organisation. The opinion of the younger generation should never be stifled as it can help in
bringing about a distinctive point of view to an issue (Dhurup, Surujlal and Kabongo 2016).
They can think in a different manner that can be an important reason that can help in the
success of an organization. An organisation can grow to a phenomenal extent in the event of
paying equal amount of attention to the voices of all the employees. The techniques
pertaining to optimisation of the website differed in between the employees and a meeting
could have been taken recourse to that could have proved to be useful in solving the dispute
arising in an organization.
Question 2
Why did the marketing team failed to meet objective in Big Market?
There started a clash in between the senior employees and the young employees in the
Marketing team due to differing opinions among the employees. The younger employees
believed in the modern form of the marketing whereas the older employees believed in the
traditional methods pertaining to marketing . The older employees in the organization

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preferred using HTTP request reduction, web coaching optimisation along with code
minification that can help the company to succeed in the growing market of Australia. On the
other hand there were the younger employees who felt that hotlink protection along with data
base optimisation can play significant role in the optimisation of the website of the company.
The marketing team of Big Market failed to meet objective as they could not earn the profits
that was predicted in the beginning of the year (Wilson 2018). They could not attain the
strategic objective because there was dearth of employee commitment in the company. The
employees could not come together in the company that cost the fate of the company. The
company was not able to make profits in the competitive market of Australia and it could not
rise above the competitors. The company lost the confidence of the investors and the
shareholders of the company.

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References
Dekker, S., 2018. Just culture: restoring trust and accountability in your organization. CRC
Press.
Dhurup, M., Surujlal, J. and Kabongo, D.M., 2016. Finding synergic relationships in
teamwork, organizational commitment and job satisfaction: a case study of a construction
organization in a developing country. Procedia Economics and Finance, 35, pp.485-492.
Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K., 2015. The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-
performance organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Rahim, M.A., 2017. Managing conflict in organizations. Routledge.
Ramdhani, A., Ramdhani, M.A. and Ainissyifa, H., 2017. Conceptual Framework of
Corporate Culture Influenced on Employees Commitment to Organization. International
Business Management, 11(3), pp.826-830.
Tjosvold, D. and Tjosvold, M., 2015. Teamwork with Customers. In Building the Team
Organization (pp. 141-150). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Warrick, D.D., 2016. What leaders can learn about teamwork and developing high
performance teams from organization development practitioners. Performance
Improvement, 55(3), pp.13-21.
Wilson, F.M., 2018. Organizational behaviour and work: a critical introduction. Oxford
university press.