Fire Art Company: Principles of Management and Teamwork Report

This report examines the importance of teamwork within an organization, using a case study of Fire Art Company. The report highlights the challenges faced due to a lack of effective teamwork, including the suppression of ideas and differing ideologies among team members. It explores the benefits of teamwork, such as increased productivity, improved decision-making, and enhanced employee morale. The report proposes solutions to address these challenges, including team-building activities, personnel counseling, anonymous feedback systems, clear division of work, and the implementation of the Tuchman teamwork theory. The conclusion emphasizes the value of teamwork for organizational success and provides a reflection on the author's belief in the power of collaborative efforts. The report also includes references to relevant academic sources supporting the concepts discussed. This report is available on Desklib for students.

Running Head: Principles of Management
Principles of Management
The team that wasn’t?

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Table of Content:
Introduction................................................................................................................. 2
Importance of work groups:.........................................................................................2
Failure of team work....................................................................................................3
Solution to the problem at hand:.................................................................................3
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 4
References:.................................................................................................................5
Reflection on Teamwork............................................................................................. 6

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Introduction: In the case study, it is been pointed out that the team at Fire art is not
able to collaborate and develop positive synergies amongst the team mates. A new
director of strategy has been appointed just now and he has a sole task of building
and managing the team. Teamwork being essential to an organisation’s success, the
onus is on Eric for the same.
In the process, there are certain difficulties as some of the mangers at fire art are not
able to contribute much to the team as their views and opinions are suppressed by
director of sales and marketing, who in himself is a magnanimous personality with
bundles of energy exuberating out of his personality. The problem with him is,
difference in ideology in comparison to other team members, due to which tension
prevails during team meetings.
In the report it will be discuss as to what are the problems faced by the organisation
due to lack of team work, what are the challenges hurdling the process , and using
some organisational theories , how the problems can be turned over.
Importance of work groups:
 It empowers team members with good accountability towards their job, a
sense of ownership, higher decision making power, and thus boosts the
morale of an employee(Lynn, Plat & Reilly, 2016)
 Helps organisations to capitalize on the knowledge and the motivation of the
team members (Goetsch & Davis, 2014)
 Helps the organisation in loosing of its bureaucracy and promotes greater
flexibility and responsiveness.
 Serves as a pool of multiple free lowing ideas, which further leads to better
strategic decision making (Hu & Liden, 2015)
Failure of team work
The company in the case study is Fire art, a family owned business, successfully
running for last 80 years and serving the Midwestern clients, and has positioned
itself in the mind-set of consumer as high quality and high pricing company. With the

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advent of globalization and changes in the technologies, cheaper machinery and
many players, the sales of the companies are falling rapidly. Hence, the burden is on
the managers to come up with the strategies to buckle up and increase the sales, the
same can be achieved only with contribution of everyone and all of them coming
together as a team.
Major challenge at hand is, the director of sales and marketing, Mar. Randy’s attitude
towards the fellow team mates and other divisional managers, it comes as the
biggest hurdle in the creation of positive synergies towards a common goal. Mr
Randy believes that, groups in companies are absolutely useless and consensus is a
mediocre concept. He also has another belief, in which he believes strongly that, in a
company it’s only efforts of meticulous people who comes up with a brilliant plan and
strategy, and rest everyone just follow the leader, disbeliever of team work and team
efforts.
Solution to the problem at hand:
 Team building activities helps the team members get out of their zones and
break the cultural barriers, which could possibly cause friction among the
team members. The team building activity will help them open up to each
other and create an atmosphere of friendliness despite the individual positions
(Levi, 2015)
 Personnel counselling of Mr Randy with the HR head or a person of higher
experience than him, and make him understand the importance of team work
and the possible benefits for the organisation. Also, it is important to make
him understand; team work will not make him loose his individuality, but,
would increase his respect in the eyes of his team mates (Brand, 2014)
 Inculcate a habit of posting anonymous feedback after every team meeting or
in general business operations, this will help the management in analysing
problems with certain employees, which then could be tackled with the help of
counselling (Tucker & Abbasi, 2015)
 It is must and should that division of work should be clear, no one can
interfere in the work of other person, until and unless required. This division of

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work would keep all the employees in the limits of their task and prevent any
poking from other team members(Chimel, Fraccaroli & Sverke, 2017)
 Another important aspect of successful team meeting is presence of a strong
influential meeting coordinator. His role is to ensure everyone participates and
contributes towards the objectives of meeting .He should ensure the decorum
and timelines of the meeting and also make it really fruitful, with clear
identified goals to focus in meetings, the participation would increase. The
meeting coordinator should also take care of any miscreant, whose only
purpose is to waste the time of other team members by disrupting the
meeting, such person should be dealt with authority and harshness even after
repeated warning (Li & Lam, 2013)
 Tuchman teamwork theory should be put to use in the organisation. The
theory has 4 components attached to it, starting from forming, storming,
norming which ultimately leads to performing. This framework, if adopted
would drastically improve the team meeting at fire art and lead to developing
of positive synergies.(Betts & Healey, 2015)
Conclusion: Fire Art Company is in the business of making wine goblets, beer
steins, ashtrays and other glass novelty since last 80 years. It’s a family owned
business which has earned its reputation in the market because of its high quality. It
is considered to be one of the best in the market. The company in the recent times is
not able to live up to its potential and the sales are going down. The management
wants to rework on the strategy and it requires cooperation from every individual
members. Some miscreant is not allowing this to happen. Certain techniques can
work in the favour of company which would help them in conducting successful team
meetings, some of the strategies as discussed are counselling, team building
activities, feedback sessions, division of work. Truman’s revolutionary theory on
team work is of great advantage for any company who wants to have constructive
team meetings, using all the above would help Eric in getting desired outcome from
the team meetings.

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References:
Lynn, G.S. Polat, V. and Reilly, R.R 2016, Team Trust and Team Learning in New
Product Development Projects. In Let’s Get Engaged! Crossing the Threshold of
Marketing’s Engagement Era(pp. 639-640), Springer, Cham.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational
excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Hu, J. and Liden, R.C., 2015. Making a difference in the teamwork: Linking team
prosocial motivation to team processes and effectiveness. Academy of Management
Journal, 58(4), pp.1102-1127.
Levi, D., 2015. Group dynamics for teams. Sage Publications
Brand, T., 2014. Basic counselling skills. SAMJ: South African Medical
Journal, 104(7), pp.510-511.
Tucker, R. and Abbasi, N., 2015. The architecture of teamwork: examining
relationships between teaching, assessment, student learning and satisfaction with
creative design outcomes. Architectural Engineering and Design
Management, 11(6), pp.405-422.
Chmiel, N., Fraccaroli, F. and Sverke, M. eds., 2017. An Introduction to Work and
Organizational Psychology: An International Perspective. John Wiley & Sons.
Betts, S. and Healy, W., 2015. Having a Ball Catching on to Teamwork: An
Experiential Learning Approach to Teaching the Phases of Group
Development. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 19(2), p.1..
Li, M.P. and Lam, B.H., 2013. Cooperative learning. The Active Classroom, The
Hong Kong Institude of Education.

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Reflection on Teamwork: I am a staunch believer in team work, all my
professional life, I have observed the benefits of team work, and I account for it
highly than the individual efforts any day. The rationale for my thinking is based on
certain clear cut points, such as; team work reduces the time taken to complete a
job, which in turn keeps the management happy. It also hence increases the
productivity of the company earning them a good fortune for themselves. In the
process, the quality of the work is enhanced as the collective effort of all the bright
mind and average mind will certainly be higher of any one person. This is one of the
reasons why I am such a big proponent of team work.
Apart from the work related benefits, team work also plays a lot of importance in
setting the values of the companies. A company which has a strong culture of
working in teams directly move towards an environment of happy work place, a place
where employees would yearn to come and learn. Teamwork is the pillars behind
creating such an organisation. It also helps in reducing unnecessary friction between
work forces, and reduces any possibility of destructive internal competition. The
synergies coming out of such close association takes the company to unfathomable
heights of glory and success. Hence managers here have a very strong role to play,
keep the teams involve in some activity or team building exercises, make them feel
empowered, motivate them in perpetuity, on a constant basis make them understand
the importance of team work and the benefits of the same, only then the team built
will be in a position to give their best outputs.
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