Effective Teamwork and Leadership: A Case Study of Mumbai Dabbawalas

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments. This report analyzes Mumbai Dabbawalas' organizational behavior.

ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Factors behind the development of effective teamwork in organizations..................................3
Impact of technology on a group................................................................................................4
Laurie J Mullins theory of group effectiveness..........................................................................5
Path-goal theory of leadership....................................................................................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
Every business has its unique organizational behaviour as per the business nature. This
organizational behavior pertains to the study of people’s interaction within a particular group.
The principle idea of this study is to identify a scientific approach that can be applied to the
management of the employees working for an organization. An organizational behavior
theory is used for the management of human resource for the purpose of maximizing the
output from each of the individual group member. In this context, various leadership
approaches and styles are followed by "Mumbai Dubbawalah” services for the purpose of
motivating the organization employees towards the direction of the shared goals of
organizations. This report mainly focuses on different leadership styles deployed by the
organization and their corresponding impact on the employees. Moreover, it further
highlights the various aspects of the concept of teamwork as well as the impact of technology
on a perfectly build team.
P3 Factors behind the development of effective teamwork in organizations
For the target of achieving a goal, the teamwork is an essential factor. An effective team is
characterized by the eagerness of involving in teamwork. An effective teamwork of Mumbai
Dubbawalah is impacted upon by the following factors:
Goal fixing: A team is formed mainly for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. A goal that
needs to be achieved is fixed first. After selecting a proper goal, the rest of the planning part
is preceded ahead. Based on this goal, the team leader is selected based on the appropriate
leadership skills. The team leader then analyses the goal and the proposed plan of its
achievement. This is necessary to select the appropriate followers. After the team is formed,
it is the duty of the leader to explain the goal to the fellow subordinates. In this regard, the
medium of pen and paper seems to be the best. This goal is compact list of the objectives, on
which the team should focus on (semanticscholar.org, 2019).
Effective communication: An effective plan is materialized successfully only when there is
an existence of excellent communication between the team members. The communication in
an organization takes place in two successive levels. One level is responsible for the
communication between the team members. The other level is responsible for the
communication between the management hierarchy and the team members. Encouraging an
open communication between the members of the team proves to be beneficial for the entire
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team. This is because this open communication serves as the easiest medium for knowledge
transfer between the employees. Often it is realized that this open communication is a
channel for collecting the ideas for problem solving (researchgate.net, 2019).
Positive Attitudes: The essential mindset that every team members gets impacted upon is the
positive attitude. This is the key for any complex problem solution. A positive attitude helps
an individual to identify the solution of a problem in the most efficient way possible. It is thus
essential that all the team members share a positive attitude towards the goal as well as the
company they are working for. It is difficult to build a bond between the members who have
possibly never worked together. In such situations, it is the duty of the team leader to let these
team members build a trust about each other. These are achieved by involving the team
members in work that demands to be shared between the two for its completion. A team
having its entire member share a positive attitude about each other is termed as a team builds
upon trust (iosrjournals.org, 2019).
P3 Impact of technology on a group
In the era of globalization, some of the strategic business techniques include the concepts of
outsourcing and off shoring. These concepts are fast becoming a key to success for much
business organization. The success of such concepts is attributed to the introduction of
advanced digitalization. Thus, it can be concluded that in micro level of an organization, the
impact of technology is multi fold. The micro level of Mumbai Dubbawalah is termed to be
the small departments existing within the organization. Some of the well known technologies
are discussed below:
Project Management Software: Project management software is an essential component for
the purpose of project management. This is because such software’s have the inbuilt
capability to track the progress of a project. This is evident by the presence of Gantt chart and
work breakdown structure in the software. The entire project plan details are fed into the
software as input. These details include start date of the project, estimated project completion
date, modules of the project, time duration of the modules and the project team details. The
details of the project team include the details of the task that have been allocated to a
particular project member (researchgate.net, 2019).
Video conferencing: The concept of videoconferencing is the revolutionary idea introduced
to the world of business management. This video conferencing allows the direct
communication between two or more individuals staying in two different locations far away
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from each other. One of the most common tools for video conferencing is the Skype. The
impact of this tool is observed in case the headquarter located far away from the branch
office, resolves to have a session of video conferencing with the branch executives. This is
one of the safest medium of sharing information between the individuals as both the
individuals can see each other through the Skype screen (iosrjournals.org, 2019).
Portable Document Format: This is an online tool. This Portable File Format (PDF) is a
filetype that lets the user carry a document in the safest way possible. The safety of the
document is ensured by the locking facility inbuilt within the file format. This is an optional
attribute of this tool. Such authentication allows file access only by the individual, the file
meant for. Another advantage of this file format is as compared to the readable as well as
writable word file, this pdf file is only readable. This ensures the integrity of the document
data. Also, a readable pdf document can be converted into a writable word document as per
requirement.
P3 Laurie J Mullins theory of group effectiveness
As per the theory of effectiveness, the organizational behavior of Mumbai
Dubbawalah is defined to be the study of individual, group behaviour as well as patterns of
structure in the context of an organization for the ultimate goal of improving the performance
of an organization (academia.edu, 2019).
Same theoretical aspect, the leadership is defined to be a relationship which helps in
the influencing on the behaviour and action of an individual or team by another individual.
Good leadership is evaluated in the time of need. Good leaders are expected to alter people’s
perception by change identification in the form of a threat as seen as an existing challenge
According to this theory, a group is defined to be a cluster of any number of people
interacting with each other. The group members are identified to be psychologically aware of
each other and perceive them to be an inherent part of the group (oldpm.umd.edu, 2019).
This theory states some of the competencies of teamwork as follows:
 Scope of improved productivity
 Maximum chances of quality work and innovations
 Advantage of being technologically sound
 Improved employee motivation and commitment
The theory states some of the observed advantages of training and development as
following:
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 Boosting of the motivation, confidence and commitment of the fellow employees
 Recognition of an employee as individual in the form of rewards and promotions
 Overall satisfaction
 Improving the staff quality and skill
The theory identifies some key areas of the organizational behavior as follows:
 Behaviour of an individual
 Overall process management
 Process management in the organizational context
 Organizational process and work execution
 Interaction of the external part of which the organization is a sub part
From this, it is observed that there exist four aspects to influence an organizational
behavior. These four aspects are the individual, group, organization and environment. An
organization is consists of the individuals.
The theory identifies the scenario of conflict as the situation in which, the needs of an
individual is of completely different nature as that of the demands of the organization
(worldcat.org, 2019)
The theory defines the style of leadership as the way by which the functions of
leadership is carried out. This is evident by the behavior of the manager towards the fellow
subordinates.
The theory states the following reason to form a group within the organization:
 When a specific task mandatorily requires the involvement of multiple individuals
 Conflict avoidance
 Urge of an individual to be a part of the group
 Following of appropriate behavior as per situation
 Protection of oneself from outside pressure
Path-goal theory of leadership
This theory of leadership is primarily based on the leadership style followed by a leader in the
hour of need at Mumbai Dubbawalah. This leadership style must be in accordance with the
surrounding environment and the immediate employees. The ultimate goal of this leadership
style is the achievement of a goal to motivate the employees and subsequently empowering
them. This leadership style also takes care of the employee satisfaction. All these factors
together include the driving force behind an employee to become productive for the
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organization they are working for. This theory is based on expectancy theory that deals with
the expectancy of an employee (researchgate.net, 2019). This theory has the following three
basic steps:
 Determination of the employee and the environmental characteristics
 Selection of an appropriate leadership style
 Paying attention to the motivational factors helping on the success of an employee
Employee Characteristics: Employees are prone to interpret the behaviour of their leaders
on the basis of their personal needs. These needs include affiliation, estimated level of ability
and the desired need for control. Leaders are advised to motivate their employees instead of
giving those structures. This is because motivating an individual helps in the understanding of
that individual (regent.edu, 2019)
Task and environmental characteristics: This theory especially focuses on the removal of
an obstacle from the path of achieving the desired goal. In case, the obstacle is too difficult
for removal, then the leader along with the employees plans an efficient way around the
obstacle. Some of these obstacles are stated below:
 Task Design: The designing process of the task mandatorily requires the support of
the leader.
 Formal System for the purpose of authority: Depending upon the task and its
authority, the leader decides on the goals
 Work Group: In case of team being non-supportive, the leader needs to restructure
the team to make it effective.
Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded from the above case study that unity between the team members is
the main driving force behind the efficiency of a team. This is observed in the micro level. In
the macro level, a unity between the different teams of an organization ensures the easy
achievement of goals in the organizational context. Thus it recommended that the leaders
must analyze the behavior and performance of the employees in different situations. Thereby
according to this analysis, the leaders must allocate the tasks to the fellow subordinates.
Achievement of an organizational objective gets converted into rewards for the employees.
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