PROJ6006: Organizational Behaviour and People Management Case Study

This case study examines leadership styles within Acorn Industries, a company undergoing significant changes including acquisitions and a shift towards government contracts. The analysis focuses on how a project manager might select between transformational and transactional leadership styles, considering factors like organizational culture and the need for change implementation. It explores the use of tools such as coaching, training, delegation of roles and responsibilities, and rewards to influence project teams. Furthermore, the case study covers communication strategies both within and outside the project group, including the use of social media, emails, phone calls, and SMS. The application of different types of power to motivate team members and develop self-managed teams for agile projects are also discussed, along with methods to alleviate challenges faced by the project team. The analysis references module resources, research, and insights gained from discussions, providing a comprehensive overview of leadership and management in a project environment.

Organizational Behaviour and people management
Name
(Affiliation institution)

Explain why you might choose one of the leadership styles discussed in this module’s
learning resources over another style when managing the highlighted project team.
Various factors impact the leadership style to be applied to a particular team or a project.
Organizational culture, structure as well as change implementation is one of the reasons why I
might choose transformational leadership over transactional leadership style when managing
Acron industry team. For example, I will consider choosing transformational leadership to
implement a change of creating additional project management department and dividing power
of the marketing department in the context of securing the government contracts. According to
McCleskey, (2014), Transformational leadership style involves a leader inspiring and motivating
employees to create change that can assist in growing an organizational mission. Through the
transformation leadership over transactional, there will be a strong relationship among the
project team which in turn encourages teamwork and effective management of Acron industry
employees. I can also prefer to choose transactional leadership over the transformation in the
situation where there is a high record of underperformances and project team have all motivation
elements in place. For example, with Acron industry’s marketing department not obtaining
contracts and increasing organizational sales despite good rewards and compensations, I can
choose transactional leadership approach over transformational. According to McCleskey,
(2014), Transactional leadership will involve managing the project team through rewarding and
punishing. For example, employees with high performance will be rewarded with bonuses while
the underperforming will be fired and replaced.
Describe which tools and techniques discussed in the resources you might use as a PM to
influence this project team.

Coaching and training- The training and coaching is an effective technique that I can use to
influence Acron Industry’s project team. Forse, Bramble & McQuillan, (2011) quoted the
training and coaching of staff as a way of influencing team performance. Training will ensure
will equip employees with knowledge and tasks of handling project management activities while
coaching will help employees instil the skills in their work hence increasing productivity.
Roles and responsibility- delegating tasks appropriately per roles, responsibility and
competency of a project team is a technique that can influence Acorns industry. The effective
delegations of roles and responsibility ensure all employees are satisfied and more engaged with
what they are doing which in turn leads to a high degree of commitment. The high extent of
employee commitment in an organization as well as employee job satisfaction increase the
productivity and boosts motivation as well as the morale of team members leading to high
productivity.
Rewards- According to Harunavamwe & Kanengoni, (2013), rewarding involves giving
employees monetary and non-monetary benefits such as cash bonuses, recognitions as well as
promotion to improve motivation. Rewarding of the Acorn’s industry’s project management
team will boost their morale enabling them to perform as per organizational goals and objectives.
As a project manager, what tools and techniques discussed in the resources are appropriate
for managing communication outside of the project group?
Emails, social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitters and chats, phones
call and messages are the tools that are appropriate in the management of communication outside
the project group. The main purpose of all the communication tools and techniques is to pass
timely information from project manager to the project teams.

Social media platforms
As a project manager, I can use social media like Skype, Facebook, Twitter as well as
WhatsApp to manage communication outside a group project. Social media are very engaging
and therefore they can convey information to the team members more effectively. Everyone on
the project team needs to have a clear understanding of projects goals and therefore creating and
managing formal accounts on social media networks can accelerate effective communication
between team members and a project leader. Besides, with social media, costs and time are saved
as a project manager can manage communication without travelling to meet group members
through delivering messages in pictorial format, video, audio or written. With video-sharing
platforms and instant messaging platforms now available (Antonopoulos, Konidaris, Polykalas &
Lamprou, 2020), a project leader can host meetings from anywhere around the world.
Emails, phone calls and SMS (Short Messages)
Emails, phone calls and SMS are also other techniques that I can use to manage
communication outside of the project group. In most cases, emails are known for conveying
formal information in an organization. Through the emails, as a project manager, I can get
opinions, ideas, suggestions as well as the progress of the project team virtually. Sometimes,
managing communication via emails can be challenging to offline workers as they can delaying a
message being conveyed. SMS and Phone calls can be useful in managing urgent
communication. When an urgent message is needed to be conveyed, opting for calling the
concern team members who might be offline at that time can be effective.

Explain which of the 5 types of power (as described in Shenoy web article) you would
employ to motivate the team members to work collaboratively, and impact the project’s
success
Five types of power are used in leadership to motivate team members to work
collaboratively and impact project success. The five power types include legitimate, reward,
expert, and referent as well as coercive power. Out of the five types of power, I will motivate my
team members to work collaboratively and impacts the project’s success through the power of
rewarding. organizations such as Google, Amazon and Walmart which have a good record of
rewarding employees appropriately have managed to motivate their employees and that’s why
they respond to changes more effectively and have a high level of innovation and creativity. In
the modern world, group rewards can motivate employees to achieve project success than an
individual. Therefore, the use of rewards packages to project teams for accomplishing a project
can motivate them to perform collaboratively towards the achievement of a common goal and
facilitate to project success.
Explain the methods for developing self-managed teams for agile projects
There are various methods which an organization can adopt to develop teams for agile
projects. Some of the methods include the involvement of employees in decision making to
create can create trust, transparency and honesty environment for a project manager and self-
managed team to carry on agile projects effectively as well as coaching and training employees
on various areas within their line of duty.
The use of employee-driven decision is one way of developing self- managed teams. The
strategic management in an organization plays a crucial role in defining the mission and
clarifying on various roles of the agile projects (Selig & Baltes, 2017) The strategic management

invites the self-management teams in the making of the decision making process to implement a
collective decision that motivates and satisfies them. The self-driven decisions that add value to
self-managed teams contribution assist in the development of performing culture.
Training and coaching of employees can help to develop self-managing teams. Training
and coaching should be not conducted rarely but an organization need to have a complete
schedule of continuously training employees to improve their competency on handling
competency projects. Furthermore, through the training and coaching of staff, all the gaps in
skills and knowledge are identified and addressed which enables to develop a competent self-
managed teams.
Explain your reasons for selecting these approaches, referencing any insight you have
gained from the module resources and research or your interaction with colleagues in the
Module Discussions.
The main reason for selecting the approaches is because they can fit with most of the
leadership styles that we have learned from the module resources. For example, training and
coaching of self-managed teams on various aspects such as teamwork, performance and time
management can assist the team to be adaptive and responsive to various changing environment
aspects and fit to all the management and leadership styles adopted by project managers.
Besides, the involvement of employees in the decision making assists to create a workforce that
is more committed and engaging as a mutual agreement between a project manager and project
team reduces various barriers such as change resistance and miscommunications and
misunderstanding.

Describe the steps you might take, as a project manager, to alleviate challenges faced by
your project team before those challenges grow so large that they damage the work
environment or the final product. Explain why
Identifying the challenge, analyzing the challenges, holding a meeting with the concern
parties to discuss the challenges as well as getting solutions are the critical steps that I might take
as a project manager to alleviate changes faced by my project team before those challenges grow
so large that they damage the work environment or final products. Identifying the challenges
include conducting comprehensive research on the challenges that are facing my project team
and to trace their root cause to plan for the solution. Collecting feedback from the team members
as well as reviewing the organizational goals, appraisals, key performance indicators and
objectives of an organization can assist me to identify the challenges. Holding a meeting with the
concern parties and analyzing their opinions, suggestions and feedbacks also assist in the
problems identification step. After identifying the challenge, the next step will be to conduct the
challenge analysis. For appropriate problem analysis, I can consult an expert or human resource
manager to assist in analyzing the risk associated with the challenge and its impacts on team
performance. After getting the full analysis of the challenge, I can now call for a meeting with
relevant authorities to discuss the challenges and come up with effective solutions to the
challenges.

References
Antonopoulos, N., Konidaris, A., Polykalas, S., & Lamprou, E. (2020). Online Journalism:
Crowdsourcing, and Media Websites in an Era of Participation. Studies in Media and
Communication, 8(1), 25-36.
Forse, R. A., Bramble, J. D., & McQuillan, R. (2011). Team training can improve operating
room performance. Surgery, 150(4), 771-778.
Harunavamwe, M., & Kanengoni, H. (2013). The impact of monetary and non-monetary rewards
on motivation among lower level employees in selected retail shops. African Journal of
Business Management, 7(38), 3929.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and
leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.
Selig, C. J., & Baltes, G. H. (2017, June). Clarifying the roles in corporate entrepreneurship.
In 2017 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation
(ICE/ITMC) (pp. 879-887). IEEE.