ABcorp Case Study: Teamwork Failure and Financial Consequences

This case study examines the financial downfall of ABcorp due to significant failures in teamwork, communication, and leadership. The organization, facing intense competition, missed a crucial contract with Amber Technologies because of internal issues. The case highlights problems within the research and finance teams, including a lack of effective leadership, poor communication, trust issues, and a lack of cooperation between team members. The research team's manager displayed autocratic leadership, while the finance team suffered from generational divides and blame games. The study identifies essential skills for effective teamwork, such as transformational leadership, relationship building, planning, decision-making, and problem-solving skills. It emphasizes the critical role of communication in fostering understanding, resolving conflicts, and building a positive working environment. The lack of these skills led to project delays, a poorly executed presentation, and ultimately, the loss of a major contract, resulting in substantial financial losses for ABcorp. The study underscores the importance of open communication, trust, and collaboration for organizational success.

Running head: TEAMWORK
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Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Case study:
Financial loss faced by ABcorp organization due to ineffective teamwork:
ABcorp organization was going through a terrible financial condition. It was in need of a
strong contract from some of the large companies of the nation who uses steel for their
production. ABcorp is mainly based on preparing steel from its raw materials and selling steel to
other organizations that require them to prepare their own products. The growing competition
among the steel industry had made it difficult of the ABcorp organization to survive. It was
indeed in need of a big contract from an organization that would buy steel from them. At that
time, Amber Technologies sent an invitation to the organization for their bids. Amber
technologies are specialized in developing home products which include washing machines,
refrigerators, televisions, microwaves, toasters, coffeemaker and many similar other products.
Fortunately, ABcorp organization won the bid. Amber technologies requested the ABcorp to
develop a proper plan in a presentation mode discussing the benefits they would be getting and
planning the financial transactions that would be conducted between them throughout the year. It
was a great opportunity of ABcorp to regain back its reputation and re-establish its financial
competition.
The higher authority of the organization provided a deadline of 15 days to the employees
and gave the managers the duty to develop presentations. The financial department, the business
strategists, business analysts, the research team all needed to work together to prepare
themselves for the presentation and meet all the queries of the representatives of the Amber
technologies. However, various issues came into notice, which affected the teamwork among the
various departments. Not only, teamwork failed miserably among the different teams but also

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working climate among the respective team members within the team was also not going through
a smooth phase.
The research team was given the duty to develop an audit of the various businesses that
Amber technologies had created and study the statistics of their purchasing techniques. This
would help the finance department to develop proper financial planning to hold their customer
company and provide them the best plans and service. The manager of the research team was a
new member and was quite rude with the team members. I was actually the research team and
had been observing everyone’s activity closely. It was seen that the members of the team did not
have proper communication with the manager as they were rudely treated. The manager
embarrassed a member who failed to understand a particular piece of work. This prevented the
team members to approach their manager whenever they faced any issues. The employee stated:
“I felt so bad to be humiliated in front of so many people for no reason. I had no idea about how
to conduct the task. It was entirely new for me. I got no help from the team members as well. I
had never seen any rude managers in my life. Once, I felt like leaving the job”
Moreover, it was also seen that there was also ineffective communication among the team
members. One of the experienced members of the team was seen to have impatient listening
skills and therefore the new joiners could not get help from the experienced member, as their
queries were never properly addressed. Besides, the members of the team did not have proper
feedback giving and receiving skills. None of the members used to motivate each other or help
each other by providing good advises. I heard a member saying:
“I have no one to talk to. Everyone is so professional. The place is emotionally draining me.
There is no one to share any feelings. No one wants to be friends as well. It is getting diffivult to

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work here day by day. I do not feel like working here. There is no one to encourage you. No
motivations ……”
They never used to provide help to each other and power struggle was observed among
the members. There was once an incident where three senior members forced a junior member to
work overnight and commanded him not to leave the office until the work was done. Such an
unprofessional behavior was complained to the higher authority. However, no actions were taken
against the senior members and they continued to harass the juniors. The juniors also did not care
for the instructions of the seniors. The seniors suffered from superiority complex and never gave
the juniors effective feedback for developing their skills. Moreover, the juniors also avoided any
communication with the seniors as they had poor feedback receiving skills as well. Their
complexes made them act in ways where no coordination was maintained. Because of the
ineffective communication, the work that was often conducted in the team did not synchronized
with each other and the managers rejected them repeatedly. This delayed the work and as a
result, the entire objective of the project was jeopardized.
Moreover, trust issues were also seen among the members of the finance team. Many
members of the new team used modern technologies in their working approach. The old
members of the finance team were not a supporter of the new approaches used by the new
members and considered them inferior to them. They behaved rudely among each other and did
not rely on each other’s skills. The new members used modern day software to complete their
calculation. This was not liked by the older generations. Another trend was also observed among
the team members. None of the team members was seen to be having a helping attitude towards
each other. Blame games were constant among the team members. When the manager wanted a
response from the team member due to the delay of work, lame excuses were provided. It was

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heard that one of them said ‘Sir, trust me, it was not my job, he was supposed to do the excel
sheet modification.’ To these the opposite person said ‘We never had any conversation like that.
It was you who was supposed to do this part and not me’. When one of them used to be absent,
his work would remain piled up and no one would come forward to help. Moreover, the new
aged employees could never become comfortable with the older generation employees and
therefore the working climate was always tensed and stressed. Moreover, the managers who
were appointed were never seen to motivate both the cohort to work together with extrinsic and
intrinsic motivators like reward, inspiration and others. As a result, the finance team was also not
seen to properly complete their assigned roles and hence, the work did not complete successfully
within deadline.
Another big issue that was noticed is that the inter-team communication was quite low.
They never used to have proper face-to-face communication among themselves. The written
communication is not also done in proper manner for which inter-team activities were also not
conducted in proper manner. Power struggles were also seen among the managers and therefore
the team of managers did not conduct team-head meetings, which are very important. Face to
face meetings were not done and therefore on the final day, the entire arrangements were not
synchronized. The objective was not achieved and the presentation did not take a good shape.
The lack of coordination among the teams was clearly affected in the presentation given by
ABcorp representatives for which Amber technologies got agitated. They were not sure about
their partnership and hence cancelled the entire deal. This resulted in complete loss of the
company.

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Two questions:
What are the skills which if present would have prevented the failure of the teams in
meeting their objective?
Researchers are of the opinions that effective teamwork requires the team members to
develop skills that are extremely important for the success of organizations. For effective
teamwork, the team leaders or the team managers need to develop transformational leadership
but not autocratic leadership. The manager of the research team should have followed a
transformational leadership where he should not have criticized the worker but rather had given
him effective feedback (Jackson 2015). He should have provided them scope to succeed,
motivating them to work better and making them learn the proper ways of conducting their tasks.
Besides, transformational leadership, another important attribute need to be developed by them is
effective relationship building and trust among each other. Researchers are of the opinion that
betters the trust and communication among the team members, the better will be the work
environment. Such work environment will never develop job stress among the workers but will
in turn develop an informal environment where all members will freely communicate their
concerns, their issues, their queries and others (Cheruvelil et al. 2014). This will help in proper
coordination among them. Moreover, the team should also develop proper organizing and
planning skills so that they can complete the tasks properly on time. Proper decision-making
skills could have prevented the team members to work individually and they would have in turn
worked together taking decisions in a collective as well as unanimous manner (McQuail and
Windahl 2015). The members also did not have proper problem solving skills for which they

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faced issues and could not consult with each other and solve problems. Moreover, the team
leaders should have arranged frequent meetings, which should have included effective feedback
giving and receiving sessions among the different members in constructive ways so that proper
rapport can be built among them (Thomas 2014). Accountability is an important attribute, which
should have been inculcated by every team members as researchers are of the opinion that
accountability and responsibility reduces the chance of occurrence of blame games. Moreover, it
enhances every member to accept duties and complete them in timely fashion. This attribute also
would have helped the members to acknowledge and thereby take responsibilities for their own
mistakes (Costa and Anderson 2017).
How effective communication can influence effective teamwork?
Ineffective communication could have been taken as one of the main reason that had
resulted in the complete failure of the project. For effective teamwork in the research team, it
was seen that members did not have proper communication skills. Therefore, they could not take
part in effective feedback giving and receiving skills. This communication skill if present could
have increased the chances of interaction among the members, which would have resulted in
better team output and productivity (Sims, Hewitt and Haris 2015). The development of an
informal environment with effective communication skills could have reduced the grudges each
of the members had against each other (Sacks et al. 2015). In the finance team, the gap between
the new members and old members took place because neither the members nor the leader took
initiatives to overcome the gap. Presence of proper communication skills would have helped in
increasing interaction among the members and helped in conflict resolution. Communication
helps in relationship building. The better the bonding among the team members, the better will
be sharing of emotions among the members. This will prevent development of stress, as

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members will be able to share their concerns and different barriers they were facing. Proper
communication would have helped them in developing proper socializing skills, which are very
important in modern day working environments to maintain harmony. If effective and
constructive suggestions and feedbacks were exchanged between the different members, the
working climate would not have been so tensed and negative .Poor communication mainly
resulted in misunderstanding which lead to internal conflict. If proper training on effective
communication skills would have taken place and both old and new members were
communicated about how both of them can put in their own ideas and help each other to reach
their goals, such issues would have never taken place. Proper communication skills would have
cut down the possibilities of conflicts (Galeghar, Kraut and Egido 2014). Rather both of the old
and new members could have collectively worked in manners that would have increased each
other’s knowledge and enhanced their skills. This would have helped them to meet their goals
within deadline and thereby complete it with high quality.

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References:
Cheruvelil, K.S., Soranno, P.A., Weathers, K.C., Hanson, P.C., Goring, S.J., Filstrup, C.T. and
Read, E.K., 2014. Creating and maintaining high‐performing collaborative research teams: the
importance of diversity and interpersonal skills. Frontiers in Ecology and the
Environment, 12(1), pp.31-38.
Costa, A.C. and Anderson, N., 2017. Team Trust. The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the
Psychology of Team Working and Collaborative Processes, pp.393-416.
Galegher, J., Kraut, R.E. and Egido, C., 2014. Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological
foundations of cooperative work. Psychology Press.
Jackson, D., 2015. Employability skill development in work-integrated learning: Barriers and
best practice. Studies in Higher Education, 40(2), pp.350-367.

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McQuail, D. and Windahl, S., 2015. Communication models for the study of mass
communications. Routledge.
Sacks, G.D., Shannon, E.M., Dawes, A.J., Rollo, J.C., Nguyen, D.K., Russell, M.M., Ko, C.Y.
and Maggard-Gibbons, M.A., 2015. Teamwork, communication and safety climate: a systematic
review of interventions to improve surgical culture. BMJ Qual Saf, 24(7), pp.458-467.
Sims, S., Hewitt, G. and Harris, R., 2015. Evidence of a shared purpose, critical reflection,
innovation and leadership in interprofessional healthcare teams: a realist synthesis. Journal of
Interprofessional Care, 29(3), pp.209-215.
Thomas, T.A., 2014. Developing team skills through a collaborative writing
assignment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(4), pp.479-495.