Analyzing Teamwork: Benefits, Challenges, and Apple Inc. Case Study

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of teamwork within organizational structures. It differentiates between group work and teamwork, highlighting the collaborative nature of teams and their impact on achieving organizational goals. The report emphasizes the advantages of teamwork, such as creating synergy, facilitating multi-disciplinary work, and enhancing employee motivation. It also addresses the disadvantages, including potential conflicts, prolonged decision-making processes, and the issue of free riders. Furthermore, the report explores management strategies to enhance team commitment, such as social activities, conflict resolution, recognition programs, and employee involvement in decision-making. The report uses Apple Inc. as an example of effective teamwork and its positive impact on organizational success, referencing various studies and scholarly articles to support its claims.

UNIT 4 KEY ASSESSMENT 1
Unit 4 Key Assessment
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UNIT 4 KEY ASSESSMENT 2
Multiple numbers of people with same desire and mission when come together and work
together, they form the process of teamwork. Generally the team members share common
responsibilities and interests. The organizational unity, reliability, harmony and support are
maintained through effective teamwork. As the business world is getting competitive every day
team work has become more important for effective organizational performance. Major
international companies like Apple, Google or Coca Cola has been utilizing the benefits of
teamwork. Their management has always engaged in developing unique strategies in order to
promote teamwork within the organizational culture. Their importance to team work has resulted
in more profit and enhanced organizational performance. The cohesion, cooperation, reliability,
loyalty, unity and efficiency among the employees have given all these successful companies
influential competitive edge in their own industries in the global market (Southwick et al., 2017).
There are certain differences between the practice of group work and team work within
any organizational structure. Both of them work for achieving the organizational goal but the
groups generally work independently as a distinct department (Brandler & Roman, 2015). In a
group the group members can work for similar job but in the team all team members work for the
same single project. Therefore the group work is also contributing to the desired task but not
necessarily directly or collaboratively. The members of a group tend to respond individually but
in a team the team members respond collaboratively. It has been observed that the cohesion is
higher among the team members while serving a team work (Kozlowski & Bell, (2013).
The organization can benefit greatly while engaging in team work. Primarily the most
significant contribution of the teamwork is that it creates the synergy through which the

UNIT 4 KEY ASSESSMENT 3
organization can utilize the sum of the good work going beyond just the individual performance
(Pandy & Smith, 2016). Secondly the teams successfully establish the multi disciplinary work
that connects various separate departments within the organizational structure. The multi
disciplinary activities help the company to achieve increased productivity as a whole and the
certain individual’s failure does not affect the productivity much. The team work also
establishes employee motivation and eventually job satisfaction through a sense of equity,
comradeship and achievement. The constraints can also be removed successfully in order to
establish improved employee efficiency through effective teamwork (Crawford & Lepine, 2013).
Along with the advantages the teamwork also brings some disadvantages as well. As the team is
consisted of various individuals the conflict among each other and especially with the higher
authority is bound to appear. The conflicts must be resolved by the management by applying
effective strategies in order to prevent the organization from moving towards wrong direction.
As in team work the decision making process the members get involved that might drag the
decision making process for a longer period of time. The teams are consisted of diverse
individual with personal thoughts and lifestyle and often that reflects upon their activity. Some
team members act as free riders who do not work much and depend on others; this creates
challenges for other team members and the management (Fahn & Hakenes, 2014). The
management and team leadership have to monitor the employee activities closely in order to
identify the problem areas and improve those.
There is another drawback that the team might experience related to the shared purpose.
The issue is termed as Abilene Paradox. This issue occurs when all the team members are

UNIT 4 KEY ASSESSMENT 4
agreeing upon the company purpose even when that is going against certain members’
preferences. Generally it is developed when the team leader or team members feel the lack of
enough power to convince all the members for mind change (Johnson, 2016). On the group hand
there is Groupthink where decisions are always made collectively. In this process the team
members avoid any kind of confrontation in order to minimize any kind of conflicts. In this
process it has been noticed that the team members do not engage in extensive discussion to find
out the most effective strategies and the resulted decisions are often weak and flawed.
It is the responsibility of the managers of the team work to enhance and strengthen the
team members’ commitment. There can be various methods that the managers can employ to
achieve the desired commitment from the team members. The managers’ engagement in social
activities with the team members can prove to be effective (Cha et al., 2015). This can happen
over a coffee shop meeting or lunch on weekends. The relationship the team members and with
the managers get improved. Whenever any conflicts or disputes arise it is the duty of the
managers to address and resolve them immediately. This helps the team to restore their broken
relationship and bring positivity within the team. The managers can also facilitate a recognition
program where after successful completion of any project every team member will be recognized
and rewarded by the management. Finally the team members must be encouraged and involved
in significant decision making and problem solving. This way the employees will feel that the
management holds value, respect and appreciation for them.
An example of great team work can be found in Apple Inc. (Chhiu & Kleiner, 2015). The
inter-organizational structure works such a way that the teamwork floats from the top of the

UNIT 4 KEY ASSESSMENT 5
management to the lower level. In its industry the organization has achieved great success and
excellence through the effective teamwork. Incorporating latest innovative technologies Apple
Inc. constantly engages with its teams and with the world that places the company ahead of its
competitors in the global market.