CBA 110 Chapter 9: Study Notes at Rider University
8 Jan 2019
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Department
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Improving performance through empowerment, teamwork, and communication
● Empowering employees
○ Empowerment- giving employees authority and responsibility to make decisions
about their work without traditional managerial approval and control
○ Sharing information and decision- making authority
○ Keeping them informed about company's financial performance
○ Giving them broad authority to make workplace decisions
● Linking rewards to company performance
○ Employee stock ownership plans
■ 11 million workers at 10,000 companies participate
■ Gives employees ownership, motivating them to work smarter and harder
● When you retire you cash it in
● More motivated to do better work so you get more when you retire
○ Stock options
■ Right to buy a specified amount of company stock as a given price within
a given time period
■ Being offered more and more to employees at all different levels
■ ⅓ of all options go to the top five executives at a firm
● Teams:
○ Group of employees who are committed to a common purpose, approach, and
set of performance goals
○ Mutually responsible and accountable for accomplishing objectives
○ Ability to work on teams often emphasized during the hiring process
■ Everyone is responsible equally for everything
○ Work teams- groups of people with complementary skills who are committed to a
common purpose
○ ⅔ of the U.S. firms currently use work teams
● Five species of teams
○Self managed teams
■ Teams that are empowered to decide how they complete their daily tasks
■ Everyone knows how to do everyone else’s task as well
○ Cross functional teams
■ Teams that are made up of members from different functions, or parts, of
a firm
○ Virtual teams
■ Groups of geography and/or organizationally dispersed co-workers who
use a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to
accomplish an organizational task
■ May never meet face-to-face
■ Very flexible because doesn’t matter where people are located
■ Since very flexible, can also be hard to manage
○ Work teams
■ An increasingly popular species, work teams do just that-the daily work.
When empowered, they are self-managed teams
● Relatively permanent
● Day-to-day activities
○ Problem-solving teams
■ This most popular of type comprises knowledge workers who gather to
solve specific problems and then disband
● 1 year team or 2 month team
● When the problem is solved, team is disbanded
● Team characteristics
○ Team size
■ Can range widely, but mostly have fewer than 12 members
■ Ideal size is often 6-7 members
○ Team level and team diversity
■Team level- a barrage level of ability, experience, personality, or any
other factor on a team
● Experience and ability of team members
■ Team diversity- variances Of differences in ability, experience,
personality, or any other factor on a team
● Stages of team development
○ Forming
■ Orientation, breaking the ice. Leader facilities social interchanges
● ex→ Ice breakers
■ Not being productive during this stage, don’t make this stage last long
○ Storming
■ Conflict, disagreement. Leader encourages participation, differences
surface
■ Clarify roles
■ Not being productive during this stage, don’t make this stage last long
○ Norming
■ Establishment or order and cohesion. Leader helps clarify team roles,
norms, and values
■ Starting to do work
■ agreeing/ disagreeing on who does which tasks
○ Performance
■ Cooperation, problem solving. Leader facilitated task accomplishment.
■ Doing actual work
■ Frequent interactions
○ Adjourning
■ Task completion. Leader brings to closure, signifies completion.
■ Finish→ the problem is solved, tasks completes, team is dissolved
Document Summary
Empowering employees about their work without traditional managerial approval and control. Empowerment- giving employees authority and responsibility to make decisions. Keeping them informed about company"s financial performance. Giving them broad authority to make workplace decisions. 11 million workers at 10,000 companies participate. Gives employees ownership, motivating them to work smarter and harder. When you retire you cash it in. More motivated to do better work so you get more when you retire. Right to buy a specified amount of company stock as a given price within a given time period. Being offered more and more to employees at all different levels. Of all options go to the top five executives at a firm. Group of employees who are committed to a common purpose, approach, and set of performance goals. Mutually responsible and accountable for accomplishing objectives. Ability to work on teams often emphasized during the hiring process. Work teams- groups of people with complementary skills who are committed to a.
