Introduction

It takes a lot of time and effort to become a successful organisation. An organisation is- A
social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals
(Buchanan et al, 2007). Integrated Business Decision course is a very practical way to learn
through experience about an organisation. Although it is considered as a game and we had to
play it in virtual world but it was very realistic. We had to work in a team just like a profitable
organisation and we had to compete in a tough business world to gain profit. My team mates
were form different countries; it was also interesting to work with the people from different
nationalities and background. At the very beginning, I thought it will be very easy to make
decisions in the game. After first quarter, I was proved wrong. It took us a long time to take
decision some times. As example, one day we spent over 8 hours in the library to come up
with an idea. It was like a real business world and I never thought it will be this tough to keep
up a social arrangement towards its collective goal. As a team we were not that good in
making profit, but personally I learned a lot and no doubt it was a pleasant learning
experience for me. This paper is a self reflective essay, which is consists of both my self
contribution in the team and about our team work and decision making process. Before
writing this essay we had a group meeting to discuss about our positive and negative sides as
a group and also individual. It was an open discussion and every one shared their experience
and gave feedback individually.

Self Contribution
At the very beginning of this course we had to set our personal goals and decide the
responsibilities that we have to take through out the game. My personal goal was to- have
fun, develop leadership skills, develop team work skills, develop marketing skills, develop
over all understanding of the business. At the end of the business game, I should say- most of
my goals were fulfilled. The most important goal for me was to understand the over all
business and I learned a lot about it which I am sure are similar to real life business
experiences. My responsibility for the team was the marketing department. I was Vice
President of the marketing department. My second responsibility was to look after the
manufacturing unit.

We decided to have a regular meeting on every Wednesday. As a group we have spend around
8000 minutes. Most of the team in our group are similar in using the time to play the game.
The total time utilised by the winning team is much higher then us but interestingly the
second winning team were in the game for about 5000 minutes. They used less time then us
but their performance is much better then us. Personally I have played the game for around
1800 minutes. Two of my team mates were there for similar amount of times but the other
two members had spent 1300 and 800 minutes in the game. I think the second best team in
our game really managed their time effectively and all the group members worked smart to
make their decisions. If I compare it in my team, me and two of the team members were the
main decision makers and that took us a long time to take decisions. As I mentioned earlier,
we divided our responsibilities at the very beginning but it did not really work out after few
quarters. We as a group tried to involve every one equally; especially our President of the
organisation tried hard to do that, but it did not work out. My personal responsibility was
marketing but after quarter two I got involved with the other area like- helping with
manufacturing, finance or where ever I was needed. It was time consuming for me most of
the times, because we three had to work together on the areas that we were not really
responsible for and it took us a long time to get agreed and make changes. I was there all the
time when ever team needed me. When we had our team meeting after finishing the game,
my team mates also said that they are pleased with me. The meeting was for open discussion
about our performance as a group and also in the group. Me and one of my team mates were
appreciated for our effort when our President had an accident and it was before submitting
our group assignment. We both worked whole night to finish the unfinished part of our team
mates. I am thankful to my team mates for appreciating my work for the team. I have
contributed in every quarter with my other hard working team mates and I am happy by my
self about that. Even though the roles and responsibilities were changed from what we have
decided in the beginning but I was never hesitated to cope up with the change. As my most
important goal- I tried to get involved with every thing possible to understand the business
environment and tried to learn from it. I have learned a lot about- being a part of the team,
individual behaviour, personality and values, socialisation.

Team participation
According to West (2004), being part of a team means taking responsibility for team
objectives, team strategies and team processes. So, this definition replies- it is not only the
team leader who is solely responsible for determining team objectives, strategies, processes
or outcomes. It works on the other way round- in effective work teams, all team members are
aware of and sensitive to team functioning. Team participation involves- interacting among
the team, information sharing, influencing in decision making and creating a sense of safety. I
think I have participated well according to this definition. I am satisfied about my
participation in the team.

Intellectual Ability
Intellectual ability is a very important individual ability- which encompasses mental activities
such as thinking, reasoning and problem solving (Robbins and Judge, 2008). This is one of
the best predictors of performance in any kind of jobs. According to Robbins and Judge
(2008), the more complex a job is in terms of information processing demands, the more
general intelligence and verbal abilities will be necessary to perform the job successfully. One
reason the intelligent people are better job performer is- they are more creative. This is
absolutely true for the team became second in our game. They had spent about 3000 minute
less then most of the team, but still they are one of the best team. I think this ability must
come up with the right combination of people and in our team there was lack of this
combination; that is why only three among five of us had to carry most of the decision
making process.

Personality and Value

Personality can be thought of as the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and
interacts with others (Robbins and Judge, 2008). According to Luthans (2008), personality
means how people affect others and how they understand and view themselves, as well as
their pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and the person situation interaction. The
popular individual traits of a person are- shyness, aggressiveness, laziness, ambition, loyalty,

etc. According to Big Five personality traits there are five important personality traits of
human beings. They are called Five-Factor Model. These traits are given below-

Core Traits
Conscientiousness

Characteristics
Dependable, hard working, organised, self disciplined,

Emotional stability
Agreeableness

persistent, responsible.
Calm, secured, happy, unworried,
Cooperative, warm, caring, good-natured, courteous,

Extraversion
Openness to experience

trusting.
Sociable, outgoing, talkative, assertive, gregarious.
Curious, intellectual, creative, cultured, flexible.

As an individual, my core personality is more likely to cover most of the traits like my group
mates as well. I have done my best for my team. I am very happy to work with such a nice
team and I am sure they think in the same way about me.

Decision Making and Teamwork

As a team we were always there present in our team meetings. We decided to meet every
Wednesday to discuss our decisions and to wrap the quarters on time. As a team we adopted
democracy and we wanted to employ total group effort in decision making. Decision making
in an organisation is never an easy job and to convince every one about your plan is even
tougher. But we did well, because we did not had much argument or conflict to come up with
a decision. Our president acted as a democratic leader and eventually we started taking
decisions together in the meetings. At the very beginning we were assigned with our
responsibilities, but when we started taking decisions together; participation of some of the
members of the team started to decrease. We were there attending the meeting for most of the
time but not every one was interested in discussion or decision making process. So, three of
our team members decided not to rely on them after trying hard to make them involved. We
were happy with that, because realised it is becoming tough to wait for their decisions and
then make changes according to that. As our relationship is class mates; it was tough to act
like real life business organisation and it was not possible for our president to take any action.

We adopted every thing very quickly, but it started to take long time to come up with
decisions and we have to check other areas that are not our responsibilities.
The good thing about our team is we never had a massive argument. We argued logically to
present our points but were never displeased to judge others point of view and accept it when
ever majority of the team supported it. We decided in the beginning that, if we have any
argument then the President will take decision for the team. We gave a lot of authority to our
President but she was too democratic some times, which was not good for our team. As a
leader she needed to step forward in some situations and take control, rather then trying to
make every one to contribute in every decision making process. It could be better if she
would have worked more like a leader then a moderator. After quarter four, we realised taking
decision all together is a very tough process, but we became so dependent on each other that,
we keep doing it. This was our biggest mistake. The allocation of responsibilities should be
more precise to work efficiently and we should be bound to explain why our departments are
doing badly or how to improve it. There should be more trust among the team members in
decision making. We allocated responsibilities but there was lack of trust that- some of the
group mates will take appropriate decision.

Group Formation
There are two types of groups- formal and informal. According to the definition from
Buchanan et al (2007), formal group is one which has been consciously created to accomplish
a defined part of an organisations collective purpose. The formal groups functions are the
tasks which are assigned to it, and for which it is officially held responsible. The informal
groups are a collection of individuals who become a group when members develop
interdependencies, influence one anothers behaviour and contribute to mutual need
satisfaction. Our group is more likely a formal group. We were assigned in this group to work
as an organisation and perform a particular task. Even if we did not had to work in the real
business world, but we had a formal structure. To be more specific we worked like a
temporary formal group.

Team vs. Group

Team is a psychological group whose members share a common goal that they pursue
collaboratively. Members can only succeed or fail as a whole and all share the benefits and
costs of collective success or failure (Buchanan et al, 2007). According to this definition, we
were more like a team then a group. Supporting with this definition, Robbins and Judge
(2008) said- a work team generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. It is not true
some times that- team will generate positive synergy. For our team it was different- basically
three members of the team had to do every thing where number of team mates were five.

Team work
Why work in a team is important for an organisation? According to West (2004), there are
several reasons for that Teams are the best way to enact organisational strategy, because of the need for
consistency between rapidly changing organisational environments, strategy
and structures.
Teams enable organisations to develop and deliver products and services
quickly and cost effectively. As we were in a team for a short period time it
was not very relative to us.
Teams enable organisations to learn more effectively. It is very true in our case.
Personally I have learned a lot in a very short period of time.
Time is saved if activities, formerly performed sequentially by individuals, can
be performed concurrently by people working in teams.
Staffs who work in teams report higher levels of involvement and commitment
and they have lower stress levels then those who do not work in teams. This
opinion is some how again did not match with our team. Off course
involvement was higher but not from every member of staffs in the team.

Social skills are also very important to maintain a very effective team work. These social
skills are-

 Active listening skills- listening to what other peoples are saying and ask
question.
Communication skills- planning how to communicate effectively among the
team.
Social perceptiveness- being aware of others reactions and understanding why

they react the way they do?

Self monitoring- being sensitive to the effects of our behaviour on others.
Altruism- working to help colleagues.
Warmth and cooperation.
Patience and tolerance- accepting criticism and dealing patiently with
frustrations.

As a team our general social skills were very good, specially listening skills, warmth and
cooperation, patience and tolerance and altruism. There is some thing to say about
communication skills. One of our team mate faced great communication problem with us, it
was because of the language. It was a big problem for us to make her understand some thing.
Most of the time she was talking to another group member in their language and it offended
rest of the team several times. We were very patient through out the game as a team but at the
very end we became bankrupt and one of the group members displayed a great deal of
frustration. She spent a whole night to find out and sort out where the problem was without
letting others know. She made the change by her self and wrap up the quarter. This offended
our President of the team but we sorted it out very quickly.

Team Development Stages

The best-known and most widely used model suggests that, there are five stages for team
development. They are- forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. Though
these stages are not significant in our case but at forming and storming stage were significant.
About deciding the team goals specifically and to decide the leadership it was a bit
conflicting. But it was not very important for any of us.
Groupthink
According to social psychologist Irving Janis, group think is a deterioration of mental
efficiency, reality testing and moral judgement that results from in group pressures. Group

think results from the pressures on individual members to conform and reach consensus
(Luthans, 2008). Group think arises where any of these five conditions are present1. The team is a highly cohesive group of individuals who are more concerned
with their own cohesiveness and unanimity than with quality of decision
making.
2. The group typically insulates itself from information and opinions from outside
and particularly those that go against the group view.
3. Members of the group rarely engage in any kind of systematic search through
the available options for appropriate solutions, choosing instead to go with the
first available option on which there is a consensus.
4. The group is under pressure to achieve a decision.
5. One individual dominates the group.
(West, 2004)
In our case it was number two- we preferred not to discuss with our class mates about the
game and about our situations. We just relied on our selves and took every decision by just
consulting our group members. Some of our class mates tried to help us cause they were
doing very good in the game but we refused to take their help and paid the price by being
bankrupt. Another dysfunction associated with groups and teams is social loafing. This
problem occurs when members reduce their effort and performance levels while acting as part
of a group. We also faced this problem. If we look at the activity log and total times spent in
the game it will become clear that, we had social loafer among us.

Decision Making
There are several decision making approaches but we worked with the approach calledrational economic models. It is a model which assumes that decision-making is and should be

a rational process consisting of a sequence of steps that enhance the probability of attaining a
desired outcome (Buchanan et al, 2007).
There are five stages in this approach. They are1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Recognition and definition of a problem or opportunity.

Search for alternative courses of action.
Gathering and analysis of data about alternatives.
Evaluation of alternatives.
Selecting and implementation of preferred alternatives.

The decision making process we used are so much like this approach. As I have mentioned
earlier we used to make decision together in every quarter. We discussed and then came up
with a decision which is accepted by every one.

Conclusion
Simulation is a great way to learn about the real life organisation and business world. For
three month we as a team had to work as an organisation to compete in the personal computer
industry. Although the game was not totally realistic and we played it in a virtual world but
we learned how to work as a team. We faced a lot of situations which we came across through
our text books. Lot of those team working and decision making theories are very clear now as
we experienced them. Working in a team is never very easy but if a team is organised and
structured they can create a positive synergy in the out put. It was also interesting to work
with different nationalities. Every nation has their own culture and organisational behaviour
which was projected in our case. I have learned a lot from this practical experience. It is
important to show patience, show respect to the group mates then they will show the same in
return and it is easy then to create synergy in the team.

Reference

Andrez, A. Huczynski, Buchanan, A. (2007), Organizational Behaviour, Prentice Hall, Essex.

Luthans, F. (2008), Organizational Behaviour, Mcgraw Hill, Singapore.

Robins, P. Judge, A. (2008), Essentials of Organizational Behaviour, Prentice Hall, New Jersey.

West, A. (2004), Effective Teamwork, BPS Blackwell, Oxford.

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