Management-Business & Finance homework Assignment
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Assignment #3 – There are three parts to this assignment.
1) You have been a member of many teams in your lifetime. As discussed in our text, these groups or teams would generally be classified into three categories: teams that recommend things, teams that make or do things or teams that run things. Recall the most effective and least effective team in which you have been a member. What were the characteristics of each? What made one so effective? What made one so ineffective? After reading the chapter, could the ineffective team be transformed into a high-performance team? How? (three to four paragraphs)
2) Paula Meers has been the manager of nursing for the night shift at Bluff City Hospital for nearly four years. Paula’s duties include managing the twenty-four nurses who work from 11:00 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. Seven of the nurses have been very close to one another, both inside and outside the hospital. Each of these seven nurses has been with the hospital for more than twenty years, and they have gained the respect and confidence of the medical staff and the administration. One of these nurses, Bonnie Lin, is an excellent nurse, a very friendly and outgoing person, and well respected by this group of seven nurses.
When new nurses are brought on to the shift, they are assigned a mentor for the first three months. In addition, the seven nurses also engage in a welcoming routine of some jokes and a few non-harmful tricks. Many of the new nurses recognize this as a harmless rite of passage for new members of the nursing night shift. But Paula has become concerned that the jokes and tricks may be causing some problems. Three newly hired nurses have left Bluff City Hospital after only two weeks on the job.
Paula arranges a meeting with Bonnie to express concerns over the jokes and tricks. Bonnie states that the jokes and tricks are harmless fun that is necessary to break the tension and constant pressure of caring for the patients. In addition, she says, “Any nurse who can’t take the jokes should not be working the night shift at Bluff City Hospital.”
Three weeks later, three more newly hired nurses resign after telling Paula that they did not like the “jokes and tricks treatment.” These nurses tell Paula that they believe nursing is a serious profession and that they cannot work under the present conditions. The nurses leave the meeting stating that they intend to communicate their concerns to the hospital administrator. Answer the following questions in one to two paragraphs each:
1) What type of group do the seven nurses on the night shift represent?
2) Discuss the topic of group norms as related to this case.
3) As the manager, what should Paula do?
3) Using your favorite search engine, seek out the term “conflict management” and/or “negotiation”. Find three different and varied sources (perhaps from a consultant, an institute of higher learning, a government source, a general-purpose site, or from a business site). No Wikipedia please! (You may do one source on conflict management and two on negotiation or any combination that fulfills the three sources.) Read them carefully to see what they tell the average manager about conflict management and negotiation. Write up a brief synopsis of your findings. (one to two paragraphs for each source). Compare and contrast your findings with the materials from this chapter about conflict management and/or negotiation (two to three paragraphs).
