BUS103e Organisational Behaviour Assignment 2 – Group-based Assignment January 2017 Presentation BUS103e Assignment 2 Group-based Assignment This assignment is worth
30% of the final mark for BUS103e Organisational Behaviour. The cut-off date for this assignment is 20 February 2017, 2355hrs. This is a group-based assignment. You
should form a group of 3 members from your seminar group. Each group is required to upload a single report to Canvas via your respective seminar group. Please elect a
group leader. The responsibility of the group leader is to upload the report on behalf of the group. It is important for each group member to contribute substantially
to the final submitted work. All group members are equally responsible for the entire submitted assignment. If you feel that the work distribution is inequitable to
either yourself or your group mates, please highlight this to your instructor as soon as possible. Your instructor will then investigate and decide on any action that
needs to be taken. It is not necessary for all group members to be awarded the same mark. SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 2 of 6 BUS103e Assignment 2 Important
Note: Grading of TMA/GBA/ECA Submissions Marks awarded to your assignment are based on the following guidelines: 1. 80% of the marks are allocated to the content of
your answers: The marks awarded to what your answers cover depend on the extent to which they cover the key points that correctly and comprehensively address each
question. The key points should be supported by evidence drawn from course materials and, wherever relevant, from other credible sources. 2. 20% of the marks are
allocated to the presentation of your answers: Wherever applicable, the marks awarded to how your answers are presented depend on the extent to which your answers:
form a sound reasoning by developing those key points in a clear, logical and succinct manner; provide proper and adequate in-text citations and referencing to content
drawn from course materials and other credible sources; strictly follow APA formatting and style guidelines1, in particular for: in-text citations and end-of-report
references; the identification of figures and tables; use, wherever relevant, the specialised vocabulary and terminology commonly used in discussions about the topic
(s) covered by each question; provide a reference or bibliography at the end of the main report; include the less relevant details in an Appendix; use sentence
constructions that are grammatically and syntactically correct; are free from spelling mistakes; present the workings, numerical formulations and results in a logical
manner that follows the APA formatting and style guidelines; design and present graphs, diagrams and plots that follow the APA formatting and style guidelines; are
highly original; have proper formatting, which may: include a properly formatted cover page; respect the answer length/word count set out in the assignment guidelines,
if any is prescribed; present answers in paragraphs with proper spacing and page margins; include page numbers and appendices, if necessary. 1 You can find a short
tutorial on the APA formatting and style guidelines here: https://is.gd/mgEOnC . Additional details (pertaining to tables and figures) can be found here:
https://is.gd/O4vDdT . SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 3 of 6 BUS103e Assignment 2 Case Study – Unusual Health Products Background Unusual Health (UH) is a company
that imports health products from different regions of the world and sells these products to the local market. UH employs salespeople who sell the products at various
locations and using different channels, through direct contact with customers. In the initial years, salespeople worked independently and looked for their own
contacts. Business was good as the products were reasonably priced and the salespeople provided good service. However, in the recent years, demand for UH products
decreased due to increased competition offering a growing number of similar health products sold in the same market. Even UH’s regular customers were beginning to
switch to competing products. The morale of the UH salespeople was low as they regularly failed to meet their monthly sales targets. Teams at UH The manager at UH
decided that the way to boost morale and sales was to have the salespeople work in teams instead of individually, an idea that he decided to implement after reading
some management articles on the benefits of team work. To make it easier for him to manage the teams, he decided it would be best not to have too many teams. Hence,
the salespeople were divided into a few teams of 15 people. He appointed a team leader for each team. With the new team arrangement, performance evaluation and reward
for each salesperson remained the same. Salesmen were rewarded with individual bonuses based on individual sales targets. In addition, each month, the team leader was
also rewarded with an individual bonus if his team achieved the highest level of sales. Albert was one of the team leaders. To improve the sales in his team, he
decided that all salespeople should share their customer contacts with the rest of the team. This way, if a salesperson was not available when the customer wanted to
purchase products, another salesperson could easily take over and serve the customer, a policy that created tension within the team as some salespeople were being
accused of “stealing customers”. There were also salespeople who were not motivated to look for new customers as they simply relied on the customer contacts from the
other salespeople in their team. The high-performing salespeople were also unwilling to share their customer contacts as they felt that it would not improve their
individual performance evaluation. They also felt that they had worked hard over the years to establish regular customers and feared that their performance would be
adversely affected if their customers were “stolen” by other salespeople. They were also unwilling to look for new customers as this meant sharing the contacts with
the other salespeople in the team. There were also rumours that some salespeople were bad-mouthing other salespeople in front of the customers. Ben was another team
leader. Like Albert, he was facing various issues in his own team of 15 salespeople. Although he tried to organize team meetings every week to share updates and sales
tips, most of his salespeople were unwilling to share information. They did not really know each other as they had worked independently before the teams were formed.
Some of them did not enjoy working in teams and stopped attending team meetings altogether because they did not see the benefit of such meetings nor how they could
help their sales performance. For salespeople, team meeting attendance was a burden as it meant that they SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 4 of 6 BUS103e Assignment
2 had to be in the office for that day of the week. A few salespeople started taking medical leave on the meeting days as they found team meetings to be boring and did
not like to attend the meetings. Caleb was another team leader. He was zealous about his new role. He decided that he should manage his salespeople closely and in a
systematic manner so that they could maximize their sales. He developed a roster for the salespeople and also assigned them to various geographical regions. Each
salesperson must follow the schedule and cover the region that Caleb had assigned. In addition, all the salespeople must submit timesheets every week to indicate the
hours worked and the progress made in their assigned regions. Some of the salespeople were unhappy with the new arrangement, as they were assigned to regions that were
far from their homes and their regular customers. Other sales people were also unhappy as they could not choose their working hours. They did not see the rationale of
working fixed hours as they were doing direct sales. They started grumbling about Caleb. Some of them decided to ignore Caleb’s arrangement and went back to their
usual way of meeting customers at their preferred schedule. Dilemma After a few months of setting up the sales teams, the manager was dismayed to see that sales had
further declined instead of improving. Some of his best salespeople had also tendered their resignation, especially those from Albert’s team. The manager did not
understand what was wrong as he thought that teams should help improve performance. He did not know what to do. Should he do away with the teams? If not, how should he
improve team performance so that overall sales performance improves? Question 1 (Word Limit: 1000) (a) What is the purpose of studying OB? Describe an example where
knowledge of OB can be applied in your workplace. (5 marks) (b) One of the ways to apply OB concepts in this case is to examine the job attitude of employees. List and
explain the three (3) components of attitude, using examples from this case. (12 marks) (c) Explain the four (4) major work-related attitudes that are relevant to
organisational behaviour. Which work-related attitude is affected in this case? Explain your answer. (15 marks) Question 2 (Word Limit: 1000) (a) We have learned three
contemporary theories of motivation. Explain one of the theories which is relevant to this case and describe how it is illustrated in this case. (10 marks) SIM
UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 5 of 6 BUS103e (b) Assignment 2 Describe the Job Characteristics Model. Determine which job dimension was changed with the team
arrangement and explain how that dimension was affected. (18 marks) Question 3 (Word Limit: 1200) (a) State four (4) benefits of work teams compared to groups. Do you
think the teams in UH demonstrate these benefits? Explain. (8 marks) (b) Identify and describe four (4) issues in the teams that affected performance. For each issue,
suggest solutions that are likely to make the teams more effective. (32 marks) —- END OF ASSIGNMENT —- SIM UNIVERSITY Assignment 2 – Page 6 of 6
