Organizational Leadership Case Study Assistance

Case Study for Assessment 2 Requirements

When DGL International, a manufacturer of refinery equipment, brought John Terrill to manage its services division, company executives informed him of the urgent situation. Technical services, with 20 engineers, was the highest-paid, best-educated and least productive division in the company. The instructions to Terrill: turn it around. Terrill called a meeting of the engineers. He showed great concern for their personal welfare and asked point-blank: ‘What’s the problem? Why can’t we produce? Why does this division have such turnover?’ Without hesitation, employees launched a hail of complaints, ‘I was hired as an engineer, not a pencil pusher’, and ‘We spend over half our time writing asinine reports in triplicate for top management, and no one reads the reports’. After a two-hour discussion, Terrill concluded he had to get top management off the engineers’ backs. He promised the engineers, ‘My job is to stay out of your way so you can do your work, and I’ll try to keep top management off your backs, too’. He called for the day’s reports and issued an order effective immediately that the originals be turned in daily to his office rather than mailed to headquarters. For three weeks, technical reports piled up on his desk. By month’s end, the stack was nearly a metre high. During that time no one called for the reports. When other managers entered his office and saw the stack, they usually asked, ‘What’s all this?’ Terrill answered: ‘Technical reports’. No one asked to read them. Finally, at month’s end, a secretary from finance called and asked for the monthly travel and expense report, Terrill responded, ‘Meet me in the president’s office tomorrow morning’. The next morning the engineers cheered as Terrill walked through the department pushing a cart loaded with the enormous stack of reports. They knew the showdown had come. Terrill entered the CEO’s office and placed the stack of reports on his desk. The CEO and the other senior executives looked bewildered. ‘This’, Terrill announced ‘is the reason for the lack of productivity in the technical services division. These are the reports you people require every month. The fact that they sat on my desk all month shows that no one reads this material. I suggest that the engineers’ time could be used in a more productive manner’. The CEO and the senior executives admit that there has been a process error. However, they are not entirely convinced on how Terrill attempted to resolve it. The company brings in you as an organizational leadership consultant to assess the current issues and provide a report with recommendations to resolve matters related to leadership and team development. Refer to the assessment instruction document for detailed instruction.

Solution:

Introduction

DGL International is a manufacturing company that recently recruited John Terrill to address the issue of low productivity at its Technical services department. The division comprises of 20 engineers who are highly qualified and well-paid, yet the department has one of the lowest rates of productivity at the company. Upon his arrival at the firm, Terrill had a meeting with the employees of the division to understand their concerns and uncovered that the preparation of technical reports is a redundant task assigned to the engineers. These reports are generated for the senior management, but the engineers believe that they do not contribute to their work. Terrill’s solution to the issue has led to concerns raised by the senior management. Terrill did not take the top management’s views into account when deciding to revert all technical reports to his office, which kept piling up, but were never reviewed. This report presents a comprehensive analysis of the issue of low employee productivity at DGL International’s Technical services department and relates it to the concepts of team composition, organizational performance and leadership. The discussion highlights the types of followers and the team composition at the Technical services division and presents recommendations for resolving the issues being faced by DGL International.

Organizational Leadership and Performance

Leadership is an important area of assessment in organizational studies. It is a process through which leaders inspire, motivate and lead employees to move ahead in a specific direction, which aligns with the strategic objectives of an organisation (Hurduzeu 2015, p. 290). Research indicates that there is a correlation between organizational performance and the utilization of effective leadership (Hurduzeu 2015 p. 290). Organizational performance is the process through which a company converts inputs into outputs, which generate desired goals. The concept of organizational performance can be defined in terms of cost efficiency, quality and quantity of outputs. The adoption of effective leadership style by an organizational leader not only enhances standards of excellence in a firmbut also drives the professional development and commitment of employees to their work and the organisation (Katou 2015, n. pag).

In the case of DGL International, employee performance maybe characterized as the ability of employees to successfully complete the tasks, roles and responsibilities defined in their job description. For example, engineers in the Technical Services department are expected to showcase high levels of productivity, which is a measure of their individual performance. Semedo, Coelho and Ribeiro (2016, n. pag) found that the adoption of an authentic leadership positively influenced employees’ attitudes towards their work including their degree of commitment and creativity.  The research suggested that organizations should actively recruit leaders who support the professional development of employees and have authentic features in a bid to enhance employee performance.

These findings are further substantiated by the work of Mittal and Dhar (2015, n. pag) who note that transformative organizational leadership has a direct impact on the creativity of employees, which in turn leads to high performance. Creativity enables employees to tackle issues and problems in an efficient manner and hones their knowledge sharing skills, which is critical towards improving performance (Mittal and Dhar 2015, n. pag).

Soane, Butler and Stanton (2015, p. 21) noted that certain traits of leadership also had a positive impact on employee performance, for example, conscientious leaders proved to generate more effective performance outcomes. This indicates that the personality of leaders directly impacts performance and further substantiates the view that performance is influenced by organizational leadership. The understanding of this concept has critical implications for DGL International because it showcases the importance of honing leadership skills, knowledge and capabilities in the organisation to improve staff productivity and creativity in the Technical services department, which is reporting low productivity levels despite the higher pay and educational levels of its employees.

 

 

Importance of Team Composition in Organizational Composition

According to Bell et al. (2018, p. 349), team composition is responsible for configuring member characteristics and is therefore, recognized as a fundamental element of teamwork. Moreover, team composition also impacts the performance of teams and the behavioral processes of individuals who make up the team hence, affecting organizational performance. An example of this is that of entrepreneurial teams, which can determine the success of new business ventures (Jin et al. 2017, p. 744).

Organizational composition is essentially a broader perspective of team composition, whereby teams are parts of the organisation, as a whole. According to Bell, Brown and Weiss (2018, p. 454), decisions regarding the composition of teams which are taken on a departmental level can provide a firm with a competitive advantage. This is because, organizations can compose teams to meet specific strategic objectives that fit in the overall mission of the company. If member attributes of individual teams align with the strategic aims of the organisation, then the organizational composition can act together to help drive performance, effectiveness and productivity.

At present, DGL International faces a pressing challenge because its highest-paid and most well-educated team of 20 engineers are reporting low rates of productivity. This is an alarming situation because as a manufacturing entity, the company relies on the efficiency of the its engineers to generate results and support the continuation of core business operations. It is important to note that team composition in this case is important because positive team processes practiced in core teams have a domino effect, which can improve organizational composition by driving the performance of other teams within the company (Kollmann et al., n. pag). Absence of effective team processes within the Technical services department can ultimately have an adverse influence on other divisions within the company, which can further affect organizational performance in an adverse manner.

Issues with team composition should therefore be resolved as soon as they emerge because they can harm the overall organizational composition. Dissatisfaction within teams is reflective of underlying challenges in the firm, which can stem from problems with the leadership or other employee grievances. Thus, team composition holds undeniable importance in the organizational composition and any issues in team composition should be readily addressed by the leadership, as they can contribute to critical challenges if left unaddressed.