The Problem with Teamwork in Companies and Organizations (Essay Sample)

The Problem with Teamwork
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The Problem with Teamwork
Companies and organizations will always have different departments to uphold the division of labour along with specialization. The latter helps ensure that the assigned area is perfectly addressed by the one assigned to it. The former ensures that work or tasks in the organization are divided into small chunks and managed in the shortest time possible. Eventually, the organization comes up with a whole unit of product that seeks to satisfy consumer needs and expectations. This phenomenon is the same concept adopted by Auto Safety Products, a firm specializing in the designs and production of automobiles seat belts along with infant and child safety seats. This paper will seek to conduct a study analysis of the case study The Problem with Teamwork.
This firm has studied the market and pointed out a market gap. Few firms have seen this, and, therefore, this company would easily succeed in its endeavours. Again, the nature of the problem they seek to solve, again, is a real necessity. Moreover, the firm's goal is to come up with quality but low-cost products and meet user needs is viable. Additionally, after the division of labour, the firm seeks to reduce the time consumed while moving unfinished products from one department to another. Undoubtedly, this firm has an ideal setting where it would have been destined to succeed.
However, just like other organizations, Auto Safety Products has been facing a challenge that would lead to its failure if it is not addressed. Every time people come together, there arises a challenge mainly because everyone possesses their expertise (Siregar et al., 2018). Everyone feels that it would be great if their opinion would be taken seriously. Again, people feel that where they are designed to work carries the most critical aspect of the whole production and, therefore, they need to be seen as more important than others (Siregar et al., 2018). As a result, this brings problems and conflicts that would slow the firm's growth under consideration or break it completely.
This issue is what Auto Safety Products has been experienced for quite a long time. Its two departments, manufacturing and designing, have grown animosity towards each other (Miller, 2008). Each of them feels that they carry more of the end product’s part than others. However, it seems that there is more to that. The manager of the manufacturing sector, Mike Garcia, a 45-year-old, feels that the head of the design department, Jill Hendrickson, a 25 years old lady, has got no experience and, therefore, there is no need to work together.
Since their misunderstanding and conflicts were known in the whole firm, Adam Shapiro, the project supervisor in the company, oversees the booster sear project where Mike and Jill were to work on, decides to bring them together (Miller, 2008). Unarguably, it would be hard or even impossible for both parties to work together in such a project with their animosity against each other. Jill explained that Mike undermines her. She feels that Mike downplays her ideas maybe because she is a woman or younger than him (Miller, 2008). This aspect would be a way to express that they previously had met in a circumstance that did not work at all (Huusko, 2006). There are various reasons why Jill would perceive it this way. Maybe she felt her ideas were being overlooked while they would have worked (Huusko, 2006). Therefore, she might have thought that she would have saved the situation, which, eventually, failed. As a result, this would have been why she is termed “assertive” and “strong-minded” since she believes that her profession, engineering, is dominated by males.
On the other hand, Mike illustrated that Jill, along with the members of her department, forces their ideas down the throats of the manufacturing department. He said that Jill with her department pretends to be good through their façade while in real sense they are not (Miller, 2008). Consequently, Mike perceives that working together, concurrent engineering, with Jill and her department is not working for him (Miller, 2008). He urges that rather than working with