Groups, Teams, and Conflict

Part I: Team Strategy Plan

You are part of a group of newly hired team superintendents with Riordan Manufacturing. Your group was hired to lead new teams and begin production of the newly designed CardiCare Valve heart valves. This will be at the organization’s Pontiac, MI, location that is currently manufacturing custom plastic parts. Many of the production employees are current employees from other divisions, and the company expects to hire some new employees.

Resources: Riordan Manufacturing Virtual Organization, and University of Phoenix Material: Team Strategy Plan

Review the Riordan Manufacturing intranet site and the Human Resource section under Demographics, Employees, Employee Files, and Reports.

Prepare a plan to create the teams. Address the following in your plan:

• Identify various strategies available to build teams.
• What challenges or barriers may happen?
• How will the best strategy be determined?
• What measures will you use to determine if the team is operating successfully

Part II: Conflict Management Plan

While developing the teams, the management group finds that there is currently some internal conflict among two of the employees chosen for this project. David Nguyen has spoken to his current manager twice regarding his feelings that James Deal is intentionally creating problems on the production line, which is causing David to miss his quality checks. James insists that he has no idea what David is referring to and does not understand why David is trying to cause problem. James now goes to his own superintendent because he feels David is spreading rumors that he is looking for other work. David advises his own manager that he is not sure why James thinks this because he has never said anything like that.

Before the new teams are formed, the management group knows they must resolve this issue so that the new production teams can operate smoothly. Both James and David are good employees with positive performance reviews, and they were chosen for the new project because of this reason.

Resources: Riordan Manufacturing Virtual Organization, and University of Phoenix Material: Conflict Management Plan

Create a Conflict Management Plan for the conflict between David and James. In this plan, include the following:

• The various conflict management strategies
• The strengths and weaknesses of each
• Considerations for selecting a strategy
• Alternate strategies
• Possible challenges