1

Group & Organization Dynamics

Group Assignment Div C





Submitted By:
Nikhil Jhanb C023
Riddhi Kundu C026
Ann Mary Mathew C027
Gaurav Mehrotra C028
Shramana Saha Roy C043
Stuttee Arora C061

2

INDEX

S.No. Section Pages
1 Introduction 3
2 Statement of Objectives 3
3 Method of Study 3
4 Organizational Structure 4
5 Team Effectiveness 5
6 Organizational Culture 6
7 Change Management 8
8 Power Structure 8
9 Conflicts and their Resolution 10
10 Conclusion 11






3


INTRODUCTION
Manufacturing is the production of goods for use or sale using labour and machines, tools,
chemical and biological processing, or formulation. The term may refer to a range of human
activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production,
in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such finished
goods may be used for manufacturing other, more complex products, such
as aircraft, household appliances or automobiles, or sold to wholesalers, who in turn sell them
to retailers, who then sell them to end users the "consumers".
One of the biggest manufacturing sectors in India is Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private
Limited, which has been taken for study by our group. Toyota Kirloskar Motor Private
Limited is a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan (with Kirloskar Group as a
minority owner), for the manufacture and sales of Toyota cars in India. It is currently the 4th
largest car maker in India after Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Mahindra.


STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES
Through this assignment, we have tried to understand the Group and Organisation Dynamics
of TKM with respect to its Organisational Structure, Team Effectiveness, Organisation
Culture, Change Management, Power Structure and Conflict Emergence and Resolution
through various modes of research.


METHOD OF STUDY
To prepare the report, we have conducted both primary and secondary research. Through a
detailed questionnaire floated via the HR of the company to a sample of 20 respondents, we
have tried to analyse team effectiveness based on various parameters.
We also had a discussion with an employee of TKM, who gave us useful insights on the
Organisational Structure, Power Structure and Conflicts and the resolution methods etc. of
the organisation.
Apart from these, we have done an extensive research to understand the Organisational
Culture and Change Management and so on.

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF STUDY
The scope of this study is limited to the data obtained from the sample of respondents of the
survey and interview conducted with the Toyota personnel. Hence, the findings given in the
report may not be an actual representation of the scenario in the overall manufacturing sector,
as the sample size is small.
4


ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
The organizational structure of the company is introduced its new organizational structure on
1
st
Jan 2013. According to the new structure, the managing director is Hiroshi Nakagawa and
the total number of employees in the organization is 6000+.

Exhibit 1 Basic organizational structure of Toyota

The organizational structure as shown in Exhibit 1 mainly resembles a Matrix Structure.
The strength of the is putting like specialists which minimizes the number necessary while
allowing the pooling and sharing of specialized resources across products. Its major
disadvantage is coordinating the task of diverse functional specialists within time and budget.
The organization follows a lean production system. Lean manufacturing often simply,
"lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other
than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for
elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or
service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay
for.

This report has tried to look into the various organizational issues that Toyota faces in its day
to day operations and how it deals with it.


5


TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
Team effectiveness refers to the system of getting people in a company or institution to work
together effectively. The idea behind it is that a group of people working together can achieve
much more than if the individuals of the team were working on their own. The effectiveness
of a team is determined by a number of factors. The four contextual factors most significantly
related to team performance are adequate resources, effective leadership, a climate of trust
and a performance evaluation and reward system that reflect team contributions.
Adequate Resources Toyota has implemented Just In-Time methods to reduce
waste and increase efficiency. The suppliers are integrated with the Toyota online
system and hence they can supply parts as and when required by the company thereby
enabling the work teams to perform their jobs effectively.
Leadership and Structure - Toyota has a relatively flat org structure. The Toyota
philosophy is to disperse responsibility to the lowest level possible.
Toyota uses an inverted pyramid model for leadership, where the leaders of
the organization are pictured at the bottom to support the majority of the
organization (versus the traditional top/down chart)
Production Employees are assigned to groups of 20-30.
Group Leader is responsible for one of these groups. Typically has the
greatest number of direct reports. Group Leader is considered the first level of
management.
Team Leader within the group are smaller teams, generally 5-7 people.
Each of these teams has a Team Leader. The Team Leader reports to the
Group Leader.
Team & Group Leaders have direct responsibility for all production-related
activities in the plant.
Team and group leaders have three basic responsibilities:
1. Support for operations
2. Promotion of the system
3. Leading change
Climate of Trust Toyota creates a climate of mutual trust and respect between
labor and management through dialogues and sharing of responsibility to facilitate
cooperation among team members.
Performance Evaluation and Reward Systems Toyota follows a performance
evaluation system based on individual as well as team results and rewards its
employees accordingly.
Questionnaire floated in the organization:
To check the overall team effective behavior of the organization, our group floated a
questionnaire (the questionnaire is attached in the appendix) to the HR of the company.
We received 12 responses from the organization at different levels. This questionnaire
consists of a team effectiveness scale of 30 items. Each item has two extreme poles. The
respondent is required to rate each item on a five point scale.
6

The scoring of the same has been done in the following manner.
1. In order to make all items unidirectional, we have reversed the following items 2, 4, 6,
8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28 and 30 ( 5 becomes 1, 4 becomes 2, 2 becomes
4 and 1 becomes 5).
2. After reversing all the items and adding up all the encircled ratings and find the total
of the ratings. This will be range from 30 to 150. Multiplying the outcome by 0.83
and then obtaining the final output in the range in which we can interpret it.
Result Interpretation:
The following results are suggested for various level of team effectiveness:
Sl.no. Total Ratings Level
1. 0 to 25 Very high
2. 25 to 50 High
3. 50 to 75 Medium
4. 75 to 100 Low

The 12 responses obtained mainly consisted of production department people. According to
the result, almost 90 percent of the people said their team was very high on team
effectiveness. While only 10% of them said that team effectiveness was high. There was no
one in the group who had medium and low team effectiveness, which shows a high
cohesiveness among the team members. Almost everyone said they had high mutual trust and
good communication among the group members and hence recognized each others strength
well. Their goal was very clear for the team and the assignment was properly distributed.
However the team decision making style is was not very effective as per the response and
people rated low in general for conflicting each others temperament in a team. In crisis
situation, the team members supported each other well and remained cohesive even at that
situation. All in all, almost all rated high on continuing with the same team and were satisfied
with their team members.




ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Toyota aims to create a corporate culture that reliably reflects the Toyota Way 2001 in actual
corporate activities and the work of individual employees. Therefore, founded on a stable
employment and labour-management relationship based on mutual trust and mutual
responsibility, Toyota promotes various measures including human resource development
and healthcare so that employees can work with vigour and enthusiasm.
7


Exhibit 2 Toyota principles of organizational culture

Organizational culture is defined by seven primary characteristics:
Innovation and risk taking Toyota was the first company to introduce lean
manufacturing system and the company and even today continues to reduce its waste
and increase efficiency through Kaizen.
Attention to detail At Toyota employees are pay a lot of attention to the precision
of manufacturing process which maintain Toyota in the top most leaders in car
manufacturing.
Outcome orientation Toyota has never been behind in changing with time and
bringing new models in the market according to customer needs.
People orientation - Toyota respects employees' diversity in areas such as culture,
nationality, race, language, religion, gender, age and perspective.
Team orientation Since Toyota is a manufacturing company, the successful
assembling of cars depends on the successful collaboration of the teams on the job
floor. As observed in the questionnaire the team effectiveness in the company is very
high and almost all people are satisfied with their team members.
Aggressiveness The Just in time concept brought about by Toyota shows the
competitiveness and aggressiveness of the group members. Their products shows the
innovativeness and the continual challenge they put themselves in to improve plays an
active role to make Toyota a better company to work in.
Stability - Stability in the lives of employees, and opportunities for self-realization
and growth as well as corporate development are interdependent. They are all founded
on mutual trust and respect between labor and management, long-term employment
stability and open communication.
8

CHANGE MANAGEMENT
At Toyota, everyone within the organization, from executives to shop-floor workers, is
challenged to use their initiative and creativity to experiment and learn. We often hear labor
advocates criticize assembly line work as being oppressive, and claim that menial labor robs
workers of their mental faculties. However, this could not be further from the truth with
respect to lean. When Toyota sets up assembly lines, it selects only the best and brightest
workers, and challenges them to grow in their jobs by constantly solving problems.
Toyota invests time and money into their employees and has become the model for a true
learning organization. The importance of teams and teamwork is a way of life: team-building
training is required, and it is put to practice daily. This investment in its employees far
exceeds that of the typical organization that focuses on making parts and counting quarterly
dollars.
The HR policies of the entire organization were changed and restructure so as to increase
their effectiveness and continuously keep on improving so as to fit with the changing market
demands. The new structure was implemented from 1
st
January 2013. All in all we can say
that Toyota has an excellent change management system and can well keep itself in par with
its competitors.

POWER STRUCTURE:
Based on the organizational structure defined above, we interviewed an employee of Toyota
to understand their power dynamics. Different types of power plays were observed among the
various stakeholders:
1. Formal Power:

Coercive Power
The labour unions have very high coercive power in the organisation. Since the
shopfloor workers are important resources, their demands have to be heard and met to
an extent. So high is the power enjoyed, that the labour union President directly
interacts with the VP or President of TKM regarding labour issues.
Also, from the marketing point of view, the area sales manager has coercive power as
he is the one who decides which dealers to give orders to.
Reward Power
At the office level, the lower rung of administrators and lead administrators do not
have any reward oriented variable pay based on performance at TKM. Generally, the
people from section engineer level and above are offered performance based rewards
and this power is exercised by their immediate superiors. In the shopfloor, even the
lowest workers have reward based pay defined by their team leader or group leader.

Legitimate Power
Legitimate Power is held by the General Manager and Asst. General Manager who
make important decisions regarding the organization. In TKM, based on our
9

observation, not much power is in the hands of the HR department. The Area Sales
Managers and Regional Managers also have legitimate power to an extent.

2. Personal Power:

Expert Power
The specialist engineer and Sr. Specialist engineer have an expert power owing to
their expertise in the field of automobiles. They are the ones involved in the design
and execution of manufacturing of the automobiles and hence are highly skilled.

Referent Power
The group leader or Team leader is often the one the team members look up to. Good
team leaders always enjoy referent power as they encourage and motivate their
subordinates to work efficiently.



DEPENDENCY
There is a high level of dependency on various stakeholders as these resources are
important, scarce and sometimes non substitutable.

Importance
The shopfloor workers are extremely important resources as production would go to a
standstill if they decided not to work. Hence good relations with the labour unions are
necessary for smooth functioning of the organisation. Thus the leadership always tries
to avoid any kind of uncertainty by controlling these important resources.

Scarcity
These days engineers fresh out of college are a very large number owing to the
multitude of engineering colleges in every corner of the country and they join TKM at
the basic engineer level as team members. However, the team leaders available to lead
these teams are scarce as promotions in such manufacturing firms are not so frequent.
Thus team and group leaders are valuable resources that are well taken care of in
TKM.

Non-substitutable
The Area Sales Managers are responsible for the sales of TKM automobiles and
hence there is a heavy dependency on them as they help the organisation meet their
targets and grow at the pace it needs. They are non substitutable as they are few in
number and owing to their highly specialised role they cannot be substituted.



10

CONFLICTS @ TKM
Conflicts at TKM are not common but not unheard of either. However, they are quick
to come to a resolution in case of a conflict and dont let it affect their professional
relationship in any way. Roles and tasks are divided among employees at various
levels to avoid conflicts.

1. Potential opposition or Incompatibility
The first stage in the conflict process is the appearance of conditions that creates
opportunities for conflict to arise. These conditions appear because of lack of
communication, inherent structural problems and due to personal variables.

a. Lack of Communication
Within the teams, conflicts do arise sometimes due to lack of communication
or miscommunication especially when details are not shared transparently
with all the team members. Particularly in the marketing department, conflicts
can turn serious between the area sales managers and dealers if there is lack of
communication and can hamper sales.

b. Structure
As per our discussion, roles are very clearly defined in TKM and no two job
requirements bring them into conflict. Hence, conflicts due to structure as such
are low in this organisation.

c. Personal Variables
Quite naturally, minor conflicts due to personal variables like personality,
emotions and values do take place at TKM, as there are people from various
walks of life working here. However, it does not lead to major issues and is
not as high as the conflicts occurring due to lack of communication.

2. Cognition and Personalization
At this stage, identification of any conflict is done. This stage involves the
transformation of Perceived conflict to Felt conflict. In TKM, this is a stage where
a difference in opinion is identified as a conflict. At this stage, it is important that
all members have positive feelings which will help them preserve the relationship
as they see the broader view of the situation.

3. Intentions
A lot of conflicts are escalated simply because one party attributes the wrong
intentions to the others. The newly joined members sometimes take time to gel
with people in the organisation. This results in attributing wrong intention to
others and causing conflicts sometimes. However the degree of Conflict will be
dependent on the assertiveness and cooperativeness of the persons involved.

4. Behaviour
Conflicts become visible at this stage. Before this stage, the persons become
aware of the difference in opinion but do not make it visible by their statements,
behaviour and actions. At this stage, a person attempts to implement his own
intentions rather than understanding and jointly decide on a course of action.
11


5. Outcomes
At this stage the group outcome is either benefited due to a functional conflict or
affected due to a dysfunctional conflict. The action-reaction interplay between the
conflicting parties results in consequences. However, as understood from our
discussion with employees at TKM, functional outcomes are more common at
TKM than dysfunctional outcomes. This leads to constructive discussions during
meetings improving quality of decisions, stimulating creativity and innovation and
encouraging interest and curiosity among team members.

Various conflict resolution techniques adopted by TKM:
1. Face to face discussion: The conflicting parties meet and discuss and come
to a conclusion which supports the group objective the most.

2. Compromise: The suggestions of both conflicting parties are accepted to a
extent.

3. Employee Grievance Redressal Cell: A committee devoted to solving issues
of the employees.



CONCLUSION
Based on our study, we understand that in the manufacturing sector and in Toyota Kirloskar
Motors in particular, the organizational structure is clearly defined. Team effectiveness is
quite high in the organization as most of the work happens on the shopfloor and there has to
be co-operation between all members for smooth production to take place. Different kinds of
power are exercised by the various stakeholders. Conflicts do exist but not to a great extent
and resolutions are provided quickly.

REFERENCES
http://www.toyotabharat.com/
http://www.toyota-global.com/sustainability/csr_initiatives/stakeholders/employees/
http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/10817/toyota-continuous-improvement
Organizational behaviour by Robbins, Judge and Vohra

APPENDIX