Advantages And Disadvantages Of Team Work - Free Essay Example

After forming our team, we vote a team leader to lead the team. The team leader is in charge of formulating and delegating the tasks according to the strengths of individual members. This form also allows team members to be organised on comparative advantage grounds with each members operating in their area of specialisation resulting the lowest opportunity cost during the project process. For example, some excel at coming up with the creative ideas, while others who are more meticulous can work out the small details and there are those who have the ability to communicate the overall big picture to the rest of the team. There are also others who can be counted on when it comes to implementing and follow through the whole project. Others who can speak well will be nominated to present. The key takeaways is that when a team work together, it has a huge range of skills available that can be tap on and utilise to deliver the best results. Using this approach, valuable time will be put to good use, leading to achieving maximisation of the end product. Next, speed is very crucial is finishing the project as we are faced with a tight schedule. Beside the deadline to meet, we also need to accommodate to each members schedule as most members are working. For example, our project that required intensive research, implementing it and pulling together as a whole proposition is allocated to one member to complete it; it could take more than the required time to complete the project. And due to the heavy workload on the particular member, there is also a high possibility of achieving sub- standard for the project. Therefore working in team enable the group to split up the workload, ensuring that the project schedule will be completed on time. Different members acquired different skills and knowledge. By utilising and mixing all of these different attributes in our team, more ideas can be generated during brainstorming session. As more ideas are generated, more creat ive solutions are generated, leading to better results. For example while discussing about our individual research in regards to Singapore employment key trends, challenges and issues during our brainstorming sessions; we are able to stimulate each other mind to generate ideas and solutions to our problems. During this period of discussion, transfer of nowledge will takes place as each member’s idiosyncratic information is shared among other members. And this idiosyncratic information is important as we are able to broaden our views and learn from each member’s knowledge and point of view. Discussions in a team are important to achieve creative ideas and solutions. However more than often this will also open up to a wide range of options which will result in a dilemma to choose the best solution. If we spend too much time figuring on choosing the best solution, we will remain stagnant and never move forward, impending on our project progress. In this team situation, other members can act as a sounding board, vetting through the options and choose the best agreed solution that is most likely to achieve the purpose and goal of the project. Working in a team can also create both the right support and satisfaction needed to complete the project. For example, there are times when team cannot progress with the project due to reason like lack of ideas; members can relied on the camaraderie spirit, support and encouragement to ride thru the down period. This significant energy is important in achieving the desired results. However working in a team has its kickbacks as well. There might be the possibility of the incentive dilution effect. In economic point of view, incentive dilution effect is caused by free- rider situation leading to the non-excludability of rewards. The free rider situation occurs when individuals in a group consume more or pay less than their fair share of a common resource, hence it will be hard to determine or measure free ri der contribution to the team. For example, each team member is assigned to different areas of research and findings; however one particular member did not perform to expectation and did not put in enough effort to perform the duties. Under such circumstances, non-excludability of rewards step in when this particular member rides on other members’ effort and hard work and claim contribution in making this project a success. Beside the free-rider effects, if communicating and understanding how each group member work has not developed, it may also pose a problem in completing the project. As a result conflicts will take place; cooperation within the team will be hard to compromised, therefore leading to a high transaction cost of coordination. For example, lack of understanding and cooperating with group members might lead to using more time than required to complete the project. This is an example of high transaction costs. The lower the transaction costs is, the more ben efits the team will gained. To counter the problems faced in working in a team, we can shrink the number of members to reduce the free-rider effects. As the larger the team is, the greater the free-rider effect would be. In a large team, communication within group members may not be specific enough, resulting in issues not receiving necessary focus or attention. On top of that, if members are not performing to the duties assigned to them, resulting in diminishing returns, we can use the rotation policy to assign the duties to other members to increase the flow of information. In short, working in a team is definitely more beneficial as compare to working individually; there will be more outputs in term of higher efficient work rate and more creative ideas being generated to complete the project. When we speak about teamwork, it is also about understanding how each individual member’s works and to tap on each member’s different ability and knowledge to produce qua lity work within the given deadline. However to achieve maximum benefits by working in a team, there are few issues like the free-rider effect and the risk of high transaction costs that needed to be manage carefully. If not manage carefully, time and resources like member’s knowledge will come to waste.