Product Overview

What does a multinational approach to team-building look like? This case explores why, on the surface, one team was succeeding brilliantly while another team was languishing. Mounting problems at one of Fiduciary Consulting's fledgling business units in Boston required the immediate attention of the company's Montreal-based CEO, Jim Smith. Fiduciary had hired a new CEO for the U.S. subsidiary in 2003, and now, only nine months later, there seemed to be a lot of turmoil in that office. He began to wonder whether the subtle grumblings of his colleagues in Boston should have warranted a response from him earlier. All he could do at this stage was to think about what his expectations for success should be in the United States. What was going on in that office? How should he try to sort out the issues that seemed to be percolating? With all the success and collegiality that surrounded him in Montreal, Smith wondered what had gone so wrong in the Boston office--and what he could do to rectify the situation.

Learning Objectives

The learning objectives include: creating a learning situation to illustrate the importance of setting group norms and adhering to them, and using concepts from an organizational behavior course to analyze difficult team situations such as (1) is there information flowing among themselves; (2) how effective is the boss is in encouraging cohesion; (3) how effective is the team in making decisions; and (4) has the team achieved social balance?