Management theory suggests that compared to an individual, a diverse group of people will be more creative because team members will bring a variety of ideas, perspectives, and approaches to the group. For an organization like Alphabet’s Google, innovation is critical to its success, and teams are a way of life. If management theory about teams is on target, then Google’s research and development Hyderabad center in India should excel at innovation. Why? Because there you’ll find broad diversity, even though all employees are from India. These Googlers include Indians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and Jains. And they speak English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and more of India’s twenty-two officially recognized languages. One skill Google looks for in potential hires is the ability to work as a team member. As Google continues to grow at a rapid pace, new Googlers are continually added to teams.

Suppose you’re a manager at Google’s Hyderabad facility.

How would you gauge a potential hire’s ability to work as a team member, and how would you maintain your team’s innovation when new engineers and designers join the group?

Global Sense Workforce productivity. It’s a performance measure that’s important to managers and policy makers around the globe. Governments want their labor forces to be productive.
Managers want their employees to be productive.
Being productive encompasses both efficiency and effectiveness.
Think back to our discussion of efficiency and effectiveness in Chapter 1. Efficiency is getting the most output from the least amount of input or resources. Or, said another way, doing things the right way. Effectiveness was doing those work activities that would result in achieving goals, or doing the right things that would lead to goal achievement. So how does workforce productivity stack up around the world? Here are some of the most recent data on six-year labor productivity growth rates from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Australia, 1.57 percent; Canada, 0.99 percent; Greece, –1.09 percent; Ireland, 6.12 percent;
Korea, 2.09 percent; Turkey, 3.06 percent; United Kingdom, 0.23 percent; and United States, 0.36 percent.
Despite fairly strong economic growth and low unemployment, workforce productivity rate growth across the globe has been relatively slow in recent years. Since the recession, labor productivity growth has been about half what it was before the last economic crisis. Companies have been hiring more employees as a way to increase productivity growth.
Low unemployment rates mean that companies have been forced to hire less skilled employees than they would like.
This makes productivity growth harder to achieve for companies.
But what an opportunity this situation presents if you are getting into the workforce and have skills and strong productivity to offer!
Discuss the following questions in light of what you learned in Part 4:
• How might workforce productivity be affected by organizational design? Look at the six key elements of organizational design.
• What types of adaptive organizational design might be conducive to increasing worker productivity?
Which might be detrimental to worker productivity?
• How might an organization’s human resource management approach affect worker productivity? How could managers use their HR processes to improve worker productivity?
• Are teams more productive than individuals? Discuss and explain.
• What could managers do to reduce the stress that employees feel due to pressure from managers to increase productivity growth?............

Discussion Questions 

P4-1. What types of departmentalization are being used?
Explain your choices. (Hint: In addition to information in the case, you might want to look at the description of corporate executives under “Leadership” on the company’s website.)
P4-2. What possible problems could Starbucks encounter with their matrix structure? What could they do to try to minimize these problems?
P4-3. If Starbucks wanted to offer compressed workweeks, flextime, or job sharing, what would they need to consider? What are advantages and disadvantages of offering these employment options at Starbucks?

P4-4. Starbucks has said its goal is to expand delivery to one-quarter of its US stores and increase earnings per share by 10 percent. How will the organizing function contribute to the accomplishment of these goals?
P4-5. Starbucks has said that it wants people who have the ability to create “genuine moments of connection”
with customers, a willingness to learn, and an openness to getting the job done while helping fellow team members. How does the company ensure that its hiring and selection process identifies those kinds of people?
P4-6. Evaluate Starbucks’s training efforts. What other type(s) of training might be necessary?
P4-7. Pretend that you’re a local Starbucks’s store manager.
You have three new hourly partners (baristas)
joining your team. Describe the orientation you would provide these new hires.
P4-8. If Starbucks wanted to implement multiperson comparisons or 360-degree appraisals as methods of evaluating employee performance, what possible issues (both positive and negative) might arise?
How might those employee performance management methods affect how store managers manage their teams?
P4-9. Which of the company’s values affect the organizing function of management? Explain how the one(s) you chose would affect how Starbucks’s managers deal with

(a) structural issues;

(b) HRM issues; and

(c) issues in managing teams. (Hint: Starbucks’s values can be found on the company’s website.)