Those studying organisational behaviour often find themselves reading about the issues faced by global businesses, whose managerial excellence is supported by cutting-edge technology and major financial investment. The organisation in this case study has neither cuttingedge technology nor major investment and never has had. However, it has become famous in recent years, as the world’s business schools have beaten a path to its door to study the extraordinary organisation of Mumbai’s dabbawalahs.

Dabbawalahs (or ‘tiffinwalahs’) run a service in Mumbai whose purpose is easy enough to describe: each working day, they arrange the collection and delivery from Bombay’s suburbs of about 200,000 lunches in the traditional tiffin boxes. These meals are prepared by wives or mothers (or sometimes local restaurants) for individual workers in central Mumbai: obviously, the contents of each box are unique, which is the central appeal of the service. A little later in the day, the dabbawalahs collect the empties and return them to the workers’ homes.

Your tasks

1. If a team can be defined as a group of people working towards a common goal, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the dabbawalah practice of making team members shareholders, rather than employees. Would the same arguments apply to other logistically similar operations?

2. Use the framework in Figure 8.4 to analyse the cohesiveness and performance of the dabbawalah team. To what extent does the dabbawalah service display the characteristics of an effective work group?

3. Why has technology played such a small part in the development of the dabbawalah service so far? Is this likely to change in future? Identify ways in which this might affect the team spirit of the organisation.

Transcribed Image Text:

Figure 8.4 Factors contributing to group cohesiveness and performance MEMBERSHIP ■size of the group compatibility of members permanence of group members ORGANISATIONAL management and leadership ■ HR policies and procedures success external threat WORK ENVIRONMENT nature of the task physical setting ■communications ■ technology GROUP COHESIVENESS AND PERFORMANCE GROUP DEVELOPMENT AND MATURITY forming storming ☐☐norming performing adjourning