1. Form into groups. 

2. Analyse the Factory paint shop case below using Homans’s model: environment of group (physical, technological, social); external system (required activities, required interactions, required sentiments): internal system (emergent activities, emergent interactions, emergent sentiments). 

3. Make the case for and against management intervention. Give your reasons and state your recommendations. Factory work can be boring and monotonous. Employees must work at the pace of the assembly line or machine, with output levels closely prescribed and monitored by management. It is not surprising that factory workers will try anything to break the boredom and relentless grind of the controlled activity in a factory. In a particular factory a large paint-spraying machine was approximately 100 metres long and required a team of 24 people to keep it running. There were only 18 workstations on the machine, but the staffing plan was that six people would float between jobs, thereby allowing everyone to take a break whilst keeping the machine running. In practice four people would be in the mess room for their entire shift running a card syndicate. Everyone else in the work team would take shorter breaks and simply drop in and out of the card game as their breaks allowed. A different team of four people would be informally ‘rostered’ each day so that over a period everyone had the total break time allowed by the company. The team achieved their allowed breaks in a way not intended (or approved) by management. Gambling was not allowed by the company either, but this did not bother the workers. Supervisors also turned a blind eye to the process as long as the work was completed and productivity was at acceptable levels.