T. A. Stearns is a national tax accounting firm whose main business is tax preparation services for individuals. Stearns’ superior reputation is based on the high quality of its advice and the excellence of its service. Key to the achievement of its reputation are the state-of-the-art computer databases and analysis tools that its people use when counselling clients. These programs were developed by highly trained individuals. The programs are highly technical, in terms of both the code in which they are written and the tax laws they cover. Perfecting them requires high levels of programming skill as well as the ability to understand the law. New laws and interpretations of existing laws have to be integrated quickly and flawlessly into the existing regulations and analysis tools. The creation of these programs is carried out in a virtual environment by four programmers in the greater Vancouver area. The four work at home and are connected to each other and to the company by email, telephone, and conference software. Formal on-site meetings among all of the programmers take place only a few times a year, although the workers sometimes meet informally at other times. The four members of the team are Tom Andrews, Cy Crane, Marge Dector, and Megan Harris. These four people exchange email messages many times every day. In fact, it’s not unusual for them to step away from guests or family to log on and check in with the others. Often their emails are amusing as well as work-related. Sometimes, for instance, when they were facing a deadline and one of Marge’s kids was home sick, they helped each other with the work. Tom has occasionally invited the others to visit his farm; and Marge and Cy have gotten their families together several times for dinner. About once a month the whole team gets together for lunch. All four of these Stearns employees are on salary, which, consistent with company custom, is negotiated separately and secretly with management. Although each is required to check in regularly during every workday, they were told when they were hired that they could work wherever they wanted. Clearly, flexibility is one of the pluses of these jobs. When the four get together, they often joke about the managers and workers who are tied to the office, referring to them as “face timers” and to themselves as “free agents.” When the programmers are asked to make a major program change, they often develop programming tools called macros to help them do their work more efficiently. These macros greatly enhance the speed at which a change can be written into the programs. Cy in particular really enjoys hacking around with macros. On one recent project, for instance, he became obsessed with the prospect of creating a shortcut that could save him a huge amount of time. One week after turning in his code and his release notes to the company, Cy bragged to Tom that he had created a new macro that had saved him eight hours of work that week. Tom was skeptical of the shortcut, but after trying it out he found that it actually saved him many hours too.

Questions 

1. Is this group a team? 

2. What role have norms played in how this team acted? 

3. Has anyone in this case acted unethically? 

4. What should Dave do now?