David J. Cherrington , Brigham Young University Tamarack Industries manufactures motor boats that are primarily used for water skiing, During the summer months, a third production line is normally created to help meet the heavy summer demand. This third line is usually created by assigning the experienced workers to a three lines, and hiring university students on their three-month summer holidays to complete the crews. In the past, however, experienced workers resented having to break up their teams to form a third line. They also resented having to work with a bunch of uni students and complained that the 'kids' were slow and arrogant. The supervisor, Dan Jensen, has decided to try a different strategy this summer and have all the university students work on the new line. He asked Mark Allen to supervise the new crew because Allen claimed that he knew everything about boats and could perform every job 'with my eyes closed'. Allen was happy to accept the new job and participated in selecting his own crew. Allen's crew was called 'The Geek Team' because the university students were always talking about computer technology. Allen spent many hours in training to get his group running at full production. The students learned quickly, and by the end of the first month their production rate was up to standard, with an error rate that was only slightly above normal. To simplify the learning process, Dan Jensen assigned The Geek Team long production runs that generally consisted of 30 to 40 identical units. Thus the training period was shortened and errors were reduced. Shorter production runs were assigned to the experienced teams. Within six weeks, a substantial rivalry had been created between The Geek Team and the older workers. At first, the rivalry was good-matured. But after a few weeks, the older workers became resentful of the remarks made by the students. The Geek Team often met its production schedules with time to spare at the end of the day for goofing around. It wasn't uncommon for someone from The Geek Team to go to another line pretending to look for materials, just to make demeaning comments. The experienced workers resented having to perform all the shorter production runs and began to retaliate with sabotage. They would sneak over during breaks and hide tools, dent materials, install something crooked and in other small ways do something that would slow production for The Geek Team. Jensen felt good about his decision to form a separate crew of university students, but when he heard reports of sabotage and rivalry, he be~e very concerned. Because of complaints from the experienced workers, Dan equalized the production so that all of the crews had similar production runs. The rivalry, however, did not stop. The Geek Team continued to finish early and flaunt their performance in front of the other crews. One day The Geek Team suspected that one of their assemblies was going to be sabotaged during the lunch break by one of the experienced crews. By skillful deception, they were able to substitute an assembly from the other experienced line for theirs. By the end of the lunch period, The Geek Team was laughing wildly because of their deception, while one experienced crew was very angry with the other one. Dan Jensen decided that the situation had to be changed and announced that the job assignments between the different crews would be shuffled. The employees were told that when they appeared for work the next morning, the names of the workers assigned to each crew would be posted on the bulletin board. The announcement was not greeted with much enthusiasm, and Mark Allen decided to stay late to try to talk Jensen out of his idea. Allen didn't believe the rivalry was serious enough for this type of action, and he suspected that many of the university students would quit if their team was broken up.

QUESTIONS

I. Use the conflict model to (a) identify the structural causes of conflict, and (b) discuss the escalation of conflict described in this case. Your answer should also identify the signs (symptoms) of conflict in this case.

2. Analyse the case using relevant theories on team dynamics.

3- If you were Dan Jensen, what action would you take in this situation?