Teaching Notes for Adctional Cases BZ THE OUTSTANDING FACULTY AWARD Prepared by Steven L McShane, The University of Western These case teaching notes were Australia Primary Case Topics ‘Team dynamics and decision making, individual decision making Case Synopsis Cannes escribes the experience ofa faculty member who sat on an Outstanding Faculty Award committee for the Sarcbe Of Business. The case describes the process from nomination to selection, as well as discussion regarding aacrences of opinion. The committee used a structured decision process involving weighted criteria and scores fOr candidates on each criterion. However, the final choice went toa faculty member who received the bottom sere. Discussion Questions and Suggested Answers 1 Wns problems in team decision making likely caused the committee to selec for the award the worst applicant on their list? Students should be able to identify at least two team decision making problems in this case. One problem is that a more influential people derailed a logical decision process because thetr preference had mere weight. The chapter (on feam decision making advises that no one on the team should dominate the process. A second problem is that individual committee members were easly swayed by the support that others gave to the ith the seein’ suggestion. This relates to peer pressure in that others probably do not wish to appear a odds with the group attitude.