b.

Lencioni’s five factors (2009)

Furthermore, Lencioni (2009) provides another model to point out dysfunctional factors that
prevent team from operating productively. According to Lencioni (2009), there are five factors
that explain why team members cannot work well together, including absence of trust, fear of
conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of responsibility, and inattention to results. The faults
within the Corporation’s revolution can be illustrated as below:

No Dysfunctional Factors Applying to the Corporation’s case

1 Absence of trust
2 Fear of conflict
3 Lack of commitment
4 Avoidance of responsibility
5 Inattention to results
There was an absence of trust among the
organization committees towards the success of the
project when many of them questioned Barbara
about the program’s cost and risk.
When the agreement was reached, everyone seemed
to compromise and gave no more arguments as they
might be afraid of conflicts.
Tom with his unapproved project showed no interest
in the automation program and has no commitment
to it since he runs another program himself.
Other departments either exercised no effort in
developing the project.
The CEO of the company who was supposed to play
an important role in the approval meeting was
absent and could not keep track of the program
procedure.
Since Harry only viewed the project under his
financial standpoint, he continued to cut cost and
seemed not to pay attention to the final results of
the program.
Tom also does not care about how the program is
 going and serves only his department benefits.

The model highlights shortage of the Corporation in implementing the new IT system, so this
also hinders the direction to the Corporation to improve itself.

III. Conclusions
Analyzing the Corporation case is helpful in understanding theory models and perceptions of
human management. Firstly, the main conflict arises during the process, which is between
Barbara and Tom, can be classified as interpersonal conflict or intergroup conflict. Conflict
between them is caused by role incompatibility, environmental stress (Carlopio & Andrawartha
2008), target differentiation and limited resources (DeJanasz et al. 2005). The evolving of this
conflict is also described through four stages, including latent conflict, felt conflict, overt
conflict and outcome (Quinn et al. 2007). According to Thomas’s Conflict modes (1992),
Barbara’s conflict behavior is competing, while that of Tom is avoiding. The conflict results in
dysfunctional outcome to the Corporation. Regarding to assessment of Barbara’s politic
management, though her course of actions toward John Franks is perceived quite well, she fails
on dealing with other three key players, which are Mr Jeavons, Tom Blyth and Harry McLeod.
Finally, the paper uses two models of ineffective team of DeJanasz et al. (2008) and Lencioni
(2009) to explain the overall failure of the Corporation’s automation project.
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