SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE BUILDING DESIGN

Bachelor of Quantity Surveying (Honours)

PEOPLE DYNAMICS IN MALAYSIAN ORGANIZATIONS

UCM60303U3

Name: Tan Vin Nie

Student ID: 0323706
Course: Bachelor of Quantity Surveying (Honours)
Tutorial Session: Wednesday 4-5pm (Session 3)
1. Discuss how Toyota can train its employees to shape team behavior and
emphasise teamwork throughout the organisation. (500 words)

Toyota Motor Corporation has been creating a good image and model to the
world with their fabulous teamwork. From the article, we could know that teamwork is
one of Toyotas core values. They believe that an employee who concerns about trust,
continuous improvement, long-term thinking, standardization, innovation and problem
solving will assist their company to reach the biggest achievement. In addition, Toyota
also emphasizes on four management principles (the 4P model) which are problem
solving, people and partners, process and philosophy. The 4P model is the essential
elements in Toyota which is used to train and guide its employees in order to shape
their team behavior. What makes them somewhat unique to Toyota? Toyota utilizes
these principles to construct the personality of every employee so that they can exhibit
strong teamwork capabilities such as able to trust their team, be comfortable solving
problem collaboratively and motivated to achieve collective outcomes. With a long-term
philosophy, employees could evaluate every function in the company in terms of its
ability to achieve it. Toyota also encourages its employees to solve problems and
improve the process by going to the source and personally observing and verifying the
data rather than believing what the computer screen tell you. Working with relentless
reflection and continuous improvement is the main characteristic for a qualified
employee in Toyota.

Toyota Motor Corporation has their own culture to emphasize teamwork

throughout the organization. Toyota prefers its employees to concern more about values
rather than the outcomes. Toyota wants its employees to work together without conflicts
and misunderstandings. Goal setting is the most significant part in order to cooperate
the people in an organization. Goal setting acts as a fundamental purpose for an
organization to exist. Goals indicate and give direction to an employee about what they
needs to be done and how much effort the employee needs to expand. In Goal-setting
Theory, there are five criteria which are SMART. SMART indicates specific, measurable,
action-oriented, realistic and relevant and time-based. This theory helps to motivate
employees by setting challenging and attainable goals. Therefore, goals lead them to
work as teams. Toyota inspires and motivates their workers to work together toward
common goals. The leaders of Toyota always emphasize on teamwork no matter where
they are. They believe teamwork is the main power to succeed their goals.

From the article, it stated Toyotas hiring process weeds out those who are not
oriented to teamwork. Toyota reflects its emphasis on teamwork by implementing the
act of resigning someone who is non-cooperation. With the concept Theory X and
Theory Y, we could find that there are two aspects of human behavior at work, one of
which is negative, called Theory X, and the other of which is positive, called Theory Y. In
order to create a harmonic working environment, Toyota prefers to have employees who
have the characteristic of Theory Y. Theory Y encourages decentralization of authority,
teamwork and participative decision-making in an organization. It helps to create a
peaceful and pleasant working surrounding which satisfies the employees needs.
However, Toyota eliminates those who prone to Theory X because this kind of people
dislike responsibilities and are motivated mainly with money. It may affect the
performance and result of the company as well as the emotion of other employees.

To ensure that teamwork is properly integrated in the organizational culture,

every Toyota employee goes through a teambuilding training program. Toyota invests
time and money into this program in order to develop a strong relationship between the
leaders and the employees. When they get to know each other well, they tend to
eliminate their defenses and try to reveal their real personalities. It promotes teamwork
among the employees when they feel ease to interact with the people around. They feel
love and belongings which is one of the needs in Maslows Hierarchy of Needs Theory.
They find belongingness when they have friends and colleagues. Colleagues could
provide help and suggestion when they are facing problems with their works. A strong
bonds among the employees encourages them to work as a team.

Besides, Toyota encourages their employees to be innovative and creative where

they could grapple with challenges and problems with a lot of fresh ideas. Equality and
fairness are important in an organization as all the people need opportunities and
promotions. Toyota therefore invests heavily in people and organizational capabilities,
and it garners ideas from everyone and everywhere. In the concept job satisfaction,
opportunities and promotions is one of the factor that affects the feeling of the
employees toward their current jobs. When all the employees are treated equally and
being given chances to express their opinions and ideas, they will feel enjoyable and
confident to work together with people. It is a significant process as all the strengths and
creativities of the employees can be gathered to make a huge success.

As conclusion, I found that Toyota is a very responsible organization as it puts a

lot of efforts to guide and train its employees. Toyota has increased its employees
strengths in different aspects and also the teamwork abilities to work together. As all
Toyota employee knows the adage, All of us are smarter than any of us. Therefore,
Toyota made incredible success nowadays with the spirit of teamwork.
2. In your opinion, analyse if Toyota has succeeded because of its team-oriented
culture or it could have succeeded without it. (500 words)

In my opinion, I believe that Toyota has succeeded because of its team-oriented

culture. A team is defined as a small number of people with complementary skills who
are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals and approach for which
they hold themselves mutually accountable. When effective teams are in place, the
collective product is greater than the sum of the individual effort. Teamwork is one of
Toyotas core values. Toyota holds on the adage All of us are smarter than any of us to
reflect the importance of teamwork. Toyota shows its employees the seriousness of the
commitment by giving teams the authority to get their jobs done on their own terms,
while ensuring they accept responsibility for the results.

Toyota Motor Corporation has succeeded because it considers employee as the

most significant asset. Toyota invests a lot of money to train its employees to be the
best and qualified members in the team. As what we have learned in Maslows
Hierarchy of Needs Theory, employees aim for physiological needs, security needs,
social and belongingness needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Toyota
satisfies their needs and interests through satisfactory salaries and wages and a career
development program for advancing employees. In addition, Toyota also offers financial
assistance for employees continuing formal education. Teambuilding training program
has been planned in order to motivate all the employees to work as teams. Imagine that
if an organization only seeks for its own benefit without fulfilling the basic needs of the
employees, the employees would finally loss their interests for the jobs and do not be
willing to contribute their time and energy to work with the organization. Thus, Toyota
makes a pretty effort by providing several programs and services for employees, not
only to increase their strengths and potentials, and also to pull all the employees
together. Toyota offers opportunity to all the employees to gain improvements so that
they have the same capabilities and skills to work with other members as a team.

Toyota has succeeded because team-oriented culture leads to better production.

Team-oriented culture gives a potential for Toyota to get higher level of output without
increasing input in the meantime. Innovating a new product requires a large number of
experts in various specialties working together on various organizational tasks. Some
companies choose to invest heavily on human resources in order to hire a lot of
outstanding engineers and technicians from different states. They only emphasize on
the companys benefits without promoting teamwork. This situation tends to create
adverse group behavior such as social loafing, diffusion of responsibility, escalation of
commitment and groupthink among the employees. Conflict and disputation may
happen and eventually the time of production will be prolonged. Therefore, Toyota builds
an effective team by developing values and disciplines to all the employees through
different programs and activities. Toyota uses the four management principles (the 4P
model) to guide and motivate its employees. Other than that, the employees are also
trained to be in cross-functional teams. It is necessary for the employees to understand
how different areas of the company work, so that they are more apt to make decisions
that benefit the company as a whole, rather than solely their own department or group.
The most successful teams and collaborative environments have a sense of shared
purpose and understand that diversity contributes to problem-solving and creative
solutions. Regardless of the skill level and individual contribution of the members,
success is earned and shared by the team. Additional costs such as the expenses of
hiring experts and importing technologies can be reduced because work group have the
capability to achieve more than individual acting alone. Thus, Toyota can gain high level
of output without increasing the input.

Besides, team-oriented culture leads to good management system in an

organization. When all the employees emphasize on teamwork, management works
could be progressed and undergone easily in an organization. Leadership is the main
element to bring up a systematic management system. Effective leaders are
cheerleaders for the team. They encourage and support members who are committed
and actively involved with their teams and engage those members who arent
participating. From the article, we could find that the former CEO of Toyota USA rejected
to feature himself in the advertisement and he said, We want to show everybody in the
company. The heroes. Not one single person. He had shown a shining example to the
world that a leader should treat every employee fairly in order to earn respect from
them. A good leader raises awareness of attitudes and beliefs that hinder or contribute
to a team effort. Effective communication between leaders and employees is also one of
the method to encourage teamwork and prevent working on opposite direction.
Employees would feel comfortable to follow and agree with the capabilities and
decisions of the leaders. Therefore, leadership leads to the successful of the
organization.

As conclusion, I believe that Toyota could not have succeeded without team-
oriented culture. To sustain in this competitive market nowadays, the supports and
contributions of the employees are the strongest structure to support the whole
organization. No one works alone in any organization. Every employee is a part of a
team and works in close coordination with the team members to perform the highest
performance and in turn benefit the organization. With the spirit of teamwork, quality
improvement and problem solving could be achieved through the activities of work
teams. Thus, Toyota makes a big effort on promoting teamwork and it finally pays off by
showing its fabulous success in the world.