Hrm Assignment

Businesses thrive on hard-work, endurance, the ability to leap across obstacles and achieving targets in unfavorable circumstances. They rely not only on individual brilliance but also on people slogging together as a team to excel in competitive markets. All these qualities draw a striking parallel from the field of sports. Modern sporting giants like Dallas Cowboys or Bolton Celtics today are businesses in themselves. In addition, businesses in different fields apply the takeaways from sports in their day to day operations. Robert W. Keidel attempts to pitch sports as a model for providing business solutions. He advocates a forced analogy approach where business is compared to a sports team and management dons the hat of a coach.

Managers that identify with a particular sport draw similarities between their organization and the game. Concepts like “giving 100%”, “competitiveness” and “all for one and one for all” are qualities that managers strive to imbibe in their organizations. The kind of organization which they manage as well as their affinity towards a particular sport influences their actions. Their approach towards solving organizational problems could be the way a coach looks at a game. The author, in his paper, attempts to illustrate analogies between business and three professional sports, in particular- baseball, football and basketball.

Consider a sales organization or research institute where each individual excels in a certain specific area. These contain high performing individuals or individuals that work with a certain autonomy resembling a baseball team. The performance of the entire organization, similar to the winning/losing of the team, depends on the level of performance of these individuals. Efforts towards the success of the organization generally lean towards developing and improving individual skills. Additionally, the organization could be located in different locations similar to the player dispersion in baseball. The characteristic of being physically separate as well as low cohesion make these organizations a loosely coupled system. Managerial co-ordination required here is low which gives flexibility. Analogous to baseball where there are no elaborate game plans but rather just in time decisions, managers of such organizations need to be quick thinkers.

Postindustrial era, industries were characterized by strict division of labor and very formal job descriptions. Every individual performed a certain specific task and aided the others in his team. The author compares these mass production or traditional “machine bureaucracies” to a football team. American football requires a certain level of co-ordination between defense and offense. The defense backs up the offense in an attack. This co-ordination is achieved through strategy and planning similar to business strategy in organizations. Moreover a touchdown can be seen as a series of passes between players. This is analogous to an assembly line where one process feeds its output to another process. Similar to football where player dispersion is dense, workers in mass production work closely with each other. Lastly football may have different teams for offense and defense. Thus each player performs a very specific function or role something which mass producing companies are infamous for. Managers of such organizations have intensive plans for operations and strategies are followed religiously. It’s the mangers responsibility to ensure that the organization works like a well-oiled machine. All the parts work smoothly and in synchronization with each other.  

There are certain organizations in modern times where cohesion is the norm. In contrast to baseball or football style organizations where there is limited interaction, co-ordination is crucial to achieve maximum efficiency. Organizations like consulting firms or creative ad agencies have the performance unit as the team. Here the team performs as a whole and success or failure depends on collective performance. The author compares such organizations to a basketball team where passing is important and individual brilliance has less scope. These organizations share the attribute of being “tightly coupled “ with basketball and thus showcase high co-ordination. Players in a basketball team do not have formalized descriptions as offense or defense, but rather perform these roles interchangeably. This is analogous to a taskforce that has people from different teams working towards a common goal. The managers of basketball, like organizations, should be integrators as well as tacticians. The aim is to build a highly cohesive group, a team that gels well and performs as a whole. The manager has to minimize conflicts among the team and has to make sure that the members adjust to each other.