Team India : Power and Prowess at par

Essay by televjUniversity, Bachelor's April 2006

download word file, 4 pages 2.6

"The Indian Cricket Saga" - identifies the crossfire between the current Indian cricket coach Greg Chappell and former captain Sourav Ganguly, which erupted during the Indian team's Zimbabwe tour in June 2005. With the essential focus on team performance, the case probes into factors like; locus of power, shifting team dynamics, emotional intelligence, adversity quotient, effect of the environmental through various stake-holders, etc. It emphasizes the interdependence of all these factors and their influence on team performance. The basic idea is to draw parallels from the sports arena to explain team performance in organizations.

The case was given to the batch of PGDM 2005-07 for classroom discussions on the 29th of November 2005 and was received with fervor and enthusiasm. The participants were relating the issues emerging from the case to the various concepts of Organizational Behavior. Various points emerging from the discussions related to theories of different styles of leadership under different situations, preference of power bases by individuals, constructive conflict management, consistent team composition for effective team dynamics, influence of cultural changes and the rapidity of these changes, importance of emotional intelligence and association with the adversity quotient, and the external influencing factors like BCCI, the media, the political clout governing a game which is as passionate as cricket, in India.

Amidst the presence of faculty members apart from the one leading the discussions, the discussion by the PGP participants took a crescendo, as they got deeply engrossed in the issues before culminating into the conceptual analysis.

The participants identified John Wright as a transformational leader who was sensitive to the needs of the players and showed patience in understanding the psyche of individual players and the team overall. On the contrary, participants agreed that Greg Chappell was more aggressive and came as a taskmaster. Ganguly was...