The Virtual Environment Work Team Essay Example

action for the virtual environment work team.

Background of the Study

T.A. Stearns, a national accounting firm, was a popular national accounting firm because of its superior reputation for high quality of its advice and the excellence of its service to tax preparation services. Highly-trained individuals, usually lawyers and tax accountant with programming skills on the side produced superior computer databases and analysis tools that were highly technical in tax laws they covered and in code they were written. T.A. Stearns’ work was carried out in the greater Boston area by four programmers namely: Tom Andrews, Cy Crane, Marge Dector and Megan Harris in a virtual environment.

Tom Andrews, 35 years old and single, was a tax lawyer and a graduate from State University. He was the primary liaison with Stearns and the longest-standing member of the group with six years of experience on the programs. He was responsible for training new group members and he also worked out of his farm in southern New Hampshire where he enjoyed hunting and fishing on his spare time. Cy Crane, 32 years old and married with two children ages four and six, was a tax accountant and a computer science graduate of State University. His wife worked full-time in a law firm in downtown Boston. He enjoyed biking and fishing on his spare time. Marge Dector, 38 years old and married with two children ages eight and ten, was a tax lawyer and a graduate from Outstate University. Her husband worked full-time as an electrical engineer and a local defense contractor. She on the other hand, enjoyed golf and skiing.

Lastly Megan Harris,

26 years old and single, was a tax accountant and a graduate from Big Time University. She worked out of her Back Bay apartment and relocated to Boston to take advantage of the wide range of opportunity in her field and to enjoy the beauty of New England. The four negotiated separately and secretly with the management. They were on salary with accustomed flexibility which was the major factor in their commitment. They could do whenever they wanted to do their work although they were required to check in regularly every workday. T.A. Stearns’ programmers were asked to make a major change that would help do work more efficiently. There was an employee suggestion program that offers five-percent savings generated by the innovation an employee has created over a period of three months.

Programmers developed programming tools that would help them do their work more efficiently called macros. Cy Crane in particular enjoyed hacking the macros and created a new macro that could save many hours of work. His innovation helped his work team to increase work production and save more time. But their virtual work team decided to keep it a secret in reasons of: (1) the small amount of money generated by company reward offsets the free time they gained; (2) if the management was to learn about the innovation which let them do the work quickly, three programmers might only be needed therefore resulting the loss of job of one.

David Regan, the manager of the work group hinted the innovation because production time went down a bit and quality shot up. He took Cy Crane to lunch and he

told him about the innovation and insisted that their group’s action was justified to protect itself. David’s boss would soon hear of this and he knew that he would look for answers from him. To make an alternative course of action for the situation is needed.