Last month, I came across a hot video on twitter, which left me deep impression. In the video, Australian newsreader Amber Sherlock lost her cool when a fellow journalist Julie Snook, a guest speaker sat down wearing a white jacket, a color that matches the outfits of both the women. Amber had such an epic meltdown that she reprimanded Julie put on a different-colored jacket, this event created an extremely awkward situation in the chat-room.[1]

My first reaction after I learned the whole story was there was nothing to be blamed in Amber`s request as she has already given reasonable explanation that she wanted to avoid a broadcasting incidence. Surprisingly, the majority of comments under the video criticized her rudeness. This video was also widely watched on Chinese social media Weibo, there I found most viewers’ opinion was consistent with me, Amber did nothing wrong. Given the fact that Amber had reminded Julie two hours ago to not wear the same clothes that might cause trouble for clothing department , obviously Julie has adequate time to get changed, but she didn’t, she failed to do her job and violated her obligation.

By comparing these two opposite public opinion, I realized people from the west holds different opinion in fundamental attribution error, namely, the tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others, than those who are from the east. The former is inclined to attribute Amber`s overreaction to be the inevitable outcome of surroundings. While the latter tends to regards it as obnoxious bully. From the anthropological standpoint, westerners and easterners have been maintaining contrasting logical system for thousands of years. The collectivism determine Asian to value high contextual culture. Whereas individualism make western society” treat specific objects in isolation from their context. And they hold belief that they can know the rules governing objects and therefore can control the objects’ behavior”.[2]

Today’s historical significant globalization era requires entrepreneurs pay close attention to these distinctions so they could make appropriate judgment on their employee’s behavior and achieve effective management.

Reference

1. Andrew Court For Daily Mail Australia. (2017, January 13). Is there bad blood? Amber Sherlock and Julie Snook DON’T follow each other on social despite insisting they’re ‘good friends’… but DO follow their other Channel Nine colleagues. Retrieved February 05, 2017, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4115710/Amber-Sherlock-Julie-Snook-DON-T-follow-social-despite-insisting-good-friends.html
2. Nisbett R. E. The geography of thought: How Asians andwesterners think differently…and why. New York: Free Press,2004
3. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, chapter 2

This weekend, a blog named” Reward Your Best Teams, Not Just Star Players” triggered my keen interest. The author emphasizes that” for every executive utterance praising a high-impact individual, there should be an equally emphatic expression of support for a high-achieving team. “1

Personally, I concur with the author`s statement. There is one time when several girls and I put off the job by hand to help one of our friend to rehearse her play. Though we injected great enthusiasm to this play, we only won the best director award. The feeling that your devotion can`t be acknowledged sucks.

A paragraph in Chapter 5 of textbook support my idea. It says that “incentive pay, especially when it is awarded to individuals, can have a negative effect on group cohesiveness and productivity, and in some cases it may not offer significant benefits to a company”. 2

However, I doubt that word “equally” in this statement. As far as I am concerned, we can`t use group-based incentives and individual-based incentives separately or equally. Since these two systems have their own standard, we should combine them to form multiple incentive plan, depending on the task itself. In my point of view, incentive plan includes two level. First, evaluate the overall performance of the team. The executive could set a goal for the team, when team achieve this goal, they could get the corresponding reward. For the excess achievement, the bonus should split among team members. For the second level of distribution, I am inclined to separate the prize into two parts. One is to be divided equally between members, the other is be determined based on the evaluation of individual’s contribution to the team. In this way, people could balance  the importance of the collaboration and competition.

In conclusion, only when the reward could be separated scientifically between team members, could the team attains real effectiveness.

Reference

1. Reward Your Best Teams, Not Just Star Players. (2015, June 30). Retrieved February 05, 2017, from https://hbr.org/2015/06/reward-your-best-teams-not-just-star-players
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 177