Team Assignment Criteria and Tuckman's Stages at FEL
This paper examines the case of Franklin Equipment, Ltd. (FEL) and its approach to assembling project teams, using Project Abu Dhabi as a focal point. It evaluates the criteria FEL applies when assigning managers — primarily availability and experience — and identifies significant gaps, including failure to account for interpersonal histories and employee preferences for international work. The paper discusses why cohesion is especially critical on international projects, analyzes the dilemma facing project coordinator Jobe, and recommends a path forward grounded in Tuckman's five stages of group development — forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning — with particular emphasis on facilitating an open "storming" session to clear interpersonal conflicts before the team departs for Abu Dhabi.
- FEL's Manager Assignment Criteria and Their Limitations: Gaps in FEL's team selection process
- The Importance of Team Cohesion on International Projects: Why cohesion matters more abroad
- The Dilemma Facing Jobe: Jobe's challenge managing a dysfunctional team
- Recommendations for Jobe and Gatenby: Using Tuckman's stages to resolve conflict
- Conclusion: Summary of FEL's failures and the path forward
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Directly addresses each case question in sequence, giving the paper a clear and organized analytical structure that is easy to follow.
- Grounds its recommendations in a recognized academic framework — Tuckman's five stages of group development — rather than offering purely anecdotal advice, lending theoretical credibility to practical suggestions.
- Identifies concrete, actionable improvements to FEL's team selection process (e.g., screening for interpersonal history and travel preferences) while acknowledging real constraints on what can still be changed.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied case analysis: it takes an organizational behavior framework (Tuckman's model) and maps it directly onto a real management scenario, showing how each stage relates to the specific characters and conflicts described in the case. This technique — theory-to-practice bridging — is a foundational skill in business and management writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief abstract and keyword set, then works through four case questions in order, each forming its own section. The first section evaluates selection criteria and their consequences. The second explains why international context amplifies team dysfunction. The third diagnoses Jobe's dilemma. The fourth offers specific recommendations using Tuckman's stages. A short conclusion synthesizes the core argument before a reference list closes the paper.
FEL's Manager Assignment Criteria and Their Limitations
The criteria that FEL uses to assign managers to project teams are only partially efficient. The criteria consist of availability (who is free when a new project starts) and experience (those with relevant experience are given preference). However, additional criteria should be considered — for example, which workers have a history of collaborating effectively and which workers have a history of conflict with one another. The bad blood between Rankins and Perry is a clear illustration of this gap. Out of an abundance of caution, FEL should have at least recognized the risk that their strained relationship posed to the project. Rather than placing both workers on the same team, it might have found a replacement for one or the other.
Another criterion that should have been considered is whether personnel are genuinely interested in working abroad. Workers like Stonebreaker relish the opportunity to travel and look forward to the challenges such work brings, while employees like Bruder do not. Bruder clearly holds a negative perception of the assignment precisely because it is overseas, and this attitude is shaping her expectations about whether the project can be completed on time. Before assigning workers to international postings, FEL should determine which employees prefer to work abroad and which prefer to remain at home. Factoring in these preferences would meaningfully improve team morale from the outset.
Adding these additional criteria would make the team-building and assignment process more efficient and reduce the effort required to hold a dysfunctional team together. Stonebreaker is optimistic — but his optimism stems from past experiences when team members had worked together successfully. Those dynamics have since deteriorated: the relationship between two team members has only grown more bitter, and a third has no genuine interest in being abroad (though she has not openly admitted this, it is the most logical explanation for her negative outlook). The resulting problems created by FEL's limited assignment criteria are significant: a dysfunctional team with poor morale and a highly pessimistic outlook has been assembled when a more cohesive team could very likely have been put together with a little more care and consideration.
References
Lumsden, G., Lumsden, D., & Weithoff, C. (2010). Communicating in groups and teams: Sharing leadership (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Muslihat, D. (2018). Why you need good teamwork for project management success. Retrieved from https://zenkit.com/en/blog/why-you-need-good-teamwork-for-project-management-success/
Natvig, D., & Stark, N. L. (2016). A project team analysis using Tuckman's model of small-group development. Journal of Nursing Education, 55(12), 675–681.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.