Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 2 I. The benefits that teamwork brought to VinaCleans effort to get consumer to recycle household batteries ..................................................................................................................................... 3 II. Demonstrate working in a team as a leader and member towards specific goals, dealing with any conflict or difficult situation................................................................................................................ 5 III. Review the effectiveness of the team in achieving the goals set by Ms. Tran and the goals set by the team itself ......................................................................................................................................... 7 IV. V. VI. Factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work performance ............. 10 Plan and deliver the assessment of the development needs of one member of the team ............ 12 Evaluate the success of the assessment process .......................................................................... 15

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 18 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................... 19 Reference .................................................................................................................................................... 21

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Introduction
VinaClean is a new company specializes in battery recycling. The companys goal is to stop the destruction of Vietnams environment from consumers disposing of household batteries in landfills. From the very first day of the company, Ms. Suzi Tran, head of the company, had carefully planned for the success of the company. Starting with the recruitment and selection for VinaClean, Ms. Tran spent a lot of money, time and effort to have the most qualified employees who can work together in order to execute the vision as well as the main purpose for establishing the company of Suzi Tran. From the beginning of the company, Suzi Tran still receives a lot of generous donation from people who concern about environment for funding her business. However, Ms. Tran aim to make her business can be self-funding after 3 years. Therefore, it is better be ready for the employees to get along and start the work immediately. As the nature of the business, the company is going to collect old batteries from people and sell them to the recycling centre in other countries. As a team of agents from VinaClean, we must work together to make Suzi Trans vision real by planning for collecting old batteries starting with Hanoi. We found out that the best place to collect the old batteries is the place selling the new one - local retail shops. Therefore, we are going to divide Hanoi into different working area to gain permission from these shops to host the battery drop boxes. The team has 5 members, each member in the team will responsible for different tasks and Ms. Tran expected the job will be done properly. Ms. Tran needs to assess the team effectiveness as well as the work performance of each team member to see are those employees met her expectation and worth her money or not.

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I.

The benefits that teamwork brought to VinaCleans effort to get consumer to recycle household batteries To gain the benefit from team work, four selected employees need to be able to work

together like a real team but not a group of people with a label attached.

According to

Katzenbach and Smith, the two famous authors writing about teamwork, a team is defined as "a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable (J.R. Katzenbach and D.K. Smith, 1993) ". As the purpose of the team, each member should work together to get consumers to recycle their old battery and if their teamwork done well, it would bring a lot of benefits not only for Ms. Tran but also the team member and the company. There is no doubt that the main purpose of the team is to help the business of VinaClean become successful. Good teams within VinaClean help the company improve profit by adding more value and lower the costs through effective working. The quality of output from a good team normally much better than individuals or a normal group and can be archived in a shorter time. Therefore, VinaClean can archive its objective much faster. Even though VinaClean is the first company operating in this field, it is just a matter of time before its competitors appear. Good teamwork is the key to help VinaClean out-perform its rivals in the future. As the owner of the company, a good team work among the employees will definitely bring Ms. Tran some benefits in term of management. A real team with less than six people definitely can produce an extraordinary performance result that impossible to archive by even more individuals. That means Suzi can reduce the cost for hiring people to spend on other activities. Secondly, members in a good team are likely to stick together because they get on well and comfortable working with other members. That will help to reduce the intention to leave of the team member which leads to the reduction in employee turnover. Moreover, the threat of losing her qualified employees into competitors hand will be eliminate. Thirdly, from the recruitment and selection, Suzi aims to hire most qualified employees who do not need to be told what to do. She wants to empower her team let them come up with their own decisions fit with
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the objectives of the team. By doing this, Suzi can spend her time for other important things such as finding donators instead of involve in the details of the teams work. All of these three benefits essential at the dawn of VinaClean because its operation still depends on donation. An aspect that cannot be ignored is the impact of teamwork on every member of the team. As I always tell other members, T.E.A.M for me stands for Together Everybody Achieve More. We, the team members, are the people gain the greatest benefits if we are really working as a team. First of all, everyone in the team can share leadership roles. Since the team is empowered by Ms. Tran, each team member is giving an opportunity to take the leadership position base on their forte. In term of the team, sharing the leadership roles help the team makes use of special abilities of each member. Different tasks will be completed in much more effective ways. For each member, they will have a chance to express their potential as well as practice their leadership skill and contribute to the success of the team. As the expectation of Ms. Tran, this is how we should be trained for to be future leaders of VinaClean. Secondly, teamwork divides the workload but double the success. This is what we call Synergy when team members operate in ways that complement and leverage each others. In teamwork, we focus on collective work product rather than individual result because the quality of the collective work product always higher. Moreover, collective work product comes with the mutual accountabilities which team members share the responsibilities with each other. By sharing the works and responsibilities, the threat for stress also will be reduce. Thirdly, each member normally has special knowledge and skills that other people in the team can learn from. Working together brings a great opportunity to learn, improve and develop knowledge and skills for team members. In order to understand more about teamwork and its benefits, I tried to ask some people work for HSBC and some state own companies but their answers did not satisfied me enough. However, I did have an interesting conversation with a friend of my father, an ex-military officer with 35 years of experience. He said that there is teamwork in military is a perfect example of how it can benefit people and it can be applied in any companies for sure. Teamwork in military is not just about working together effectively but more about lives or die. Follow his instruction, a small research was carried out about a team of elite solders called Navy SEAL. This special force is recognized all around the word as the best by executing successfully many extremely
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dangerous missions and of course they never work alone. As the SEAL s slogan The only easy day was yesterday, teamwork can be used like a motivation to push team member moves forward, willing to take more risks and complete the task even in extreme conditions. Real teamwork can naturally motivate people, no body want to be left behind. Moreover, by doing a great teamwork, team member can earn the trust and respect from other members of the team. Trust and respect are also critical in term of VinaClean, lacking trust or respect among team members will result in a significant drop in the effectiveness. In addition, teamwork teaches team member how to communicate effectively, plan, co-ordinate and execute as a team which mean means better problem solving and costs saving. Even though both teamwork in military and a company have a lot of things in common, but there is a critical different is teamwork in military has no place for team empowerment. Orders are orders and no question asks. This is a limitation that need to be considers if anyone want to apply the model of team work in military in business. However, I strongly recommend to see a movie about Navy SEAL called Act of Valor to see the benefits of good teamwork as well as how it should be done. II. Demonstrate working in a team as a leader and member towards specific goals, dealing with any conflict or difficult situation Base on the objective as The team needs to gain permission to host batteries drop boxes in 20 local retailers within 2 weeks - from 15th November to 29 November, in Hoan Kiem and Dong Da district in Hanoi, our team started designing and dividing tasks for each member. Minh Hang and Le Nga was responsible for negotiation with 15 shop owners each person in Dong Da and Hoan Kiem respectively. The team expected the closing ratio is 67%. I was responsible for designing the drop boxes and Nam was responsible for logistic of the team. As a team, we are going to share the leadership position base on our special knowledge, skills and trait of each member. For me, I took the lead on the task of designing the drop boxes for consumers to use and the local shops will host them. As the leader in designing, the first trait I have is my creativity combine with IT skills. Right after reading the job of the team, I was thinking about some different options can be use as a design for the drop boxes and I can easily make a 3D model of the design on the computer. As the work began, I gather the whole team to tell them about my ideas and I also want to hear their recommendations as well. This is when the problem appears. The company now still needs donations for its operation. Therefore the budget
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for the job is quite small and they suggest the design should be as simple as possible to reduce the cost for producing. A member said it is just a box for dumping old batteries so just pick any box to bring to the local shops. However, I disagree with this idea. As a visionary leader, I know that a good design will bring benefits that much greater than the costs we may have to pay. I listened carefully the opinion from my team members and try to explain why we should design a good drop boxes. The first reason is the local retailers are likely to host a beautiful drop box instead of an ugly one. An ugly catton box will have no chance to be placed even outside of the shop. A beautiful box can also be used as a decoration and likely to be place inside the local stores. That will save a lot of time and effort to convince the owners of the shop which mean less work for other members to do. According to my plan, I want to design the box the same as Doraemon, a fiction character with her magic pocket, which very familiar among Vietnamese children. It would normally attract not only adult people but also the kid to bring the old batteries from their toys to drop in the magic pocket of Doraemon. It means that a good design box could increase the number of batteries collected in the future, lead to the ability of self-funding for the company within 3 years. Moreover, my design aims to influence on children by changing their habit form throwing trash away to recycle them, starting with old batteries. For the long term, hopefully this simple design can change the bad habit for the whole generation. Finally, the box will contain the name and the logo of VinaClean, which help create brand awareness among customers. After considering carefully the benefits and the costs, the team agrees that it is essential to spend time and effort to have a good drop box design. Within the creativity and visionary, I am also a hard working leader. My father, vice director of Hoang Thach Cement Company said that Even a lot of the bosses claim that leading people is telling them what to do or not, but he proves that a good leader needs to work hard and a best leader will work even harder than his employees. I do believe in the equality in a team, the leader should do at least the same amount of real work as other members because leader is also a member. Beside form my design job, I am willing to help my teammates as requested or even offers a hand if I realize they have problem. Not only worked as a leader, I also needed to work as a team member following other members when they take the leadership role. In the team, Le Nga was responsible for finding and convincing local retailers owners in Hoan Kiem district to let us place a drop box at their shops.
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As her assistant, we sat together and plan for the trip to the retailers at Hoan Kiem district. I was given a job for preparing content for leaflets that will be given to the people around the shops whether we can gain the permission to place a drop boxes a lot. The leaflet contains an introduction about VinaClean including the vision of Ms. Tran, the reason why we collect dead batteries and why should people recycle them. Moreover, I was also providing transportation for Nga if possible. There was a quite serious problem from the start that I often late for appointment to pick her up and the reason is not just because of traffic but also my terrible time management. We did have a small argument but then I realize that I should never destroy the trust between us and I did not want to let her down. Therefore, we developed a common plan so the common work is not going to be influence by personal stuffs. III. Review the effectiveness of the team in achieving the goals set by Ms. Tran and the goals set by the team itself As an important characteristic of a good team, all team members need to spend some time together for evaluating their own teamwork. Normally, team members will work together for a quite a long time in many different projects and the ability to judge will help that team and each team member to improve. This process of evaluating is essential to be an effective team. Klimoski and Jones, in 1995, proposed a model of team effectiveness for the first time in their book Staffing for effective group decision making: Key issues in matching people and teams. This model emphasized the factors in term of environmental demands and the resources are the key to assess the effectiveness of a team. In case of our team, the effectiveness will be assessed in three different stages: Preparation for teamwork as input variables, team working as process variable and the results as outcome variable.

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Klimoski and Jones, (1995, p8).

Input variables Team organization is defined as the structure of the team and the authority among team members. In our team, the responsibilities of each member were set very clear. For example, I was responsible for designing the drop boxes and help Le Nga to gain permission from shop owners. That will help to reduce the threat of conflict during teamwork. The team also took advantage from team empowerment the faster and better in problem solving as well as the unlimited creativity. Norm is simply the ground rules between team members and this is the forgotten part in our teamwork. These ground rules can be use as guidelines that shape the behavior between members and make the teamwork smoother. Some simple norms should be set in the future such as listen to what other saying and do not be defensive to other members Composition is the combination of attributes of each team member such as skill, knowledge and the specific job of the team. In this situation, the attributes of each member is quite fit with the job of the team. However, the problem is we are all students and just part-qualified employees which sometime just unable to handle the job well enough. The team should have a least one qualified member to guide other members to work more effectively. Leadership in our team is take advantages form the team empowerment policy of Ms. Tran. Each member took the leader position for different tasks base on their
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trait. By doing this, not only the effectiveness of teamwork will be increase but also all members can practice their leadership to become future leaders of VinaClean as Ms. Tran expected. Size of the team is the number of team members and normally base on the specific jobs as well as available resource of the company. In our situation, the team made a big mistake is setting the objective a little bit too high compare to the ability of 4 members. Process variables Use of skills determines that team effectiveness does not come from individual effort. But the skills and the potential of each individual are the key for success of the team. We tried to understand skills of each team members buy group discussion before deciding who will be responsible for which tasks to achieve highest result. However, there is a lack of skills in the team. There should be training for us to gain more skill or the team should recruit more members to fulfill the needs of skills. Strategies for a team can be understood as the way the teamwork will be managed. Like the norms from input variables, this is also a forgotten part of our work. The mistake was we plan for everything, decide everyones responsibly but we had no clue that how other people are working. When the team discovers that the process was very slow, it was too late for corrective action. Lesson learned the team should applied simple teamwork strategies such as having regular team meeting. Effort level, co-ordination and compatibility emphasized that team effectiveness is not come from individual effort. In our situation, we learn that even everybody on the team work beyond their best does not mean that the team can be effective. What really matter is the compatibility between team members. For next time working as a team, we need to improve the communication as well as the interaction between members. Outcome variables Task accomplishment and quality in this model is totally 2 different criteria. One hundred percent of accomplishment does not mean that the quality is high
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and the effectiveness. The situation of our team is on the opposite side. We did not complete the entire tasks but we agreed that the work of designing the drop boxes was outstanding. However, we should learn to work together more effectively to meet the objective of the team and Ms. Tran. Turnover in this context mean how well the employees feel about the result. Of course the result that did meet the objective of the team set from the beginning makes us feel quite disappointed. However, this is the first time we work as a real team, we have a lot of thing to learn and the lesson from the evaluation will help us to improve and success in the next time working together. Team effectiveness model by Klimoski and Jones is quite a good people for evaluating teamwork. However the disadvantage of the model is it makes no different between the roles of individuals and team. Moreover, this model does not have any places for feedback which is a very important criteria for effective teamwork. IV. Factors involved in planning the monitoring and assessment of work performance Similar with teamwork evaluation, assessment of work performance is a very common practice among team members of an effective team. For the team members in a company, this process is likely to be called as performance review. Performance review is defined as The process of evaluating or judging the way in which someone is functioning (Coens and Jenkins, 2000). In term of VinaClean, the performance review of team member will be used for some different purposes. First of all, it can be used for management decision such as give someone a raise or promotion. Moreover, it is the evaluation for the management. Finally, information from performance review will be the input for performance feedback. As the ideal of 360 degree feedback, the source for reviewing performance of a team member can be mangers, co-workers, subordinates or even a person from different team. However, as a person believes in peer evaluation, Ms. Tran will give the priority for each member to evaluate other members in the team. Before conducting performance review, we need to know what do we measure and what do we measure against? After working together, we came

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up with 5 performance categories of each member that should be evaluate and how to maesure them. Quality of work Quality always sounds like a very good criterion for reviewing performance but how much quality is enough and how to measure it correctly? Instead of trying to measure quality, we purposes a more creative way is measuring some sub-criteria that contribute to improve the quality of work. Such criteria are how much a team member focus on the detail, accuracy and thoroughness. Is that member always looking for improvement, find the root causes the problem and accepts the responsibility for action?

Quantity of work Quantity of work is in a way that much more easily to be measure compare to quality. Quality means that you can count. We can count to see is that member takes a fair workload during teamwork in comparison to other members and do they willing to take responsibility beyond their duty. Communications Communication is an important skill for teamwork. Better communication means better problem solving which lead to the increase in efficiency. Moreover, communication is a tool to build trust among team members. This performance can be measure by good listening skills, verbal intelligence and how they keep other members informed. Teamwork Teamwork is definitely an important criterion when people working as a team. Teamwork can be measure by some factors suc as the ability of a member to work effectively with other team members, how they deal with team conflict and the willingness and effectiveness when supporting other members. Leadership

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In a real team, every member shares the leadership roles which directly lead to the increase in effectiveness of the team. As a team is highly empowered by Ms. Tran, this is the place for all team members to show and practice their leadership. This criterion can be measure by how well a team member can provide feedback to other members and the ability to motivate the whole team move forward. Beside from setting criteria for reviewing performance, VinaClean needs to build a peer evaluation process that employees can rely on. There must be a third party like HR responsible for collecting information, the identity of the people who gave feedback need to be kept confidential.

V.

Plan and deliver the assessment of the development needs of one member of the team The performance appraisal form is carefully designed by the team. I am going to evaluate

Ms. Le Nga who I spent a lot of time working with. All performance categories above will be listed in this form to be graded in a scale from 1 to 5 with: 5 means Outstanding 4 means Exceeds Expectations 3 means Meets Expectations 2 means Needs Improvement 1 means Unsatisfactory

Position: Team member Grade Performance Quality of work 1. Focus on the detail, accuracy, and thoroughness

Age: 22

Name: Le Yen Nga

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2.

Always

look

for

improvements 3. Finds the root cause of problems 4. Accept responsibilities for actions Quantity of work 1. Take fair work load in comparison to peers 2. Assumes responsibility beyond normal work duties Communications 1. Good Listening Skills

2. Verbal Intelligent 3. Keeps Others Informed Teamwork 1. Works Effectively with other team members 2. Deal with team conflicts 3. Supports other team

members

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Leadership 1. Providing feedback to other team members 2. Use of Positive

Motivation

As my experience working with Ms. Le Nga, she is quite good at the communication skills especially with her ability to listen to other team members. It makes her teammates feel like they are respected. Her good communication skill also makes her good at teamwork. The ability to communicate and transfers information between team members makes us normally come up with better solutions. The most important thing is she know how to deal with conflict, by using her verbal intelligence, she could tell me that my terrible time management influence negatively on the teamwork but in a way that I felt like I was respect and she said that because she care about the team. In term of quality of her work, it can be said that she nearly met my expectation. As a nature of women, she really focused on the detail and the accuracy of her job. Even though her negotiation skill is quite good, she still carefully prepare for the conversation with the owners in detail. However, from working with her in a task that she acted as a leader, I realized that her leadership skills did not seem very well. Despite I sent her several drafts of the leaflet to ask for approval she seemed too busy to give me any feedbacks. Since the work of gaining permission from shop owners became more difficult than expected, I started losing my spirit but she did not know how to motivate her subordinate. This is the skill she needs to practice more and more if she wants to work effectively with the whole team. Talk about the objective set earlier, we were starting to work together in order to execute the vision of Ms. Tran of a cleaner Vietnam, starting with Hanoi. For the first steps, the team must work together to place drop boxes for collecting old batteries. The first discussion of the team was about setting an objective to get the first job done. The objective of the team needs to
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set by all the members in order to make it similar with the objective of each team members. This will make each member can be self-motivated to work harder to archive the common objective. However, after talking together and consider how we can get the best result with the limited human resource and time, we decided to start in 2 most crowded districts. The reason is the number and density of the local retailers in those 2 districts is higher so we can visit more shops in a shorter period of time. Moreover, if our job to place the drop boxes is successful, there is a chance for us to collect more batteries because of the bigger population in those two districts. Therefore, the team came up with the objective: The team needs to gain permission to host batteries drop boxes in 20 local retailers within 2 weeks - from 15th November to 29 November, in Hoan Kiem and Dong Da district in Hanoi. This objective is specific enough, it does answer some question such as who is involve, what to do, where to do and in what period of time. Moreover, the objective is set in a way that it can be measured by providing the specific numbers of shops as well as the cut-off date. Any objectives must be achievable base on the schedule, workload and knowledge of each team members. However, it is clear that we fail to calculate the workload which leads to the failure to achieve the objective. The objective is also relevant to the objective of VinaClean and it is set with a specific period of time to complete. In my opinions, this objective fulfills 4 out of 5 elements of a SMART objective except for Achievable. VI. Evaluate the success of the assessment process As mention above, reviewing work performance is a very critical process and essential for every member of the team. Therefore, such assessment process also needs to be evaluated and improved so that it would fit with the change of teamwork as well as the improvement of team members. In 2004, Suskei Linda purposed a model of six elements contribute to a good assessment process

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Suskei Linda (2004)

Give useful information The process of peer-evaluation within my team did provide some kind useful information such as the strength and the weakness of each team member. It also give the management the idea of how each team could be trained to improve their performance in each category. Give reasonably accurate and truthful information The form of the performance appraisal is design in a way that everybody can read and understand clearly. The criteria for evaluating are written in simple words and well organized so the members can provide more accurate answers. However, I prefer a six-point grading scale for than a scale of 5 because Vietnamese are normally choose the middle point which lead to the inaccurate respond. Moreover, our assessment process has to ensure the truthful of the information. A fair to all team member

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Our assessment is a peer-evaluation between team members. Every member has the right to assess their teammates as long as their information is accurate and helpful for the development of the team Are ethical and protect the privacy and dignity of those involved Even though we have no idea to maintain ethical behavior in assessment process but we do have policy for protecting privacy and dignity if those involved. First of all, the identity of those who gave feedback will be kept confidential. For all team members, they will receive their feedback in front of the team when they are complement and in private if they are rebuked. Are systemized All the feedback will be record and organized so we can see how each team member improves overtime. This is the first time we did assessment of work performance and information from the assessment will be record. Cost-effective As a team with only four people, the assessment process for the whole team did not take a lot of time and money but it will bring a lot of benefit in term of management.

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Conclusion
For the first time working together as a real team, we have been through many different emotional states from the excitement from the beginning to the disappointment when we fail to archive our objective. We did realize that working as a team is not simple as it sounds. But as a spirit of a real team: If the team wins, everybody wins. If the team fails, everybody learns. We consider our failure as a lesson so we can do it better in the next time. From the experience working as a team, we know that teamwork bring many benefits for not only VinaClean but also Ms. Tran and especially to the members of the team. I also had a chance to interview some people about teamwork in different context, especially in military. During the teamwork, we did have experience working in both leader and member position, learn how to leading and supporting other people in the team. Any difficult situations or conflicts can be solved with the trust and respect from each team members. Team member do not only working together, we also need to spend to review our teamwork for the long term development of the team In a team, there are individuals and each individual are responsible for the effectiveness and the successful of teamwork. Therefore, there is a need for reviewing the work performance of each member. The feedback for each members can comes from their manager or even come from outside of the team. But the peer-evaluation will be the most effective way in term of cost and effectiveness as well as the accuracy of the information. The process for assessment also needs to be evaluated and improved overtime. Building an effective team can be challenging for both team members and the company but the benefits of a real team are definitely worth the money and time it take.

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Appendix
Team member TrungThanh AnhHoa Nhungxinh Van Tien ThanhHuyen NhanChinh Store Address Contact Agreed host Yes Yes No Unsuitable with decoration of stores Mot haiba Nguyen Minh Hang Chang Chang Dong Da District Thanh Tung Huyen Yes No Require confirmation from authorities Ha shop MeoMeo Bich Ngoc Chi Mai Yes No Require money Dino Maxim ABC Hoang Hoa Phuong Linh HuyenTrang Thu Ha Minh Hoang No Yes No Yes Require money Nha Chung F&U Le Yen Nga Tuan Vuong HuyenLuong Hoan Kiem District Minh Tien Vuong XuanLuong Yes Yes No Yes Require money Hang Hang Yen Hoang Ngoc Dung Quang Thinh No No Require
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to Comments

confirmation from authorities Mother Baby Yen Hoa Hai Nam Manh Hung Quynh Chi Yes No Yes

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Reference
Business Essentials supporting HND/HNDC Foundation the degrees (2010), Organization Behavior, 2nd, London: BPP Learning Media Business Essentials supporting HND/HNDC Foundation the degrees (2010), Working with and Leading People, 2nd, London: BPP Learning Media Coens, T and Jenkins, M. (2000). Abolishing performance appraisals. Berrett Koehler. J.R. Katzenbach and D.K. Smith (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. New York: Harper-Collins. Klimoski, R., and Jones, R. (1995). "Staffing for effective group decision making: Key issues in matching people and teams." Team effectiveness and decision making in organizations, R. A. Guzzo and E. Salas Associates, Jossey-Bass Publishers., San Francisco. Katzenbach, J. R., and Smith, D. K. (2005). The discipline of teams. Harvard business review, 71(2), 111-20. Katzenback, J. R., and Smith, D. K. (2003). The wisdom of teams. Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Harper Business Essentials, New York, 320. Suskie, L. (2004). What are good assessment practices? In Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide. Bolton, MA: Anker.

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