21 SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure – Gunn & Pegelow

Group Reflection

Our COIL activity was met with large success on our end. Through the content learned individually in our classes on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), we learned concepts such as SDG strategy in short and long terms, integrating management and business practices with CSR objectives, intercultural management, and stakeholder responsibility. Through this activity, we were able to put these concepts to the test and apply our knowledge to a real-life case, where we interviewed a business on how they apply sustainability and social responsibility to their everyday business practices. Through the completion of this exercise, we were able to find out how businesses can integrate their CSR goals with important business practices, so that we can do it too in the future should we become leaders in our respective fields.
Before we broke off and met with our international teams we were assigned readings and attended a few lectures on globalization and cross-cultural analysis and framework. To start with, we did an in-class activity in which we used GLOBE Project’s 2004 study, in which they analyzed every country’s values and practices of a variety of categories. Some examples of these categories include uncertainty avoidance, assertiveness, and performance orientation. Essentially, the point of the study was to quantify key cross-cultural team dynamics in order to better understand other countries in comparison to your own in order to facilitate better teamwork. Our in-class activity involved us comparing these quantified categories of the countries that were in our COIL group. While this wasn’t something used as a tool for communicating with team members from different countries, this helped massively in bridging the culture gap that separated us and the other members of the group by raising awareness prior to initial meetings. We were able to better understand differences in how we acted and what we do when it comes to the differences in our cultures.

In order to prepare for working as a team, we spent a week discussing how to be effective team members. We identified the group dynamic categories known as forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Once we had a firm grasp of these categories we were able to implement the ideas into our weekly meetings. In the first few meetings, before learning about those group dynamics, all group members were nice and we gave our opinions but only to a certain extent. If two people agreed on something the rest of us went along with the decision. It was good in the sense that we were able to quickly make decisions; however, we later learned that always agreeing could be detrimental to a group. After learning about the categories we were able to identify that we were in the Forming stage. Group members began expressing more opinions and ideas. Others would challenge those ideas by asking questions and giving their own opinions. This helped us move to Performing. By this stage everyone had a solid idea of what we were supposed to do and what our final product was going to be.

During the COIL activity, work was conducted with collaboration and timeliness in mind. Prior to our first meeting, we created a WhatsApp message group used to facilitate the majority of our work, while also using it to plan when and how meetings would be done. Each week, typically on Fridays or Saturdays in the morning for Eastern Standard and Central Standard time and in the evening for East African Time, meetings were held as a way to not just conduct work, but also to reflect on work completed. We were typically expected by each other to complete work prior to the meetings held, which was either discussed and planned out through the WhatsApp group or outlined by the project itself. When joining and conducting the meetings themselves, our goal was to focus on what’s next: what is required by everybody to meet our deliverables for the week, and how can we split off work in the most effective way that best utilizes everybody’s skill sets? On occasion, it was less necessary for work to be completed as a group, which meant we were quick to split off and complete it individually. For example, the interview for our chosen company, Gunn and Pegelow, was conducted by Patrick, who chose the company and was able to easily reach out and have the meeting completed. This was done by Patrick alone, but our meeting beforehand was used to plan out potential interview questions that we would need to ask. Alongside this, certain tasks were taken on by individual team members each time in order to make things easier as a fluid process. For example, Nathan was the one each week to create and hold the zoom meetings, and would typically also be the one to submit the recording and take a screenshot of the meeting as it was being held. Overall, our combined efforts of planning and delegating lead to a much simpler completion of assignments in a weekly manner.

Throughout the COIL activity, we saw a few benefits from the way our work was completed. We were able to effectively share information via combining messaging on WhatsApp with Zoom video meetings. We talked with everyone, asked feedback, and gave frequent updates on how we were doing with our deliverables. We were able to prevent misunderstandings and redundant work by explaining each person’s specific role and responsibilities. We were all able to focus on specific duties when shorter meetings were held before breaking off to work individually. This allowed us to be more effective and successful with our solo tasks. We were in a position to stay up-to-date on our progress and status while working on these deliverables thanks to notifications and updates. We were able to spot possible issues promptly and stop major setbacks. Finally, including all team members in how decisions were made resulted in an easy and efficient successful project. When considering the detriments and what didn’t work for our group, the submission of our daily meetings and other activities created difficulties in conducting regular meetings. The scheduling of meetings was the communication difficulty that we faced most often on a weekly basis, as it was not easy to find times where everybody was individually available to meet in our busy schedules. Scheduling meetings was more difficult than normal, not only because of pre-occupied lectures and work shifts, but also due to time zone differences. Occasionally, meetings had to be held in the evening for those in America and Canada, but this would translate to incredibly early mornings for those of us in Kenya. Finding windows to facilitate meetings was difficult with these time zones in mind, and hosting these meetings during sub-optimal hours occasionally affected our focus when completing the required work.

Individual Reflections

Wambui: Participating in the virtual team project was interactive, challenging and also rewarding at the end of it. Personally as a team member of group seventeen, I initially felt a mix of excitement about collaborating with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. The cross cultural dynamics presented an opportunity to embrace varied perspectives world wide. Communication was very effective. No challenge for that as we had a platform where we had prior communication about meeting arrangements and how to handle the weekly tasks. The clear and concise communication encouraged me to articulate ideas more thoughtfully and bring forth innovative solutions. Navigating different time zones was a challenge but I ended up adapting and sacrificing personal time for the collective benefit. While the time zones initially posed an obstacle to me, it ultimately strengthened my resilience and patience staying till late at night to attend the meetings. The team project has been a valuable learning experience and a good interaction collaborating across borders.

Nicholas: As part of the Aim2Flourish project, I found it easy to change because the platform stopped any miscommunications or problems. While coordinating across time zones was hard, it also presented a flexible as well as creative opportunity. Even though it wasn’t an easy road, our persistence and commitment enabled us to succeed as a remote team. Being able to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds has expanded my perspective and solidified my interpersonal abilities. Being a member of this group and helping with overseas cooperation was an amazing opportunity.

Patrick: All in all, I felt pretty good about the assignment as a whole. There weren’t that many challenges regarding cross-cultural dynamics because four-fifths of our team was either from The United States or Canada. We did, however, run into a few minor inconveniences when trying to include our teammate who is from Kenya. It wasn’t too bad, however. She only missed one meeting which was unavoidable and she also did a fantastic job shaping her schedule around the rest of the group considering she was 8-9 hours ahead . I feel the hardest part of the whole project was being a virtual team. Most school projects are done by students that all go to the same university and can just meet on campus anytime. Obviously, everyone has their own lives outside of university so it is very hard to schedule a project that’s meant to be done outside of class into each and everyone else’s lives. That being said, I feel as though everyone on the team did a respectable job tying this project in with everything we have going on as students.

Areli: I really enjoyed working on this collaborative project. Going into it I wasn’t sure what to expect. Once we were introduced to our team members, I felt more confident with the project. Everyone in the group has been super communicative and flexible with the times they are able to meet. Everyone was also really good at meeting deadlines. The dedication given surprised me. I thought that because we are all from different parts of the world and we don’t really know each other, there would be a struggle to get things done. It is very easy in situations like these to not respond or put in any effort, but my team put in the effort and we got an amazing story out of it. This whole experience has been a delight, and I am glad to have gotten the chance to be a part of it.

Nathan: Throughout our experiences in the Aim2Flourish project, I found a lot of hurdles were crossed in the difficulties created by the project’s format. Initially, there were a lot of challenges that we found in handling the multiple time zones. Finding time to facilitate weekly meetings was a challenge with our partners as there was a 1 and 8 hour difference of time between students, but opening up communication and being open to all possible meeting times was both crucial and beneficial in creating possibilities for us to work together. With the group work, I found that there were not as many difficulties or communication challenges regarding cross-cultural dynamics; the group work was not only finished effectively, but we were able to collaborate efficiently on any major matters that needed to be attended to. Overall, I found that the combination of the ease of cross-cultural communication along with the combined use of both Zoom and WhatsApp made for an easy and effective way to work in the group project.