Performance In Sime Darby Plantation SDN BHD

This chapter focuses on the basic overview of the research background and problems that are transpired from the researcher interest in developing a Final Year Thesis. This chapter also defines the objectives as the direction of this development that would like to be achieved and also the limitation and scope that can act as guidance to guarantee the development will be accomplished within the time and schedule given.

BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY

Sime Darby Berhad is the largest conglomerate in Malaysia and one of the largest in Southeast Asia. Its broadly diversified activities include a wide range of industries, with the core businesses being plantations (including oil palm and the company’s original business, rubber), tire manufacturing, heavy equipment and motor vehicle distribution, property development, power generation, and engineering services. Other business operations include paint manufacturing, refrigeration product manufacturing, travel and tourism services, hospitals, and golf courses.

Sime Darby Plantation is the plantation and agri-business arm of the Sime Darby Group, representing one of the five core Divisions of the Group. The Division is involved in oil palm cultivation and downstream activities, agribusiness and food, as well as Research & Development (R&D).

The merger of Sime Darby Berhad, Golden Hope Plantations Berhad and Kumpulan Guthrie Berhad (completed on 27 November 2007) establishes Sime Darby Plantation as one of the world’s largest palm oil producer, producing about 2.4 million tones or 6% of the world’s crude palm oil (CPO) output annually.

As an integrated plantation company, Sime Darby Plantation is involved in the full spectrum of the palm oil value chain. The Division’s downstream operations is represented in 9 countries namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China, Germany, United Kingdom, Bangladesh, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, The Netherlands, Brazil, Canada and the United States of America. It is involved in the manufacturing and distribution of oils and fats products, oleochemicals and palm oil-based biodiesel. Alongside oil palm, the Division is also involved in agri-business activities and the cultivation of rubber.

Today, Sime Darby Plantation is proud to be the pioneer in successfully sequencing assembled and annotated the oil palm genome. With this breakthrough the company stands on the brink of discovering a ‘super palm’ that will revolutionize the industry.

Now, Sime Darby Plantations is located at Ara Damansara, Selangor. It consists of several departments such as Human Resource Departments, Administration Departments, Engineering Departments, Marketing Departments and Corporate Communication Departments. There is 450 staff estimated work in Sime Darby Plantations and this exclude staff that work at estates and mills.

Besides that, the Human Resource Departments are divided into several units such as Learning and Talent Development, Employee Engagement and Employer Branding, Industrial Relations, Benefits and Rewards, Recruitment, and Talent and Performance.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Nowadays, many organizations work hard to be success in the future and it has to realize that teamwork is very important because it is the way the employee’s value and respect each other. According to Williams and Castro (2010), a team is defined by its unity of purpose, identity as a social structure, and members shared responsibility for outcomes. Teamwork is an important aspect of maintaining the self-sustainability of organizational performance.

Teamwork could lead the team members and also organizations to be further and success in the future. This is strongly agreed by Williams and Castro (2010) where teams are considered an important ingredient for organizational success since they allow for rapid information exchange and increased responsiveness. Furthermore, teamwork is regarded merely as one aspect of the new forms of work organization and as an important component of ‘high performance work organization’. Recent study shows that organizations often rely on teamwork for continuous improvement of their products and services, and also of all other organizational functions (Judeh, 2011).

There are small number of researches were conducted on teamwork. So, in this research study highlights the importance of teamwork in organizations performance especially in Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd. Research study uses model of organization performance to find out the effect of teamwork, leadership, and team trust and communication style on organization performance and also identify the relationship between employee teamwork in organization performance.

Teamwork is taken in this study as an independent variable (I.V), whereas organizational performance is taken as dependent variable (D.V). Various other measures of organizational performance are also included in the research study, which are leadership, team trust and communication style.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

There are some factors that affect employees not working as a team and these will be discussed in this study. There are time that problem arises when employees cannot complete their task probably because of no teamwork being implemented. Some organizations did not routinely used teamwork in their organization. They are more likely to work by themselves or move solely in their task. Sometimes it works for someone who is comfortable with but some of them are not. This is because if one person did a mistake, it may affect all of the team.

In defining the problem statement, the researcher had identified several variables that contribute to the leadership, team trust and communication styles among staff at Sime Darby Plantation. Thus, from that it will influence or affect to the teamwork among staff.

The first factor that might affect employees when not working as a team is leadership itself. Leadership involves when there is a relationship between superior and their employees. In Sime Darby Plantation, most superior able to lead their team, but the problem is some of them using an approach that is not suitable or accepted by employees.

As an employee, they have to follow their superior style either they like it or not in order for them to complete their job task. This leadership style can be formal or informal. Some of them use formal but there also superior use informal style even though in office. So this formal and informal styles sometimes been accepted by their employee and some of them are not. Moreover, as a team leader they should learn to accept and appreciate team members ideas so that, their ideas can be accepted by others too.

Moreover, team trust can also be one of the factors that affect employees not working as a team. Trust is important to develop cooperation among employees. Development of trust within the organization is the responsibility of individuals. Cooperation of the team members can only be created when trust comes to be most important value of the team culture. Other than that, from the researcher observation, there are certain of the employees fail to gain trust from their team members in order for them to complete the job task. So this can give a problem that might arise later.

Furthermore, having a good communication style either formal or informal among employees can be one of the factors that affect employees not working as a team. Communication can improve cooperation between employees and superior also. A reason why employees did not apply teamwork in their task is because of poor communication among them.

Having good communication can help employee to complete their task successfully and this could lead to organizational performance. Based on researcher observation, sometimes there are redundant information giving by team leader and these occur because of information overload. Frequently, now they said ‘A’, tomorrow they said ‘B’ and later they said ‘C’. So, from this the employees don’t know which order they should follow. At the end, the task cannot be completed within the time given because of poor communication between superior and employees.

Assuming that there is teamwork in the organizations, employees and top management can gain advantage from it. Therefore, teamwork will be useful to overcome these problems in the future.

RESEARCH QUESTION

This research will look the relationship of independent and dependent variable between leadership, team trust and communication styles with the factors that affect the teamwork on organizational performance at Sime Darby Plantation. This research is designed to explore how the factors of teamwork on organizational performance can be influenced by these three factors.

Whether leadership affects teamwork on organizational performance?

Whether team trust affects teamwork on organizational performance?

Whether communication style affects teamwork on organizational performance?

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

The principle aim of this research is to investigate the relation between teamwork of the staff with organization performance. The specific aims are as follows:

To determine whether leadership affects teamwork on organizational performance.

To identify whether team trust affects teamwork on organizational performance.

To determine whether communication style affects teamwork on organizational performance.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study used sampling method in order to complete the research and focuses on the factors that affect teamwork on organizational performance at Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd. The sampling method is the process of selecting items from the population, so that the sample characteristics can be generalized to the population. Besides that, the researcher will focus on identifying the relationship between teamwork, leadership, and team trust and communication styles.

A total of 230 questionnaires will be distributed to all selected respondents in various departments at Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd. All of the departments have high potential to involve in teamwork and they have more task to be completed and problem to be solved. The staff is selected randomly regardless of their department, level, age and many more including lower level, middle level and high level.

There are many factors that influence to the teamwork, however, for the purpose of study; the researcher has only focus on three factors including leadership, team trust and communication styles in order to determine the relationship between variables that affect organizational performance.

1.7 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Several parties will gain benefits from the outcome of this project. Among parties are:

1.7.1 To the Supervisors/Leader

This research is design to identify the effects of teamwork towards the organizational performance. The findings will help the supervisors or leader to increase the performance through leadership and help strategically maintain the growth and success of the projects. By having a good relationship with their staff can make the teamwork naturally involved each time they want to complete the job task. From this, it can reduce as many problems that might occur in their task and avoid a redundant activity each time they want to complete their job.

1.7.2 To the Employees

The research is managed to evaluate or determine the level of teamwork of the staff. From the result it may identify whether the staff is agree on the power of teamwork which may bring a great development for the company or not. From that also, it will help them to find out what are the best solutions that they can take and make some improvement form it. It also can help the employees to have a good perception towards others by having a trust and build a good relationship among them. From this, it can give a benefit to all of them.

1.7.3 To the Industry/Organization

This research helps Sime Darby Plantations Sdn Bhd to identify their employee’s feedback towards the effects of teamwork on the organizational performance. The finding later can help the organization in ways to develop their performance in order to be in line with other develop company. It also will help the organization to restructure and change the styles and system that they used before this and this will contribute the organizations in several theoretical and managerial ways. By having a good teamwork in organization, it can help them achieve their desired goal and also annual or long term objective.

1.7.4 To the Researcher

Through this research, the researcher will gain knowledge on the issues of this study which is the effects that will influence teamwork on organizational performance. The research also will know how to implement the teamwork among their staff at the workplace and make harmony workplaces. Furthermore, this research will facilitate other researcher to use it as a guideline or reference in order to make their research effectively. This study also gives a clear vision for a researcher as a guideline to produce a good research in the future using appropriate steps in research methodology.

1.8 ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

This report is organized into five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Thus chapter provides the general introduction to the research topic and its issue. It is firstly started with the background of the company where the research conducted. Then, the researcher introduced the topic with the background of the study and then discuss about the problem statement. This chapter also discuss about the problem statement. This chapter also discuss about the research question, research objectives, it’s significant of the study and scope of the study. Moreover, this chapter also outlines the limitation of the study that the researcher has to face it to complete this study.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

This chapter would discuss about the previous findings by the various authors on the issue of teamwork and the factors that influence to the teamwork on organizational performance at Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd. The factors that influence to the job stress such as leadership, team trust and communication styles. The theoretical framework and the hypothesis of this study were developing as a guided from the literatures.

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

From this chapter, the researcher would explain about the data collection that the researcher use on this study. It is also discussed about the research design that consists of purpose of this study, types of this study, study setting, unit of analysis, and time horizon. Besides that, the researcher also includes the data sampling that the researcher uses in this study, as well as the instrument this study use and also the data analysis techniques.

Chapter 4: result and discussion

In this chapter described about the analysis of data findings of the research that were gathered from the survey with the various departments at Sime Darby Plantation. It presents complete results and analysis of the study in the form of figures, tables or text so that researcher would highlight the key information.

Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendation

For this chapter, discuss about the conclusion, the key of findings are summarized according to the research objectives in this chapter. The researcher would discuss about the result and some recommendations regarding to the issue also be included in this last chapter.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODUCTION

This chapter contains the review of the literature the effort done by other researchers that have a significant in the development of this research. A literature review can be in form of journals, articles, bulletins or theses. This publications can be in various sources and widely available via the Internet.

2.1 DEPENDENT VARIABLE

2.1.1 Teamwork and Organizational Performance

According to Gomez and Rohrer (2011), a team is defined as a group of two or more people who communicate and positively influence each other and harmonize the job task to be accomplished with an objective and reason for the success of organization. Team helps people to corporate, enhance individual skills, give feedback and reduce conflict occurred between individuals. As a team member, they have to learn how to work with other members and understand that one is different, unique and have more knowledge and power that can be channeled in a positive way (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011).

Teamwork is an important feature for smooth functioning of an organization. Most organizational activities become difficult due to development in technology therefore teamwork is a heart of many organizations. Gomez and Rohrer (2011) said that, when a team’s work hard and reach something great, they will have a sense of pride for their team and be motivated to do it again, because they know their role will be measured important and essential by top managers as well as all employees in the organization.

Furthermore, working together as a team to create specific performance objectives helps transforming teams form groups of persons into committed groups (Khalid Al-Rawi, 2008). However, if teams vanish, employees will no longer have an essential and important role to play in their organization but instead work just to get a wages (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011).

Another study mentions that team should be an element of an organization that builds upon itself. It fosters an appreciation of each individuals talents and the input they can make to their organization (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). This statement is also agreed by Judeh (2011) where team effectiveness is important because it is apply of the most important determinants of the companies’ achievement. Gomez and Rohrer (2011) reported that the responsibility of the teams will play in an organization will be viewed as priceless and vital of the organizational success.

When teamwork is linked to the organization, members chat about team performance in relationship to corporate priorities, and quality measures. When teamwork has developed strong relation among members, peer support manifests itself in many ways Moreover, a number of organizational benefits can result from the victorious use of sourcing teamwork, and the highest perceived benefit is the skill to bring greater knowledge and skills together at one time (Khalid Al-Rawi, 2008).

Organizations that mix their staff by implement the teamwork system will make them rapidly learn to work with others to complete their job task. At the end, each of them will value their capability and as a member of a team (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). Khalid Al-Rawi (2008) state that the main goals of teamwork are to develop an organization whose teamwork member does not reveal commitment to team process feces significant hurdles if it attempts the broad use of cross-functional productivity and motivation.

H1: Teamwork has significant positive effect on organizational performance.

2.2 INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

2.2.1 Leadership towards Organizational Performance

According to Liu, Wang and Cao (2011), leadership is best characterized as a social influence process. Each team in an organization must have a mentor who is not compulsory a supervisor but someone who is expert in teamwork to guide the team (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). In the face of complicated and complex projects leaders, managers, and team leaders have to deal with a wide range of people, including sponsors, team members, consumers, suppliers and internal department heads, all of who, often have conflicting goals and competing priorities (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). Khalid Al-Rawi (2008) argues that an effective supervisor must keep up a team’s focus on its task while establishing positive relations with team members.

Meanwhile, previous research indicates that leader behavior’s main result on team performance is very weak when considering the external surroundings of the team (Liu, Wang & Chao, 2011). Without a respect from team members, a leader can lose the ability to effectively lead and efficiently deal with their team. When there is respectful from leader and team members, it can make an easier for them to do what is asked and able to communicate (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). Most importantly, it is the responsibility of the senior employees to teach new comers to have a clean heart for the organization succeed and become profitable.

Furthermore, listening is one skill that each leader must have in order to help them in understanding that it is an active action and requires work to master (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). In other site of view, the team leader is directly in charge for inspiring this commitment from team members so as to enhance the team efforts in achieving the common goals (Judeh, 2011). According to Judeh (2011), he agrees that successful leader who is able to promote care and trust value find themselves with high standards that would affect organizations competitiveness.

This is important because as a team leader you are going to work with employees of all ages, races, backgrounds and education levels (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). Furthermore, a team leader should guide their team members to increase their efforts and focus their commitment towards the goals of the team (Judeh, 2011). While Liu, Wang and Cao (2011) had mentioned that the leader should motivate individual team members and also lead their team effectively.

H2: Leadership has significant positive effect on organizational performance.

2.2.2 Team Trust towards Organizational Performance.

Another researcher had defined trust as the point to which a person has confidence of another person and is set to act based on the words, deeds and decision of other persons or and group in other view, trust in teammates is fundamentals for success (Mach, Dolan & Tzafrir, 2010). They found that trust in the supervisor is more closely related to work variables, while trust in top management is much more closely related to organizational variables due to the functioning versus more strategic role coaches and management play.

In previous studies said that trust is the important trait to have in a team and when leader have a trust towards their team mates, the need for power becomes obsolete. According to the Mach, Dolan and Tzafrir (2010), trust is highly useful to the functioning of an organization. Organizational citizenship behavior, employee performance, open communication to the team objectives, team performance and increased coordination become a link between trust and a variety of those work behavior. Moreover, the researcher feels that trust enhances organizational relationship by increasing the capability of group members to work together.

Recent study found that, groups with higher levels of trust did not necessarily perform better than groups with lower levels of trust, thus it showed that trust influenced group process and performance indirectly. Moreover, trust can be said as an integral part of teamwork and this require high level of interdependence between members and generates synergy in the form of cooperation and interaction amongst team members (Mach, Dolan & Tzafrir, 2010).

H3: Team trust has positive effect on organizational performance.

2.2.3 Communication Styles towards Organizational Performance

According to Gomez and Rohrer (2011), teams are the central to the socialization of employees, particularly the new comers. Teams alter individual self-interest into an important resource that can be used to build and maintain the vibrant organization. Furthermore, in a team all employees are socialized to become hard workers in their organization.

However, when the new staff is timid and not tries to socialize or communicate with their teammates or other staff, they will become socially isolated individuals and will not feel the sense of connectedness with their organization (Gomez & Rohrer, 2011). Research has also reported that communication among team members, sharing of the workload, and high levels of cooperation will improve team effectiveness (Williams & Castro, 2010).

According to Williams and Castro (2010), communication among team member builds a positive team climate since it improves problem solving skills and interpersonal relations on the team. Ultimately, the more interdependent team members are with each other the more they should be able to realize outcomes related to teamwork as they build team efficacy (Williams & Castro, 2010).

Communication is also a construct that has been linked with numerous outcomes of groups and teams, such as with knowledge sharing, learning, reductions in time requirements and transaction costs and reduced redundancy (Clopton, 2011). According to Clopton (2011), communication or social capital can reduce the probability of opportunities and the cost of monitoring while encouraging supportive behavior and facilitating the development of new forms of association and innovation. In addition, social exchange relationships evolve and generate beneficial consequences when employers ‘take care of employees’. In this sense, the social exchange relationship is a mediator or intervening variable that produces effective work behavior and positive employee attitudes (Mach, Dolan & Tzafrir, 2010).

H4: Communication style has significant positive effect on organizational performance

2.3 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The theoretical or conceptual framework is the foundation of hypothetical – deductive research as it is the basis of the hypotheses that you will develop. It is a logically developed, described and elaborated network of associations among the variables deemed relevant to the problem situation and identified through such processes as interviews, observations and literature review (Sekaran, 2010).

A theoretical framework represents your belief on how certain phenomena (or variables or concepts) are related to each other (a model) and an explanation of why you believe that these variables are associated with each other (a theory) (Sekaran, 2010). Theoretical framework elaborates the relationship among all variables independent and dependent variables. It explains the theory underlying these relations and describes the nature and direction of the relationship. From the theoretical framework, testable hypothesis can be developed to examine whether the theory formulated is valid or not.

Based on literature review the conceptual framework is as follow:

(I.V’s) (D.V)

Leadership

(Gomez & Rohrer, 2011)

Organizational Performance

Team Trust

(Mach, Dolan & Tzafrir, 2010)

Communication Style

(Williams & Castro, 2010)

Figure 2.3 Conceptual Framework

2.3.1 Variable

The theoretical framework shows the variables, which are independent variable and dependent variable. The variable is anything that can take on differing or varying values. The values can differ at various times for the same object or person, or at the same time for different objects or persons such as production and motivation.

2.3.2 Dependent Variable

The dependent variable is the variable of primary interest to the researcher. The researcher goal is to describe and understand the dependent variable or to explain its viability or predict it. It is the main variable that lends itself for investigation as a viable act. Through the analysis of the dependent variable, it is possible to find solutions to the problems (Sekaran, 2010).

Moreover, researcher will not only quantifies and measures the dependent variable but also explains other variables that influence this variable. For this purpose, it is shows that the dependent variable is important for the researcher to measures in this study which is the effects that will influence to the organizational performance.

2.3.3 Independent Variable

Independent variable is one variable that influences the dependent variable in either positive or negative way. When the independent variable is also present, and with each unit of increase in the dependent variable there is an increase or decrease in the dependent variable also. In this research, the theoretical framework is about the study indicates to determinant of leadership, team trust and communication styles.

2.4 HYPOTHESIS

Hypothesis is logically conjectured relationship between two or more variables expressed in the form of testable statement. Relationship conjectured on the basis of the network of associations established in the theoretical framework formulated for the research study (Sekaran, 2010). A hypothesis can also be referring as the thing that the researcher educate guess to solve the research problems in the organization. The hypothesis for this study as below:

H1: There is a significant relationship between teamwork and organizational performance.

H2: There is significant relationship between leadership and organizational performance.

H3: There is significant relationship between team trust and organizational performance.

H4: There is significant relationship between communication style and organizational performance.

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

3.0 INTRODUCTION

The previous chapters discussed related literature on Teamwork and the context of the present study. This chapter covers the research methodology and procedure undertaken in this study. This includes research framework, data collection, and development of research instruments, population, sample, sampling technique and data analysis. Results of a pilot study, the response rate and non-response bias of the main study are also discussed in this chapter.

3.1 STUDY VARIABLES

The research study was based on quantitative research technique. The study was conducted to investigate the effect of teamwork on organizational performance. During the research study, researcher’s interference was minimal, unit of analysis was individual and type of study was cross sectional. Questionnaires were distributed among the employees and their views had been taken. In this study collected data was uploaded on computer in SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) and normality of data was calculated.

When the data was transformed and got normal, then different statistical test were applied, on the data for analysis. Through that statistical analysis, correlation and regression of teamwork and organizational performance has been measured. In order to analyze the two variables; teamwork and organizational performance, firstly descriptive analysis were measured and then correlation and regression was calculated between Dependent Variable (D.V) organizational performance and Independent Variable (I.V) teamwork, leadership, team trust and communication styles.

3.2 DATA COLLECTION

This research is relying on the data gather that can be obtained from either primary of secondary data. Both of the data encompasses all various type of information, which needed for the research purpose. In completing the study, both types of the data will be used.

3.2.1 Primary Data

Primary data will be collected by researcher for specific purpose of deal with the research problem. Besides that, to solve the research problems, the data and information will be gathered through several ways. The primary data will be obtained through questionnaires that will be given t