Case 1 The Virtual Environment Work Team

Case 1 The Virtual Environment Work Team (Summary) T.A Stearns was a national fax accounting firm whose main business was its popular tax preparation service for individuals. The work as carried out in a virtual environment by four programmers in the greater Boston area. Tom Andrews is a tax lawyer, a graduate of the University of Maine and a former hockey player there. At 35, Tom has worked on the programs for six years and is the longest-standing member of the team. Along with his design responsibilities, Tom is the primary liaison with Stearns. He is also responsible for training new team members. Cy Crane, a tax accountant and computer science graduate of the University of Massachusetts, is 32 years old, married, with two children ages four and six. Marge Dector, a tax lawyer, graduated from Penn State University, is 38 years old, married, with two children ages eight and ten. Megan Harris, tax accountant and graduate of Indiana University, is 26 years old and single. When Cy developed a program using his superior programming skills to reduce his man- hours and increase productivity, he told about it only to his colleagues so that they benefit from it and enjoy some leisure time. He didn’t tell about it to Dave because he feared that since his program helps in doing the work of four people by only three people, one of them might lose their job because of him. Another reason contributing to his secrecy was that their team would get only 5% of the profit generated by the aid of their innovation only for three months which was very less in comparison to the leisure time they had. The group even increased the quality of their work so as to not arouse any suspicion. But Cy made the terrible mistake of telling about his program to a member from another group which aroused Dave’s suspicions. Dave was wondering for a few weeks after the implementation of the program as to why the production time had decreased and the quality of work had shot up. He got his first