In-class Exercise
Paper Tower

This team exercise is drawn from pg. 194 of Gordon, Judith. Organizational Behavior. 5th ed.

Overall

Each team will build a paper tower out of newspaper and tape. The towers will be judged on three equally weighted criteria: beauty, height and stability.

Procedure

• Design phase. You should take a few minutes to figure out how to organize to do this.
• Production phase. When you are ready, start building the tower. At the end of the phase, each team must choose a "volunteer" to go judge all the towers.
• Evaluation phase. Each team must write a brief report (1 page) analyzing your approach. This can be done after class.

Rules

• You cannot tape the tower to anything else (like a wall or a chair or the ground)
• You cannot use materials other than newspaper and tape.
• You cannot use duct or similar tape

The Report

The report should answer these questions:

1. Describe the division of labor you employed
2. Describe how centralized the decision-making was
3. Explain what mechanisms of coordination you employed
4. What did you do well and what could you have done better? (e.g., if we rerun the exercise at a later time)

This is a 1-page report which should be emailed to your instructor by Monday night midnight. 

Measuring Performance

Each team will provide one member, at the end of class, to go around and judge all of the towers (including their own) on a 0 to 100 scale on each dimension (beauty, height, stability). Below is a scoring sheet you can use. Make sure to put your name and team down. The instructor will also grade the towers.

Your Name: __________________________________  Your Team:   ________________