صلاحیتهای خود مدیریتی در تیم های خودگردان : تأثیر آنها بر بهره وری سیستم چند تیمی

This research examined how composition of individual capabilities within self-managed teams translates into greater effectiveness for multi-team systems (MTS) in which teams are embedded. We investigated how a broad range of self-management competencies by team members aggregate to form a collective construct that influences productivity of a team network. In a semiconductor plant, we surveyed 716 members from 97 self-managed teams in 21 MTS. We found that MTS comprising teams whose members widely practice self-management strategies attain higher productivity gains and that multi-team systems consisting of highly cohesive teams of self-managers are the most productive.

SMWT mark a radical departure in how work is organized and done by assuming responsibility for doing whole tasks and decision-making authority traditionally reserved for management (Banker et al., 1996, Guzzo & Dickson, 1996 and Moorhead et al., 1998). American business has increasingly embraced such empowerment structures, which are currently deployed by nearly 75% of the top 1000 US firms (Douglas & Gardner, 2004). Self-managing teams are increasingly transplanted abroad and to virtual team settings (Kirkman et al., 2004 and Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001). Since inception, mounting evidence affirms that SMWT enhance work-life quality, customer service, and productivity (Beekun, 1989, Cohen & Bailey, 1997, Cohen & Ledford, 1994, Emery & Fredendall, 2002, Goodman et al., 1988 and Katzenbach & Smith, 1993). In contrast with such favorable findings, several literature reviews concluded that SMWT vary considerably in effectiveness (Beekun, 1989, Cohen & Ledford, 1994 and Guzzo & Dickson, 1996). At times, such team structures have undermined work-life quality (Barker, 1993) or failed to outperform traditional work groups (Bailey, 1998). Indeed, Gibson and Tesone (2001) alleged that purported SMWT productivity gains are overstated, while Spreitzer, Cohen, and Ledford (1999) conceded that “the promise of SMWT may be oversold in the literature” (p. 359). In the wake of such uneven success, SMWT proponents are now acknowledging how certain conditions, such as groupthink or directive leadership, can threaten team productivity or viability (Alper et al., 1998, Kirkman & Shapiro, 2001 and Moorhead et al., 1998). At the same time, prescriptions for overcoming roadblocks to team performance proliferate (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993 and Manz & Sims, 2001), though most practitioner suggestions are speculative and lack empirical grounding (Moravec, 1999).

The present investigation advances scholarly and popular understanding of how self-management enhances SMWT collectivities in several ways. First, the current results go beyond previous SMWT work on self-management by considering a broader set of self-influence strategies promulgated by modern self-leadership formulations (Kanfer & Heggestad, 1997 and Manz & Neck, 2004). Earlier work examined traditional strategies to self-manage behavior and the environment (Cohen et al., 1997 and Manz & Sims, 1987). We extended that line of inquiry by considering self-redesign of tasks and thought self-leadership (Neck & Houghton, 2006 and Pearce & Manz, 2005). The current research indicates that intrinsic motivation via self-initiated task redesign can enhance collective effectiveness, though finding weaker effects for self-control over thoughts and self-statements. Our findings add to the sparse guidelines on what external leaders can do to best support self-managing teams (Druskat & Wheeler, 2003). Accordingly, leaders or facilitators seeking to improve SMWT functioning should instruct team participants on how to overcome dysfunctional thought patterns (Brown, 2003 and Neck & Manz, 1996) and enrich tasks (Stewart et al., 1996) so they can experience more collective potency and purposeful work (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). This inquiry further extends past SMWT research on team self-management (Kirkman & Rosen, 1999 and Wageman, 2001) and self-management leadership (Cohen et al., 1997 and Manz & Sims, 1987) on collective performance by exploring emergent bottom-up effects of individual self-management on productivity of self-managing multi-team systems. Specifically, we established that self-managing competencies among team members do aggregate via composition processes to form higher-order collective constructs that predict MTS productivity. Moving beyond earlier work on aggregated individual self-management effects on team effectiveness (Langfred, 2000, Langfred, 2004 and Uhl-Bien & Graen, 1998), we demonstrated that this lower-level attribute can manifest even higher-order emergent effects on the performance of larger collectives (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). What is more, this study sustained growing reservations about excessively high individual self-management on collective effectiveness (Langfred, 2004, Pearce & Manz, 2005, Uhl-Bien & Graen, 1992 and Uhl-Bien & Graen, 1998). We demonstrated that team participants who self-manage too independently can jeopardize collective performance under conditions of team disunity and lack of cohesion. That is, MTS comprising divisive teams of strong self-managers were less productive than MTS comprising cohesive teams of high self-managers. While fostering more self-management among team participants, organizations must also ensure that members stay focused on the overarching collective mission and integrate their efforts into team processes (Pearce & Manz, 2005). Our results imply that employers place greater emphasis on team building that promotes emotional bonds to overcome potentially deleterious effects of extreme individual self-management (Chandler, Swamidass, & Cammann, 2003). They might use diversity training, collaborative problem-solving exercises, and conflict management training that integrate social activities. Of course, encouraging social cohesiveness in empowered teams should not come at the expense of greater groupthink (Moorhead et al., 1998) and social loafing (Langfred, 2004). In summary, organizations introducing self-managing multi-team systems should implement programs to enhance both group processes (e.g., cohesion) and individual self-management. 5.1. Methodological limitations While heartening, the current findings were based on 21 MTS collectivities, though they represented the entirety of the plant's multi-team systems. Despite their modest number (not unusual in team-based studies; Barrick et al., 1998 and Brown, 2003), modules nonetheless consisted of 97 teams and 716 individual members. Importantly, the present tests still identified significant collective ISM main effects as well as strong moderating effects of intra-team cohesion. More than this, our meta-team findings better mirrored workplace realities as businesses increasingly rely on multi-team projects to attain corporate-wide goals, such as development of the Boeing 777 aircraft (Sabbagh, 1996) and large-scale software design at Microsoft (Cusumano & Selby, 1995). Although challenging in terms of statistical power, meta-team investigations that recognize how teams are embedded in large collectivities may yield more externally valid conclusions. Still our findings were drawn from one corporation in the semiconductor industry, limiting generalizability to other firms and industries. Statistical analyses also did not control other influences on team performance (e.g., demographic composition; Cohen et al., 1996 and Kirkman & Rosen, 1999) that might account for observed self-management effects (Cohen et al., 1996). Additional statistical tests nonetheless revealed that demographic heterogeneity across teams and MTS did not affect performance. In a rare multivariate test, Cohen et al. (1996) however documented unique self-management effects on rated SMWT effectiveness even when statistically controlling other antecedents. Such extraneous influences were mitigated by sampling teams from the same plant that exposed them to the same management, human resource policies, training, and work design. Further, we assumed but did not empirically certify that collective ISM promotes MTS productivity via team performance given the absence of measures of team productivity. 5.2. Future directions This field research merits further replication and extension. For example, we assumed that mean individual self-management within teams would foster greater team self-management, though the sole empirical inquiry into both individual and group autonomy in traditional teams suggests weak—if not inverse—relationships between these two forms (Langfred 2000). To validate our tenet, we call for simultaneous investigations of both team and individual self-management in empowered teams, especially as many theorists speculate about their possible conflict (Barker, 1993, Pearce & Manz, 2005 and Uhl-Bien & Graen, 1998). Because our findings are drawn from a combined pooled-sequential arrangement MTS, further inquiry should strive to generalize them to intensive arrangement MTS environments, where component teams operate more interdependently (Marks et al., 2005). Moreover, the MTS collectives in this study are themselves sequentially interdependent because wafer processing must proceed across all modules and more complex wafers are processed across modules more than once. Further, our intra-team cohesion moderation warrants replication as we operationalized interpersonal attraction. Other aspects of group cohesion, such as task commitment and group pride, may also condition self-management effects (Beal et al., 2003). Besides this, we suggest that consideration of other forms of emergence for individual ISM might impact collective performance via other compositional or compilation processes (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000 and Ployhart, 2004). While we showed the value of an additive combination of individual ISM scores, collectivities might function well too if a few participants have “maximal” ISM scores and perform crucial team functions demanding more self-reliance, such as leadership or external liaisons (cf. Barrick et al., 1998). What is more, team diversity in ISM competencies may be beneficial if different team participants are competent at different self-leadership strategies (Barrick et al., 1998). Rather than all members being proficient in the full array of self-regulating tactics, teams might still carry their function if some members are adept at behavioral strategies, while other member can better deploy natural reward strategies. Further determinations when self-management strategies boost team productivity promise to expand our insight into the conditions that combine to make self-managing teams flourish (Manz & Sims, 1993). To illustrate, Druskat and Wheeler (2003) suggest that external leaders can best support team self-management when they enact broad boundary-spanning activities, such as building political awareness and relationships with outside constituents. Though Brown (2003) showed that verbal self-guidance training can benefit self-managing student teams, development of team self-management competency deserves more scrutiny. How do SMWT best learn these techniques and can prospective members be screened for team membership based on preexisting self-management capabilities? We also reiterate DeChurch and Marks' (2006) call for more inquiry into MTS leadership as leading a collection of empowered teams requires different abilities than leading a single team (Manz & Sims, 2001). Our research suggests several practical implications. In line with Chen et al.'s (2007) recent finding that managers can enhance team performance by using two distinct (but related) strategies to enhance individual and team empowerment, external leaders of SMWT teams must encourage self-management both personally and collectively. To enhance individual self-management, external leaders might engage in more one-on-one coaching or mentoring with team participants and ensure that excessive peer control does not constrain members (Barker, 1993). By comparison, external leaders might apply different interventions to foster team self-management. They might delegate more authority and responsibility to the team as a whole, help teams perform certain tasks together (e.g., problem-solving meetings), and acquire necessary material resources and information for teams (Wageman, 2001). Further, employers must ensure that teams embedded within a MTS collective are themselves empowered. Just as other team members can undermine individual members' autonomy (Barker, 1993), teams might restrict the freedom and latitude of other component teams. Ultimately, empowered teams and team systems are combinations of individual team members. To the extent that members are self-leaders, they are in a better position to not only contribute to their own team's performance but also to the effectiveness of the multi-team system. While collective performance is determined by various factors, we found that a significant portion of this variance can be explained by self-management of individual members who are the most basic building blocks of networks of related teams. That said, continued investigations are needed if the empowered team movement is to live up to its potential rather than becoming a temporary management fad (Gibson & Tesone, 2001 and Kulwiec, 2001).