Empowered self-management

The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm Empowered self-management and the design of work teams

Empowered self-management Richard Cooney
Department of Management, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia
Keywords Empowerment, Team working, Job design
Abstract This paper explores the theoretical implications of empowered self-management as a teamwork design concept. It explores the multiple definitions of empowerment and self-management that have been used in the design of work teams and it attempts to locate empowered self-management within the relevant traditions of work design. The paper provides a critical appraisal of empowered self-management as a team design concept arguing that its unique contribution to the work design literature, has been the development of concepts that focus upon task enlargement as the basis of enhanced role accountabilities within teams. Empowered self-management as a team design concept has little to say about employee or group autonomy but in fact reflects the design of teams to provide for the normative self-regulation of employees within management directed systems of control.

Introduction
The empowerment of employees to enhance self-management has become a catch cry of modern management. Empowerment is one of those broad ranging management ideas that cover a wide variety of practices that are deployed in a wide variety of contexts. Empowerment has been seen as a property of organizations (Byman, 1991), of organizational teams and groups (Katzenbach and Smith, 1994) as well as a property of individual employees (Ford and Fottler, 1995).
Empowerment has been viewed from many different perspectives and it has drawn upon a variety of sources for both practical and theoretical inspiration. Empowerment has been approached from

References: Adler, P. (1992), “The ‘learning bureaucracy’: New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.”, in Cummings, L Adler, P. (1993), “Time-and-motion regained”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 71 No. 1, pp. 97-108. Adler, P. and Borys, B. (1996), “Two types of bureaucracy: enabling and coercive”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol Bandura, A. (1977), “Self-efficacy: towards a unifying theory of behavioral change”, Psychological Review, Vol Barker, J. (1993), “Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol Barker, J. (1999), The Discipline of Teamwork: Participation and Concertive Control, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Belbin, M. (1993), Team Roles at Work, Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, MA. Berggren, C. (1994), The Volvo Experience. Alternatives to Lean Production in the Swedish Auto Industry, Macmillan, Basingstoke. Blumberg, M. (1980), “Job switching in autonomous work groups: an exploratory study in a pennsylvania coal mine”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol Bryant, B., Farhy, N. and Griffiths, A. (1994), Self-Managing Teams & Changing Supervisory Roles, Centre For Corporate Change, Sydney. Buchanan, D. (2000), “An eager and enduring embrace: the ongoing rediscovery of teamworking as a management idea”, in Procter, S Byman, W. (1991), Zapp! The Lightening of Empowerment, Century Business, London. Cherns, A. (1976), “The principles of sociotechnical design”, Human Relations, Vol. 29 No. 8, pp Claydon, T. and Doyle, M. (1996), “Trusting me, trusting you? The ethics of employee empowerment”, Personnel Review, Vol Cohen, S., Ledford, G. and Spreitzer, G. (1996), “A predictive model of self-managing work team effectiveness”, Human Relations, Vol Collins, D. (1999), “Born to fail? Empowerment, ambiguity and set overlap”, Personnel Review, Vol Conger, J. and Kanungo, R. (1988), “The empowerment process: integrating theory and practice”, Academy of Management Review, Vol Cordery, J. (2003), “Team work”, in Holman, D., Wall, T., Sparrow, P. and Howard, A. (Eds), The New Workplace Cummings, T. (1978), “Self-regulating work groups: a socio-technical synthesis”, Academy of Management Review, Vol Cummings, T. and Blumberg, M. (1987), “Advanced manufacturing technology and work design”, in Wall, T., Clegg, C Cunningham, I. and Hyman, J. (1999), “The poverty of empowerment? A critical case study”, Personnel Review, Vol Davis, L. and Wacker, G. (1987), “Job design”, in Salvendy, G. (Ed.), Handbook of Human Factors, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pp Dawson, P. and Webb, J. (1989), “New production arrangements: the totally flexible cage”, Work, Employment and Society, Vol Delbridge, R. (1995), “Surviving JIT: control and resistance in a Japanese transplant”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol Dunphy, D. and Bryant, B. (1996), “Teams: panaceas or prescriptions for improved performance?”, Human Relations, Vol Emery, F. (1972), “Characteristics of socio-technical systems”, in Davis, L. and Taylor, J. (Eds), Design of Jobs Ford, R. and Fottler, M. (1995), “Empowerment: a matter of degree”, Academy of Management Executive, Vol Gist, M. (1987), “Self-efficacy: implications for organizational behavior and human resource management”, Academy of Management Review, Vol Gulowsen, J. (1972) Davis, L. and Taylor, J. (Eds), Design of Jobs. Selected Readings, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, pp Guzzo, R. (1996), “Fundamental considerations about work groups”, in West, M. (Ed.), Handbook of Work Group Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, pp Guzzo, R., Yost, P., Campbell, R. and Shea, G. (1993), “Potency in groups: articulating a construct”, British Journal of Social Psychology, Vol Hackman, R. (1986), “The psychology of self-management in organizations”, in Pollack, M. and Perloff, R Herbst, P. (1962), Autonomous Group Functioning. An Exploration in Behaviour Theory and Measurement, Tavistock Publications, London. Jackson, P., Wall, T., Martin, R. and Davids, K. (1993), “New measures of job control, cognitive demand, and production responsibility”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol Katzenbach, J. and Smith, D. (1994), The Wisdom Of Teams. Creating The High-Performance Organization, Harper Business, New York, NY. Kinlaw, D. (1991), Developing Superiour Work Teams. Building Quality and the Competitive Edge, Lexington Books, Lenham, MD. Kirkman, B. and Rosen, B. (1997), “A model of work team empowerment”, in Pasmore, W. and Woodman, R Klein, J. (1991), “A reexamination of autonomy in light of new manufacturing practices”, Human Relations, Vol Lawler, E. (1986), High Involvement Management. Participative Strategies for Improving Organizational Performance, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, CA. Lawler, E., Mohrman, S. and Ledford, G. (1995), Creating High Performance Organizations.