Work Teams & Leadership
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Team members "maintain their ties to functional departments for personnel, training, promotion, and other such matters, but they work face to face principally with members of other departments to achieve the level of coordinated expertise demanded by their tasks" (Gortner, Mahler, and Nicholson, 1989, p. 111). The selfdirected or self managing work team places such matters as personnel, training, and promotion in the hands of the team, causing the team, in effect, to become almost a separate company within a company (Owens, 1991, pp. 5365). The selfmanaged work team (SMWT) tends to affect three aspects of organizational structure. The affected aspects of structure are (1) lines of managerial authority within an organization, (2) responsibility and accountability within the organization, and (3) the informal organization within the organizational structure. The development of an effective teambased organization depends on the addressing of issues related to each of these characteristics of an organization. Strong leadership is necessary for the effective functioning of SMWTs (Barton, 1991, pp. 5859). Such leadership is essential if SMWTs are to hire, train, and assign new employees, determine work schedules, provide instruction in various skills, and make decisions related to bonus compensation and employee terminations (Barton, 1991, pp. 5859). To foster strong leadership in SMWTs, organizational management must relinquish control over details, concrete proble
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ice of decisionmaking in American organizations is far from standard. Decisionmaking practices range from the outmoded directive decisionmaking behavior to a full embracing of the concept of participative decisionmaking. The most effective decisionmaking behavior for organizations will include participation by organizational subordinates in the process, while, at the same time, preserving the ultimate responsibility and authority of the leader. The basic decisionmaking model has been defined as being of two parts: a core group at the center, invested by the rules with formal authority to legitimize decisions, and a constellation of satellite groups seeking to influence the core group (Nutt, 1990, pp. 523553). Group decisionmaking, a requirement of both TQM and CQI, may be applied in either part of the model.
In most organizations, it is a rare event for a single individual to complete an entire decisionmaking process without functioning at least part of the time as a member of a group (Nutt, 1990, pp. 179207). Group participation in an organizational decisionmaking process assumes even greater significance, when it is considered that the effective execution of an organizational decision requires a commitment on th
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Some common words found in the essay are:
TQM CQI, Larson LaFasto, SMWTs Barton, Kimberly Rottman, Peters Waterman, Programs Deming, Mahler Nicholson, Mason Dickel, Rand Corporation, , decisionmaking process, nominal decisionmaking, tqm cqi, 1990 pp, 1991 pp, 1992 pp, nutt 1990, nutt 1990 pp, american organizations, informal organization, tqm cqi system, quality circles, 1991 pp 5859, barton 1991 pp, larson lafasto 1989,
Approximate Word count = 2323
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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