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 self directed 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. 53 65). The self managed 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 team based 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. 58 59). 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. 58 59). To foster strong leadership in SMWTs, organizational management must relinquish control over details, concrete problems, and day to day activities (Barton, 1991, pp. 58 59). Organizational management then devotes its energies to broader responsibilities, such as planning, and providing direction and support for SMWTs (Barton, 1991, pp. 58 59). Within such an organizational environment, management retains authority over strategy, while the SMWTs assumes authority for tactics within a framework of goals established by management (Owens, 1991, pp. 53 65).
Responsibility and a...