To What Extent Does Teamwork Lead to Empowerment - Essay Example

Title: To what extent does teamwork lead to empowerment? Student’s Name: Institutional Affiliation: Date Submitted: To what extent does teamwork lead to empowerment? Introduction Teamwork tasks are increasingly becoming an integral aspect of organizational management. Various types of teams are being formed, ranging from top management teams to multi-functional teams. The extent to which teamwork can lead to empowerment is an issue that is open to debate. There are many intervening factors that need to be assessed before any relationship between teamwork efforts and empowerment can be established. This paper assesses the extent to which teams can be used as a tool of organizational empowerment. The analysis of the notions of teamwork and the empowerment is carried out from an HRM perspective. Various HRM models and theories are assessed and evidence on policy and practice is presented. The organizational context of HRM Empowerment is a key element of teamwork. Any time that is empowered possesses authority, skills and information in order to carry out tasks, make the right decisions and improve performance, thereby driving results. The organizational structure of a team also determines largely how well it functions. The structure of any teamwork effort is a clear yardstick of determining how each member should behave towards all the other members. The main aim of constructing teams is to get the job done. There are many types of teamwork engagements in an organization. Whether one talks of project teams, top executive teams, product-market teams, or cross-functional teams, there is always a HRM issues to be addressed. Although different teamwork efforts are aimed at pursuing different goals, the problems that are encountered are common to them all. HRM practitioners face many challenges in their efforts to make teams successful in all the activities they are set up to undertake. The task of reconciling the demands, practices and activities of a team with the organizational structure is always a challenging one for HRM practitioners. The professionals have to come up with a clear strategy. Strategy is critical to decision making since it gives all members a sense of purpose in their work. The operational goals that follow from different goals also have to be very clear. A team that does not have a clear strategy may find it difficult engaging in organizational activities successfully at the tactical level. It can easily become divided, thereby resulting in a situation whereby each team member follows only his own pet initiatives. It is the role of HRM to ensure that the roles and responsibilities are clear and agreed upon among all participants in the teamwork undertaking. Without such consensus, the form of empowerment that is realized becomes devolved, and the participants pass the buck, fix blames and engage in silo behavior. In every business relationship, it is not possible to disentangle teamwork and the HRM. As long as the organization realizes the need for teamwork efforts to be accorded empowerment, the human resource management has a lot to offer by way of professional assistance, support, and guidance to all team leaders and members. Effective empowerment entails the ability by all team members to confront all the issues that they face. It also entails the inspiration on the part of all members to confront each other and discuss the weaknesses of every member, including the team member. Otherwise, no amount of empowerment can cure a culture that is based on avoidance of conflicts and disagreements. Protocols for decision-making have to be put in place for teamwork efforts to bear fruits. Sometimes, empowerment gets derailed mainly because of lack of upfront agreement on whether decisions ought to be made unilaterally, consultatively or by consensus. When the decisions are taken unilaterally, only one person determines crucial decisions; the input of other team members does not count. From a consultative perspective, some benefits are reaped since no single person can determine the way forward without soliciting input from other people in order for value to be added to the decision. In the consensus mode, everyone’s input is considered and people agree to abide by the outcome agreed upon by the majority of the members. In every organizational setting, teamwork activities are a key indicator of the extent of success in various undertakings. The strategies used in decision-making are indicative of the effectiveness of the organization’s HRM department. Therefore, team leaders should consult with the human resource management before undertaking crucial decisions on behalf of the entire teams. Team leaders need to identify all the decisions that require to be made. A flip chart works well. In this regard, decision sub-teams need to be identified. For every decision that is identified, a sub-team should be assembled. This sub-team becomes the steering committee that is tasked with the work of making particular decisions. Likewise, accountability should be assigned. Each decision requires a point man, someone who is responsible for ensuring that closure is achieved within the sub-team. Then, sub-teams work best within strictly set deadlines. All members of a sub-team should identify with the organizational goals that need to be set and the HRM connection that should never be severed. Once a decision has been made, it ought to be announced to the entire team before the implementation work can begin. For HRM managers, the task of ensuring that the team is high-performing is ever-present. Once such tasks are abandoned, it becomes impossible for teams to maintain their sense of empowerment. On the other hand, when a sense of empowerment is maintained, a team possesses the ability to exert authority, provide skills and information, make crucial decisions, and ratchet up performance with an aim of driving results. Every team has to concentrate on quality teamwork that pays in order to become an empowered element within an organization. Emphasis should be on total quality management, a concept that is best employed from the perspective of organizational culture. The concept of total quality management takes a long time to nurture. The recruitment procedures that an organization chooses to adopt must be inspired by elements of total quality management. This implies that all staff members need to be experienced in their areas of specialization. They also need to have immense interest in their work in order to find inspiration to learn as many things as possible from the practical challenges that they face. Experience among dedicated employees increases their job satisfaction, career satisfaction, job involvement and organizational commitment. All these aspects provide an ideal environment for empowered teams to develop. However, all these aspects should be founded on trust in various attributes of the organization. Employees need to be given the much-needed autonomy as soon as they have the requisite experience that enables them to work without close supervision. This enables them to become more involved with their jobs, both in their individual capacities as well as team players. Concepts in HRM Employees are the most important resource in any organization. Empowerment in teams, after all, revolves on the efforts made by various employees. A participative systems is required, whereby employees take responsibility for the task of improving quality within the organization. Empowerment becomes phenomenal when teams are able to achieve the goals upon which they were established in the first place. Reviews on various scholarly journals on teamwork and empowerment indicate that empowerment was first conceptualized as an aspect that involves a relational or power-sharing view. However, the view of empowerment as ‘sharing power’ has been criticized by some as incomplete, and that a complete conceptualization should also include issues of motivational effect of employee empowerment on subordinates (Brower 1995, p. 16). The notion of intrinsic task motivation has been used to build on the notion of ‘sharing power’ in the definition of team empowerment. In this context, empowered teams are said to have high potency and autonomy in the execution of their tasks. Moreover, they tend to find all their tasks highly meaningful and impactful. However, both the foundational and advanced perspectives tend to complement each other as far as the literature on team empowerment is concerned. On the basis of this body of literature, empowering leadership can be defined as behaviors in which power is shared among subordinates, and which raises their level of intrinsic motivation. The concept can be clarified further, particularly in relation to the various HR functions that come with use of organizational teams. The issues that constitute examples of empowering behaviors include participative decision making, informing, coaching, and showing concern. For HR professionals, the notion of ‘management team’ is necessary since it is a crucial yardstick for determining the hierarchy-based occupational relationships that exist among various employees within an organization. For instance, top management teams undertake tasks that are different from other lower-cadre management teams. However, both types of teams tend to confront complexity, uncertainty, competitive pressures. Empowerment teamwork practices are powerful instruments for establishing a quality culture that encourages motivation, employee involvement, satisfaction, and commitment. When emphasis is on total quality management, employees are able to achieve a high level of commitment to the various organizational goals that are critical for long-term survival. Middle managers who work in organizations that address total quality management issues in their teams tend to become less frustrated with the work that they do. Moreover, they work in an environment of a closer relationship with the top management. Many factors determine the level of involvement in teamwork efforts. In many cases, there is always a connection with the HRM practices that are applied across the organization. These practices instinctually find their way into various teams. If all employees within an organization are empowered, it is easy for the individual members of various teams to seek the drive for empowerment. The result of this empowerment may be discernible in the level of customer satisfaction, focus on quality, problem-prevention initiatives, and inspiration for continuous improvement. When quality issues are addressed from all perspective, it becomes easy for the reputation of the organization to get a facelift, thereby creating many opportunities for future improvements. Teamwork entails working together, cultivating improvement in attitudes and facilitating the employees’ ability to work in a coordinated manner in order to get the job done. Therefore, performance appraisal activities comprise a critical element of teamwork development and subsequently, empowerment. In the context of these activities, opportunities for cooperation and partnerships between managers and workers area created. Participation in teamwork, flexibility and teamwork are important factors for efficient organizations to achieve lasting partnerships between managers and employees. Teamwork generates empowerment whenever resources are provided, responsibilities delegated and the authority to plan given. The teams that enjoy the greatest level of empowerment are those that are given the authority and the means to organize, plan, implement as well as measure their work. Such teams are also accorded the freedom to make decisions that are required for their contribution towards organizational efficiency to be made efficiently. The role of HRM with regard to the empowerment of teamwork should not be gainsaid. Many organizations are yet to adopt employees’ suggestion programs, an area that possesses a great potential for quality and empowerment processes to be assessed. Such avenues for suggestions, if made available, would be highly welcome, particularly highly motivated, goal-oriented team players. Without proper opportunities for synthesis and response, the suggestions may not be useful for the tasks of improving the employees’ work life, the work area, and the organization in general. It is upon for the HRM experts within an organization to discern a relationship between quality and empowerment within teams. Moreover, there is need for an acknowledgement to be made on the ways in which teamwork efforts encourage the development of a bottom-up approach in organizational culture. Employees who find it difficult to connect with the larger organizational systems may feel empowered through participation in teamwork. For them, these teams may be a perfect way of bringing them closer to the organization than before. For organizational leaders, empowerment in teams, if well managed, monitored and controlled, translates in a feeling of trust towards top managers. Trust is achieved when employees start believing in the positive vision of the organization. Such an attitude supports and nurtures cooperation among co-workers and subordinates. In the absence of such attitudes, employees can never have a sense of ownership in any organizational undertaking. The extent to which an organizational practice increases the control of work by employees determines is a key factor for empowerment in a team. In other words, an organization practice has the potential to allow employees at any level to become increasingly involved in their job and to work in a cooperative manner within their teams as well as on the organization-wide basis. In such a context, improvements can be made through employee suggestion programs, which could be based on different teamwork undertakings. When employees are allowed to freely engage in innovative practices and to implement their own solutions to various work-related problems, they are said to be empowered. This indicates the relevance of employee autonomy. Power and control over one’s work are critical aspects that HRM managers monitor closely when they are carrying performance appraisals. These managers should be careful not to kill the spirit of employee autonomy in different during the performance appraisal processes. Human resource managers cannot avoid the temptation to interfere with the level of employee participation if they have not clearly outlined the activities, duties and responsibilities that form the basis for performance appraisal rankings. It is important for HRM experts to outline clearly the standards that they are looking for as far as teamwork participation is concerned. This is a good measure, particularly among lower-level employees, where misunderstandings are likely to bring many operations to a near-halt. Lack of empowerment in some organizational practices emanates from lack of clearly outlined measure of maintaining organizational trust. All top managers should have trust in the employees’ abilities in performing the duties that they have been assigned in their teams. Therefore, it is obvious that the organizational structure should be such that the best brains are conglomerated into different teams and complete trust accorded to all these employees. Job involvement and satisfaction are some of the ways in which empowerment in different teamwork undertakings manifests itself. Employees have to be accorded an opportunity to get involved in various tasks before they can derive satisfaction. These processes take a tool on their emotional states, thereby necessitating a clearly defined framework. Empowerment and teamwork practices provide a perfect opportunity for the right organizational culture for involvement and satisfaction to be created. HRM theories and Models There are many HRM theories and models that bear a strong connection between teamwork and empowerment. Various models of teamwork and empowerment are useful in the analysis various teamwork undertakings in both the private and public sectors. For instance, the model of organizational empowerment proposed by Rosabeth Moss Kanter was once used in a study of a multidisciplinary teamwork project that had been started in preparation of the survey on Health Services Accreditation by the Canadian Council (Kutzscher 1997, p. 14). Work structures such as teams are a source of opportunities for learning and growing, in addition to providing support, information and resources that empower employees. The body of literature churned out in recent times reflects the way in which an empowered workforce ends up getting job and career satisfaction, thereby increasing effectiveness. A study carried out by Kutzscher (1997, p. 13) showed that employees who participate in teams tend to have higher empowerment scored than those who do not participate in the teamwork efforts. Moreover, these people perceive access to empowerment structures to be much more important than those who do not participate in these teams. In the overall, Kutzscher noted that the perception of access to empowerment structures was significantly lower compared to the perceived importance of access to the various empowerment structures. The study’s outcomes supported the use of multidisciplinary teams as one of the best work redesign strategy for enhancing effectiveness at the workplace. In an investigation into the relationship existing between team empowerment and team performance, Kirkman (2004, p. 181) found out that team empowerment relates positively to two independent assessments of team performance: customer satisfaction and process improvement. This study also assessed the moderating role that face-to-face teamwork interaction plays in high-technology organizations. In this regard, Kirkman noted that team empowerment was a much stronger predictor of teams that were meeting face-to-face less, and not more, frequently. Some theories of team-building have been criticized as inadequate since they do not respond to the needs of all types of organizations. Moreover, they cannot be used to describe perfectly all categories of teams. Quinn (1999, p. 82) observes that Belbin’s team role theory describes roles that are appropriate only for highly static organizations. He also argues that in most teams no roles are set for each member, meaning that many team players tend to take up the roles of other people. Rather than engage in the task of assigning roles, it is better and more empowering for all team members to be taught on how to manage teamwork in an effective manner. It is easy to discern a positive relationship between an individual’s role perceptions and is performance in a team. Role perception is the manner in which an individual views the roles he is supposed to handle in a certain situation. In any team, it is important for all individuals to occupy the roles that are expected of them as well as to understand these roles. Role expectations entail how other people believe an individual will act in a given situation. These expectations bring a new dimension into the understanding of empowerment. In this regard, the ability by individuals to deal with role conflict is critical to maintaining a sense of empowerment. Divergent role expectations play a big role in creating conflicts. In all teams, individuals need to be empowered with regard to the roles they play as team members. Teams can easily create outputs that are greater than the sum of their respective inputs. This situation is caused by the social facilitation effect. The social facilitation effect simply refers to the tendency by individuals to improve or decline in their performance, in response to the presence of other team members. When teams create more output compared to their combined input, this process creates positive synergy. On the other hand, when the output seems to be less than the combined input, this leads to social loafing. Official loafing is a tendency for individuals to expend less effort while working collectively than when working individually. Research on social facilitation indicates that simple, routine tasks tend to be performed in a speedy and accurate manner in the presence of other people (Levi 1995, p. 38). When complex work that requires close attention is being performed, teams produce negative energy. Process gains tend to be maximized when people are trained for various simple tasks in teams. However, for complex tasks, training is best undertaken through individual practice sessions. When training and learning needs are incorporated into new job dimensions, some employees tend to perceive their jobs as increasingly stressful within a team environment since they no longer have someone in the vicinity to make some of the job-related decisions. However, empowerment tends to cultivate higher levels of job satisfaction for these same reasons. The various theories and models used in HRM to explain empowerment in teams highlight the obstacles that have to be faced and overcome in teamwork environments. Fear and cynicism are some of the barriers that all team members have to contend with. Fear of dramatic changes arises because employees are not exactly sure that they will not lose their jobs. This fear is compounded by cynicism about the benefits and successes of the newly introduced program. It is always important for efforts to be made in order to work with individual employees, so that they can understand the true implications of teamwork realignments that are about to take place. These employees need to be made aware that even after some job descriptions have been reworked and others eliminated, this will not lead to loss of jobs; that employees are simply going to be relocated into different positions. Within this perspective, teams and empowerment works only when there is trust. Employees need to trust the organization’s management with the task of reorganizing the human resource landscape without making some people losing their jobs. In teams, two main barriers can be identified: soft barriers and soft barriers. Soft barriers relate to the personal relationships that are established in teams. Hard barriers relate to the way tasks are performed. When teams start experiencing soft barriers, the main problem is with lack of understanding of the minimum behavior standards that are expected of standard teams, including self-sufficiency norms within allocated resources. A major indicator of teams that are facing soft barriers is lack of experiential learning. The level of goals achievement tends to be hindered mainly by hard barriers. Teams that overcome soft barriers tend to achieve standard-level performances. However, for these teams to bring about positive synergy, they have to pursue innovation and creativity. When hard barriers are overcome, team members are able to go beyond conventional expectations in order to put up excellent performances. Recent research indicates that majority of firms have developed the tendency to implement cross-functional teams in the majority of the projects that are undertaken involving new product development (Ezzamel 1998, p. 125). However, these firms are still facing difficulties in efforts to ensure that all teams are successful in maintaining competitiveness during new product development. Success in cross-functional teams, though, goes hand in hand with a sense of empowerment. When measured at the project level, the contribution of the human resource department in the product development initiative becomes easily discernible. Many factors have been identified which contribute to the success of cross-functional teams. The diversity maintained in these groups contributes significantly to their success (McDonough 2000, p. 235). The empowerment of organizational teams requires the presence of decision-making power. This power entails the ability for the team leaders to assign the appropriate resources, create a productive climate, and actively determine the procedures that the respective teams will adopt in order to achieve the set goals. Of the various factors that are considered essential in teambuilding, the one that is most associated with teamwork is appropriate choice and execution of project goals. The other factor that is highly regarded is empowerment. Others factors that are essential in teamwork activities include ownership of the project, commitment to the project, cooperation, trust and respect among all team members. When teams are empowered, the benefits accrue to the organization, customers, as well as employees. Empowerment leads to ease of decision making, creation of supportive functions and systems, alignment of direction, accountability and courage to take organizational risks. However, empowerment is a process rather than a phenomenon to be realized at an instant. Therefore, empowerment comes with more responsibilities that merely ensure that the benefits continue trickling to the organization. Team empowerment can be examined from various perspectives. A lot of research that has been done recently focuses various areas, including an examination of its antecedents, its consequences, as well as the meditational role that it plays (Kirkman 1999, p. 64). However, there is need for these researches to be analyzed in great detail in efforts to come with a coherent theoretical framework of the dynamics of team empowerment (McCrimmon 1995, p. 36). Likewise, the actions of external leaders, the service and production responsibilities that is given to teams, the social structure of teams, as well as team-based human resource policies, all need to be studied and summarized in coherent theoretical frameworks that can be compared to one another. In such researches, it would be expected that more empowered teams would derive higher levels of productivity. Moreover, these teams achieve high levels of customer service, team commitment, and job satisfaction. Mathieu (2006, p. 97) developed a team empowerment model, founded on a link-up of various factors that led to an emergent state, whereby inputs (I) were linked with processes (P), and, therefore, with outcomes (O), in a context an increasingly expanded IPO framework. Mathieu used survey responses of 452 members of some 121 empowered service technical teams, together with archival quantitative customer satisfaction and performance criteria. On this basis, the model was tested with the use of structural equation modeling techniques. The test supported the model, although there many areas of improvement which were clearly evident. Particularly, empowerment appeared to mediate partially the influences of different inputs on team processes, while team processes appeared to mediate fully the influence of empowerment on different outcomes. Srivastava (2006, p. 1247) carried out a survey of management teams in 102 hotels in the US with an aim of examining the intervening roles played by team efficacy and knowledge sharing in the association between empowering leadership and performance of the management teams. After carrying measurements using time-lagged market-based source, Srivastava found out that empowering leadership has a positive association with both team efficacy and knowledge sharing. This association, in turn, this shows a positive relationship with performance. Among all the research studies that have been carried out on the importance of leader behaviors in team performance, empowering leader behavior has been accorded special importance (Srivastava 2006, p. 1248). This is because it is consistent with the trend towards the provision of increased autonomy to all employees. Two main perspectives have been adopted in such studies: in the first one, focus is on leader actions while the second one is on the response of employees to empowerment. The first one specifically looks particularly at sharing of power or giving additional autonomy and responsibility to employees while the second one focuses on employees’ motivation. According to Srivastava (2006, p. 1248), the relationship that exists between leader behaviors and team performance will always be more complicated than simply the enactment of different behaviors. Rather, Srivastava proposes two categories that constitute intermediate mechanisms. First, there is the role of knowledge sharing as a crucial team process, and then there is team efficacy, which is an emergent state in the process of defining the empowerment leadership-performance relationship. According to Mathieu (2006, p. 101), team processes are simply the means through which members work in an interdependent fashion in order to utilize various resources. On the other hand, emergent states refer to the teams’ states in terms of various ‘cognitive, motivational and affective dimensions’. Evidence on policy and practice The extent to which teamwork leads to empowerment can best be determined through an assessment of the studies that have been done on practice and policy issues relating to this issue (Wilkinson 1998, p. 49). Ordinarily, not all theoretical conceptions fit well into matters of policy and practice. Likewise, there are many everyday management practices, where the provisions of teamwork and empowerment theory are not adhered to because of the circumstances in which the HR professionals and other top managers of organizations find themselves. In modern-day teamwork practices, empowerment in organizational teams is covered within the realm of Total Quality Managememt (TQM). Within TQM, empowerment is said to be achieved when bureaucracy is done in the workplace and creativity is no longer stifled. In such situations, workers are not alienated, and there are no signs of discontent either through collective or individual means. The prescriptive literature that exists on the issue of empowerment appears to be highly disjointed from the practices and policies that are present in the real world (Doughty 2008, p. 12). The main problem with this literature is that employers do not get any tangible solutions to the significant problems that they tend to face in their organizations on a day-to-day basis. It is often assumed that employers will religiously adopt the new approaches prescribed in team empowerment literature, especially those areas that impact directly on the HR function. Moreover, another undesirable assumption is that empowerment is a nothing more or less than a universal solution that is applicable to all organizations under all circumstances. Empowerment, in itself, it appears, is not viewed in a contingent manner. All literature that adopts such a view tends to be criticized as superficial, and an agent of trivialization of the nascent conflicts that exist in today’s organizations (Conger 1988, p. 475). Conclusion In summary, teamwork can lead to empowerment, though there are many intervening HR variables that get in between the efforts made and the outcomes. Meanwhile, there is a big research gap between theoretical notions of teamwork and its impact on empowerment and policy and practical implications. There is need for researchers to address as many of policy and practice issues as possible in order to provide human resource managers with a reliable theoretical reference point in efforts to solve various real-life problems facing teams within the organization. References Brower, M 1995, ‘Empowering teams: what, why, and how’, Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 3 I, No. 1, pp.13 – 25. Conger, J 1988, ‘The Empowerment Process: Integrating Theory and Practice’ The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 471-482. Doughty, H 2008, ‘Employee empowerment: Democracy or Delusion?’ The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 1-24. Ezzamel, M 1998, ‘Accounting for Teamwork: A Critical Study of Group-Based Systems of Organizational Control’ Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 43, No.4, pp.109-136. 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