Challenges and Implementation of Self-Directed Work-Teams - Term Paper Example

Effectiveness of Self-Directed Work Teams By Insert Name Course Tutor Due Date Effectiveness of Self-Directed Work Teams Introduction Employees are the most highly valuable resource in any organization. Ensuring their optimum performance is therefore an objective of most progressive organizations. The creation of teams in general and self directed work teams in particular has therefore become a common practice. A self directed team is one where the associates are accountable for their own actions rather than being subjected to control by a manager. In spite of a growing number of organizations taking up the idea, employees have generally tended to resist it, hence posing a challenge to management. Three main factors are responsible for this characteristic. These are low levels of receptiveness to change, lack of trust within the organizations and variations in cultural values. 1 Knowledge relating to determination of self-directed team effectiveness is important. This is due to the fact that it will enable the facilitation of maximum team output. This in effect leads to positive communication, enhancement of leadership skills, self development and an ability to work together much more closely as a team. In usual arrangements, the manager plays the part of a team leader and is assigned the task of defining the functioning, goals and methods to be applied by the team in the pursuit of identified goals. What leads to failure in eliminating interdependence and conflicts among different parts of the organization’s workforce is the presence of hierarchical control models. If well implemented, self-directed teams will help in the setting of clear boundaries which will result in responsibility and freedom to efficiently complete assigned tasks. This paper seeks to identify the meaning, challenges and implementation of self-directed work-teams and through the assessment of relevant literature, offer an understanding of the measures and levels of effectiveness in the work-teams. 2 Organizational Culture A team refers to a group of persons who work interdependently in the performance of tasks, hold joint responsibility for results of their work and exist as a distinct social entity. The qualifying criterion is in this case is attachment to a single or more bigger social systems. The groups are able to manage interrelation across organizations. The implementation of the work teams calls for changes in work culture. This is however not easy to do. However, in a majority of organizational settings, the approach offers several benefits and is able to utilize team work and the human social characteristic. The change to self directed work groups requires a lot of training hence contributes to success in all organizational levels. This takes away control from managers and allocates it to employees hence offers them greater ownership at work in general. It has the effect of making them feel empowered, possibly leading to a higher rate of retention hence productivity.3 For greater effectiveness, there ought to be the inclusion of team building skills in every self directed team program. Self directed teams need to re-structure their job duties and also an evaluation system to monitor its level of success and recommend measures to improve them. Education and training within the group approach needs to incorporate the best way to ensure that managerial roles are changed from hands-on to a hands-off in orientation. In most instances managers end up only playing the part of providing extra resources to the teams whenever needed.4 Challenges in Developing Self-direction The building of effective self-directed work teams requires making a change from the traditional structures of management which tend to be very hierarchical and steep to an environment characterized by high employee involvement in decision-making and determination of tasks. This includes creating teams and promoting a culture that has a lot of management support. Teams need to undergo various stages of boosting involvement in preparation for employee self-management. Thorough training is also important in the process. Training for self directed should be more comprehensive than it is for other team types. Employees should be able to know how to work better as teams and gain skills in decision-making and problem solving, in addition to learning the basic managerial skills so as to be able to manage their processes. In addition, there should be cross-training in each member's job. 5 An organization’s management is capable of either promoting or limiting employment, the degree of empowerment and development of self-directed work teams. It is thus essential for management to actively support the efforts. The provision of relevant materials and training should also facilitate the dynamic role of managers and supervisors. It is essential for workers to feel reassured about the future. They should not fear being eliminated or that their positions may be eliminated or their roles redefined. Management should further be involved in effecting the change. They should guide the groups in their transition, empowerment and development. Managers should learn when to insist and when to release the workers. There should therefore be thorough planning, facilitation and training. Supervisors ought to learn how to support continuous coaching and connect the team roles to the organization in general. The organization’s top management should also play its part. It should be the main facilitator and sponsor of the teams and teambuilding efforts. The commitment ought to be visible and continuous. There is need for a provision of enough resources, both financial and time. It should in addition offer tolerance and patience as the process takes time. 6 Studies on self Directed Team Effectiveness Management literature dwells a lot on how important teams are as a factor in the promotion of organizational competitiveness. From a number of studies, one of the most sought after skills by companies trying to introduce self-directed work teams is an ability to work together as a team. Other available literature has indicated that team effectiveness and teams in general are an important area to be studied because they are fast becoming the norm in modern organizations.7What has been written so far mostly relates to teams found in organizations. It basically deals with teams and approaches the issue if effectiveness by looking at three main outcomes as indicators of such effectiveness. The indicators are performance, behavioral and attitudinal outcomes and these are noted in three levels; individual, teams and organizations in general.8 Effectiveness of Teams The effectiveness of self-directed work teams depends to a great extent on multiple outcomes which are important in the day to day operations of the organization. The outcomes generally occur in the various levels, and for this reason, there is the need for managers to set up work teams for different tasks. It should always be the objective of organizations to come up with new teams as these are known to by far, boost the performance potential of organization, and by extension, financial output and competitiveness within a business climate that is constantly changing and emphasizing on product and service quality. 9 Effectiveness of self-directed work teams is usually analyzed basing on three main dimensions. These are performance, attitudes and behavioral outcomes. Measures of performance effectiveness include for instance innovation, efficiency, quality and productivity. Attitudinal measures are for instance employees trust in management, commitment and employee satisfaction. Behavioral measures are for instance turnover, absenteeism and safety. The measures are not mutually exclusive. Rather, in most instances there may be two or more of them occurring together at a time.10 Effectiveness of teams may be described as being a product of group processes, environmental factors, psychosocial traits and design factors. Environmental include characteristics that occur in the external environment of the company for instance economic and industry turbulence. Design factors are the descriptive aspects of the work group or organization but which may possibly be modified by management in order to develop conditions that will promote employee performance. These are for instance interdependence and autonomy of units. A group’s psychosocial traits refer to the shared emotional tone, understandings or beliefs within the workplace. A number of available studies of self moderated project teams have dwelt on the extent of impact outside factors have on the workforce. On the other hand, older works tended to look at the internal group dynamics in relation to effectiveness of teams.11 Recent studies emphasize the characteristic of a group being a social entity with commonly held psychosocial traits impacting on its behavior for instance group cohesiveness and norms together with more recent constructs for instance team mental models and group affect. Older studies on the other hand emphasized norms and cohesiveness as being group processes and failed to appropriately consider the effect of group or shared belief, understanding and emotional tone on the effectiveness that results. With time however, research and conceptual studies have began dealing more with team mental models and group affect as issues in effectiveness.12 Most of the recent studies have adopted various outcome measures and they have generally tended to focus on three or more effectiveness measures. Work Group Autonomy and Participation Self-directed work teams are one form of worker participation. They have a high degree of group autonomy. They can therefore be easily used as examples of substantive participation. This is due to the fact that there is the need for fundamental changes to the organization of work. To date, a majority of studies have focused on self-directed work teams in relation to the various factors on team effectiveness. The effect of substantive participation to attitudinal measures is positive. From studies, autonomy positively relates with satisfaction in self-directed work teams irrespective of the industry; manufacturing or service.13 Participation has a positive relation to satisfaction in nursing units. Autonomy also positively relates to attitudinal measures in organizational commitment. 14 There is a mixed result for relationships between substantive participation and behavioral outcomes. Absenteeism for instance tends to be higher in autonomous teams as compared to traditionally managed firms and quite stable in others. In the former study, there is the suggestion that raised absenteeism levels is due to overtime and longer distances traveled by workers to go to work. In general, recent studies show clear benefits of participation on the performance of self-directed work teams. Autonomy promotes worker attitudes, performance and behavior. Negative results are an indication that there is no such benefit. Having semi autonomous and autonomous teams has a considerable effect on the overall organizational financial and indeed, overall performance. This is unlike the other kinds of teams such as quality circles, employee involvement teams and general work-teams.15 Diversity There is a scarcity of studies that have factored in the issue of diversity. However, teams that have greater diversity were found to have yielded more positive evaluations of their effectiveness. Authors provide several possible explanations as to why this is the case. These include a better utilization of members’ knowledge so as to improve cooperation and communication with groups from outside. Most have noted that heterogeneity in skills is not related to productivity, manager ratings of employee satisfaction and employee. There is thus the suggestion that this is the result of insignificant variation in expertise and background. Yet another interesting issue in the understanding of effectiveness is the size of groups. Group size is noted to have a positive relationship with productivity, the kind of manager effectiveness judgment and employee satisfaction. Group size has a significant positive relationship with group performance in employee teams. The absolute group size dopes not have a correlation with group performance. This however had the limitation of not having control for the other variables. Bigger groups tend to have members from a larger number of functions in addition to having more managers as compared to smaller groups.16 Client Climate There are quite a number of studies that have emphasized, and justifiably so, the role of environmental factors in enhancing or limiting the effectiveness of self-directed work teams. These have sought to explain the dual existence of personal, bureaucratic and group modes of work control. With institutionalized settings, there is the tendency to adopt a more bureaucratic structure of control. However, due to the assessments within highly institutionalized environments being characterized by more task difficulty and member- supervisor interdependence, more social styles of work-unit control for instance personal and group control modes would tend be chosen to control and coordinate activities. Environmental factors therefore greatly affect task design. In groups where tasks performed are routine, such tasks have been noted to be generally detrimental to the performance of group processes. In groups involved in non-routine tasks however, task conflict was not as bad. In some cases, it actually proved to be beneficial.17 Conclusion This paper has taken note of the suggestion that the kind of team that is used in the performance of tasks has an effect on its effectiveness. Through the identification of different team types, the review suggests that studied variables are different for the different team types. For instance, studies that dealt with project teams examined external processes, which were concluded to be determinants of performance effectiveness. Work team studies on their part failed to consider external processes. There is therefore no clarity on their contribution to performance effectiveness. There is the possibility that external processes do not matter much for work teams. Performance and attitude benefits derived from self-directed teams tend to be superior as compared to other kinds of teams.18 There is also an affirmative relationship that exists between group cohesiveness and performance. Studies indicated a slight positive relationship between the aspects of cohesiveness with performance. Autonomy is also related to better job performance. The aspects that tend to be highly associated with accomplishment vary based on the person who is rating the the performance of the team. Team members generally rate team performance highly when a team is engaged in a healthy internal process for instance collaboration and conflict resolution. Diversity has also been noted to have a relation with performance in a variety of ways. For instance, functional diversity has an insignificant effect on the performance in self-directed work teams. In order for self-directed work teams to be most effective, there is need for management to make sure that the implementation of the approach is as much as possible justly distributed and procedural. In addition, the managers should always strive to address emergent issues relating to concerns regarding trust, and accountability. It should offer clarity as relates to the people responsible for every task and the anticipated positive outcomes of the arrangements on careers and self development opportunities at the workplace. Managers need to encourage the employees to have a positive view of the organization. Bibliography Bailey, Diane & Cohen, Susan. 1997. What Formulates Teams Work: Group Efficiency Research From the Shop Floor Towards the Executive Suite. Journal of Management. Vol 23(3): 239. Caramanica, Laura , Little, Jim & Ferris, Steve. 2001. Self-Directed Work Teams: Use with Caution. Nursing Management Vol. 32(12): 77. Grant, Adam. 2008. The implication of task significance: Job performance results, relational mechanisms, and frontier conditions. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 93(1): 108. Grant, Adam M. 2008. Employee Motivation. Journal of Applied Psychology Vol. 93(1): 108 Heap, Nick. 1996. Building the Organizational Team. Industrial and Commercial Training. Vol. 28 (3):112. Holton , Judith. Building Faith and Association in a Virtual Team. Team Performance Management. Vol. 7 (3):12. Latham, Gary. 2007. Work Motivation: History, Theory, Research and Practice. Canadian Psychology Vol. 48 (4):275. McManus, Kevin . 2009. Undirected Self-direction. Industrial Engineer .Vol. 41(6):16. Rushmer, Rosemary. 1997. How do We Measure the Effectiveness of Team Building? Is it good enough? Team Management Systems - A Case Study. Journal of Management Development. Vol. 16 (2):66. West, Michael. 2004. Building team-Based Working: A Practical Guide to Organizational Transformation. European Psychologist. Vol. 9(4):285. West, Michael. 2005. Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research. European Psychologist .Vol. 10 (1):79. Zafft , Carmen, Adams, Stephanie & Matkin, Gina. 2009. Gauging Leadership in Self-Managed Teams by use of the Competing Values Framework. Journal of Engineering Education. Vol. 98 (3): 273. . Read More