External leadership of self-managing teams : Comparative study of SMT managers’ and team members’ views of SMT leadership

Abstract

Organizations have introduced self-managing teams at an increasing rate to meet the demands of rapidly evolving social and business environment. Self-managing teams provide an opportunity for organizations to flatten their organizations and improve decision-making pace. However, while self-managing teams operate under assumption of full autonomy, paradoxically they also tend to require managerial intervention. In this study, I investigate this relationship between self-managing teams and their external leaders. Special focus in the study is placed on finding out what are the key challenges in SMT leadership and further, what kind of leadership-style would suit SMT leadership. This research follows the line of self-managing team research stream, which has gained foothold in organization and team research over the past half a century. The research on self-managing teams has largely focused on manufacturing as self-managing teams started to emerge in that context. However, over the past two decades, coinciding with the rise of service sector the need for research in service context has been called for. To bridge this gap, I have conducted a study on self-managing teams in a customer service department of finance and insurance organization. I approached this research holistically, attempting to investigate SMT leadership challenges across individual, team and organizational levels. To compile an even more holistic view, I took on comparative research setting, where I interviewed both external managers and team members of self-managing teams. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured to enable rich data, which was then transcribed and coded using template analysis. Through this study, I discovered that the key challenges in customer service self-managing teams consist of themes related to work ownership, stress management and control exertion. External leaders of self-managing teams have task of manage from the team boundary without overwhelming the team with extensive intervention. This requires organizational support and trust to take place. To meet the challenges that these factors suggest, I proposed servant leadership-style to solve them. The results of this study are especially applicable for customer service organizations employing self-managing teams.