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Recent challenges raised in the literature suggest that the application of employee self-managing teams can create more of a illusion or myth of employee self-influence than a reality. The amount of self-influence allowed self-managing employees is frequently subject to many limitations stemming from management practice and organizational constraints. In order to more fully develop and utilize organizational human resources a movement beyond self-managing teams toward self-leading teams is proposed. This perspective suggests that employees are empowered to influence strategic issues concerning what they do and why, in addition to the issue of how they do their work. The role of several contingency factors is also considered.

This study focuses on the implications of introducing self-managed work groups in a context that has traditionally relied on individual self-management-an independent property and casualty insurance firm. A multimethod approach was employed in order to triangulate on a paradoxical situation in which establishment of self-managed work groups can threaten the personal control and autonomy of individual organization members.

This paper addresses the interrelationship of power and control. A model is developed suggesting that (a) control of organizational resources (resource control) is the primary source of interpersonal power; (b) interpersonal power is the driving force for controlling individuals (personal control); the type of power used to exercise personal control will influence the controlled/controller relationship; and (d) personal control fosters resource control and thus affects the distribution of intraorganizational power. Several questions and issues relevant to research and practice are raised. Overall, it is argued that to increase our understanding of power and control, greater effort is needed aimed at uncovering their interdependent relationship rather than the usual independent treatment given these two elusive concepts.

This book focuses on a new and emerging, yet as old as recorded history, organizational concern: virtue. Virtue has recently become a topic of serious examination among organizational researchers and progressive companies who are exploring their role in creating new, more holistic, healthy, and humane work environments. With interdisciplinary insights by many of the world's leading management thinkers, the book includes conceptual treatments, empirical research, and actual cases concerning virtuous behavior and leadership under conditions of crises, and ordinary and exemplary times. Until recently, scholarly research paid scant attention to virtue, especially in organizations. The pursuit of virtue, as opposed to the bottom line, remained outside the acceptable domain of practising managers faced with economic pressures and stakeholder demands. Concepts such as efficiency, return on investment (ROI), and competitive advantage were emphasized over more virtuous concerns such as caring, compassion, integrity and wisdom. The Virtuous Organization fills this void by presenting paradigm-shifting insights of leading scholars that have the potential to change the face of management thinking and practice for both this and future generations

Total Quality Management (TQM) and Socio-technical Systems Theory (STS) are two widely recognized and used work design strategies. While both approaches advocate some degree of technical proficiency and employee involvement, little research exists that has investigated potential synergies to be gained from combining central elements of the two. This paper directly addresses how these two approaches can be combined to simultaneously achieve organizational stability and flexibility. Contradictory as well as complementary features of TQM and STS are explored. A theoretical model addressing the potential for synergistic integration of TQM and STS is developed. Research propositions derived from this model are also provided to guide future research. Research based on these propositions can be instrumental in guiding ongoing organizational investments in TQM and STS. Ultimately, an integrated approach may be established that promises to simultaneously foster efficiency, stability, innovation, flexibility, psychological ownership, quality of worklife, continuous and discontinuous learning, and high organizational performance and customer satisfaction.

Proposes a new sort of learning process ‐ power‐point learning ‐ that goes beyond the traditional "teaching". It involves a learning process that aims at satisfying the primary needs of the most important customers involved ‐ the learners. Suggests that one effective method of fulfilling these student needs is through a SuperLeadership approach.

Many organizations are currently implementing self-managing work teams. Supervision of these teams is particularly challenging in that leaders are expected to lead others to lead themselves. Grounded primarily in the positivistic paradigm of research, a typology of leadership approaches is thus developed to explain team leader behaviors and their impact on team self-management. A model incorporating leader and organizational characteristics is then presented to illustrate antecedents of team leader behavior.

Self‐managing teams have been credited with many positive payoffs.
These include increased quality, productivity, employee quality of work
life, and decreases in absenteeism and turnover. Significant attention
has been devoted to the actual benefits derived from these group
applications. What is typically lacking is exploration of the
road‐blocks to self‐managed team success. Examines an important
challenge to SMT success – the threats that groups face when
making decisions. Notable evidence indicates that cohesive groups (such
as self‐managing teams) tend to create internal pressures towards
conformity that interfere with constructive critical analysis and
ultimately lead to dysfunctional decisions. The term groupthink has been
coined for this process that threatens effective group decision making.
Addresses this challenge in some detail. In particular, proposes a new
effective group condition – teamthink – a group
decision‐making process that enables groups to make effective decisions
while avoiding the pitfalls of groupthink.

Groups have been subject to a number of weaknesses and problems that interfere with their effectiveness. One notable destructive group tendency has been labeled "groupthink"-a defective decision-making process afflicting highly cohesive and conforming groups (Janis, 1972, 1983). One contemporary type of group that appears particularly vulnerable to groupthink is the self-managing or self-directing team (Manz & Sims, 1982). In this article we examine the vulnerability of self-managing teams to groupthink and propose a theory regarding the establishment of constructive synergistic team thinking and problem solving-"teamthink."