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How To Lead a Self-Managing Team
S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 V O L . 4 5 N O. 4
R E P R I N T N U M B E R 4 5 4 1 0
Vanessa Urch Druskat and Jane V. Wheeler
MITSloan Management Review
P l e a s e n o t e t h a t g ra y a re a s re f l e c t a r t w o rk t h a t h a s b e e n i n t e n t i o n a l l y re m o v e d . T h e s u b s t a n t i v e c o n t e n t o f t h e a r t i c l e a p p e a rs a s o ri g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d .
SUMMER 2004 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 65
o get work done, many companies organize employees into self-managing teams
that are basically left to run themselves with some guidance from an external
leader. In fact, comprehensive surveys report that 79% of companies in the Fortune
1,000 and 81% of manufacturing organizations currently deploy such “empowered,”
“self-directed” or “autonomous” teams.1 Because of their widespread use, much
research has been devoted to understanding how best to set up self-managing teams to
maximize their productivity and effectiveness. Interestingly, though, relatively little
attention has been paid to the leaders who must oversee such working groups.
At first, it seems contradictory: Why should a self-managing team require any lead-
ership? After all, doesn’t the group manage itself? In actuality, though, self-managing
teams require a specific kind of leadership. Even a team that is autonomous in terms
of its activities and decision making must still continually receive direction from
higher levels in the organization. And it also must report to that hierarchy through a
person who is ultimately held accountable for the group’s performance. Many man-
agers today are expected to fulfill the role of external leader,
but most receive conflicting signals regarding how to go
about it.2 Should they, for instance, be involved in their
team’s decision-making process? If so, how should they par-
ticipate without detracting from the group’s autonomy?
To investigate such issues, we conducted a study of 300
self-managing teams at a large manufacturing plant of a For-
tune 500 corporation. (See “About the Research.”) We investi-
gated both average- and superior-performing external leaders
at that site to determine the behaviors that separated one
group from the other. Our research has shown that, contrary
to common perception, the best external leaders were not
necessarily the ones who had adopted a hands-off approach,
nor were they simply focused on encouraging team members
in various ways.3 Instead, the external leaders who had con-
tributed most to their team’s success excelled at one skill:
managing the boundary between the team and the larger
organization. That process required specific behaviors that
How To Lead a Self-Managing Team
Teams that are basically
left to run themselves can
be highly efficient and
productive. To be successful,
though, such autonomous
groups require a specific
type of external leadership.
By Vanessa Urch Druskat and
Jane V. Wheeler
Vanessa Urch Druskat is a professor of organizational behavior at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. Jane V. Wheeler is professor of management at Bowling Green State University’s College of Business Administration. They can be reached at [email protected] and jvwheel@ cba.bgsu.edu.
T
66 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2004
can be grouped into four basic functions: relating, scouting,
persuading and empowering. (See “The Work of the External
Leader,” p. 69.) External leaders who excelled at those capabilities
were able to drive their teams to superior performance.
Managing in No-Man’s Land As recently as the 1960s, self-managing teams were practically
unheard of. Indeed, an early experiment by General Foods Corp.
to deploy self-managing teams on its Gaines dog-food produc-
tion line more than 30 years ago was something of a sensation.
Even, the company’s own senior management expected the proj-
ect to fail.4 Since then, self-managing teams have become an
increasingly popular way for companies to get work done. Even
so, the role of the people in charge of those groups has remained
somewhat of a mystery.
To be sure, leading a team that needs to manage itself is inher-
ently tricky. The role is highly ambiguous by nature (and, on the
face of it, oxymoronic). In general, self-managing teams tend to
have well-defined job functions and are responsible for monitor-
ing and managing their own performance. Instead of managers
telling them what to do, these teams gather and synthesize infor-
mation, make important decisions, and take collective responsi-
bility for meeting their goals. What’s left for the external leader to
do? As one of the external leaders in our study remarked, “Maybe
we’re not needed, you know?”
But the reality is that the buck stops at the external leaders.
Specifically, companies hold them responsible for their team’s
performance. If the quality or productivity of a team is substan-
dard, its external leader is taken to task. As another team leader in
our study noted, “The hardest part is that I’m also held account-
able. If they make the wrong decision, it still comes back on me.”
In essence, the job of external leader exists squarely in the middle
of a managerial no-man’s land.
Back in 1977, a field study published about that early experi-
ment at General Foods revealed external leaders caught in the
middle: Their teams criticized them for being too controlling,
while their own managers complained that they were being too
lax.5 Not long after, another research study looked at teams in
other organizational settings and found that those three con-
stituencies — team members, external leaders and their upper-
We conducted a study of external lead-
ers at a Fortune 500 durable-consumer-
goods manufacturing plant in the
Midwest. The facility employs more than
3,000 people and is the world’s largest
manufacturer of its particular product.
We chose this site because it offered a
rich research sample: The plant had tran-
sitioned to self-managing work teams
almost five years prior to our data collec-
tion, and there were 300 such teams
reporting up through 66 external lead-
ers. This large pool of external leaders in
one location provided a wide range of
individuals in that role and allowed us to
control for organizational context.
Our method was to select samples of
high-performing and average external
leaders and to discover through inter-
views how their behaviors, strategies and
attitudes differed. We used three criteria
for selecting our key participants: nomi-
nations from team members, nomina-
tions from managers and objective
performance data for the leaders’ teams.
We then conducted intensive three-hour
interviews with each of the 19 individu-
als selected, regarding critical incidents
they recalled. The interviews were con-
ducted blind to the “superior” or “aver-
age” status of the leaders. A content
analysis of those interviews allowed us to
develop an exhaustive list of actions and
behaviors that were noted consistently
by superior leaders but not by average
ones. Initially, our exhaustive list con-
tained approximately 30 behaviors that
we hypothesized made a difference
between the “superior” and “average”
performers. Iterative readings of the
interview transcripts helped us to win-
now down that list to the 11 distinct
behaviors reported in this article. Two
expert coders, who were blind to the
“superior” and average” status of the
leaders, coded all transcripts for the
presence of the 11 behaviors and deter-
mined the reliability of the codes. The
mean reliability was 92%. Statistical
analyses also revealed that 10 of the
behaviors were demonstrated signifi-
cantly more often by the superior-per-
forming leaders. (The exception was
“diagnosing member behavior,” which
was demonstrated often by both average
and superior performers.)
To help interpret the findings and
to develop our model of how these 11
behaviors emerge as the process of
effective external leadership, we also
spoke with a total of 90 team members:
52 in focus groups and 38 in one-on-one
interviews. We supplemented that infor-
mation with interviews of the 10 man-
agers to whom the external leaders
reported, and we also collected informa-
tion via questionnaires from the broader
group of senior managers and directors
at the plant.
Furthermore, we later examined the
applicability of our findings by interview-
ing external leaders at other organiza-
tions and in different industries,
including those for product-development
groups in a design organization and
executive-level teams at a bank, a health-
care organization and a manufacturing
company. This subsequent work suggests
that our results have broader applicabil-
ity for any leader of an empowered team,
regardless of the group’s level or task.
About the Research
SUMMER 2004 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 67
level managers — all had different ideas about the role.6
Unfortunately, that lack of consensus generally remains
today. Prior to and since our study, we have found confusion
about the external-leader role in other companies and at all
organizational levels. Consider the senior executive of a large
Midwestern bank who desperately wanted to empower his team
of high-level bank executives but was unsure how to go about
that. When he attended meetings, he felt team members relied
too heavily on his opinion, but when he stopped going to meet-
ings, he felt stuck in an information black hole. Even with his
many years of experience, he really did not know how to man-
age that group.
The problem is that a self-managing team requires leadership
of a very different sort. Researchers agree that the external-leader
role is more complex than the traditional manager role.7 This is
true partly because the typical external leader is in charge of sev-
eral self-managing teams at any one time. (In our study, they
were responsible for as many as eight.)
More importantly, the external leader absolutely must avoid
any heavy-handed attempts at managing. Case studies have
shown that external leaders who struggle with their role usually
end up exerting too much control, which then undermines the
self-managing team’s ability to get work done.8 Because of that
and other issues, various researchers have labeled external lead-
ers as the most common impediment to the success of self-
managing teams.9
Confusion about the role of the external leader might be tol-
erable if that function weren’t so crucial, but a variety of studies
have shown that the success of a self-managing team greatly
depends on its external leader.10 A newly created group, for
example, often needs both effective coaching and a champion
who can represent its decisions to other executives in the organi-
zation. Teams also depend on external leaders for help in acquir-
ing resources. That’s why it’s common to see an underperforming
team successfully turn itself around with only the change of its
external leader — or to see a once-great team suffer after its
external leader departs.
Four Functions, 11 Behaviors Although the essence of a self-managing team is autonomy, the
quality of its link to the organization is pivotal to success. Some
external leaders perform that role much better than others, with
the superior ones tending to excel at relating, scouting, persuad-
ing and empowering. Each function requires specific behaviors,
of which there are a total of 11. In the exhibit “The Work of the
External Leader,” the relating activities are shown at the begin-
ning of the process because, without the formation of those rela-
tionships, external leaders will find scouting difficult. Scouting,
in turn, equips external leaders with the information they need
to persuade. And various aspects of scouting and persuading
help pave the way for greater empowerment of a team, which
then contributes to the group’s ultimate effectiveness.
The well-known key to making self-managing teams work
is to delegate considerable authority to the group, granting it
tremendous flexibility in making its own decisions.11 What is
less well-known are the kinds of leadership activities and behav-
iors that are needed to build the foundation for team empower-
ment. Relating, scouting and persuading are those critical
building blocks.
Relating External leaders must continually move back and forth between the team and the broader organization to build rela-
tionships. Success in this area requires three behaviors: being
socially and politically aware, building team trust and caring for
team members.
Being socially and politically aware. During our research study,
we heard stories of both team triumphs and irritations. In one
case, an external leader recounted the time he allowed one of his
teams a freedom that was inconsistent with the company’s infor-
mal policies. Later, he was taken aback by the backlash he experi-
enced from his peers in the organization. Recalls the leader, “This
person sends a note to my manager, to his manager and to my
colleagues … saying, ‘Since when did this policy change?’ ” The
leader was also vehemently attacked by another team leader for
his “ineffective supervision.”
What happened? Clearly, the incident suggests a lack of
political awareness: The leader simply didn’t anticipate the
impact of his decision on others. Nor did he perceive the need
to build a broader consensus. Incidentally, in our study the per-
formance of that leader had been categorized as average. By
contrast, the superior external leaders had consistently demon-
strated an understanding of the broader organization, including
the individual concerns and decision-making criteria of impor-
External leaders find themselves caught in the middle: Their teams criticize them for being too controlling, while their own managers complain they are being too lax.
68 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2004
tant constituencies, such as the engineering and human
resources groups. As one superior leader bluntly put it, “I’ve got
a good rapport with all those groups, and most things I ask for
get done. … You can get moved to the top of the list for things
in a hurry if you’re not [upsetting] people.”
Building team trust. Superior external leaders also consistently
recognized the value of building good relationships with their
teams, even to the point of achieving insider status. Given that
the leaders had little time to spend with any one team, such
acceptance was far from automatic. In fact, one leader in our
study was impeached by her team members, who did not trust
that she had their best interests in mind. Contrast that with the
experience of another leader who, when his team complained of
problems with new equipment, said, “Whatever it costs, if you
guys aren’t happy with it, we’ll get another system in here …
because you’re the ones who are gonna have to work with it.” The
team was incredulous. One member pointed out that the new
system had cost $23,000 to install.
Caring for team members. In our study, average leaders were
more likely to see the personal problems of the team members as
impediments to getting work done, whereas superior leaders
more often recognized them as opportunities to build relation-
ships. One superior leader described an incident in which one of
his employees had a problem with her disability leave. The leader
took it upon himself to call the insurance department in the
health center to clear the dispute, which had been an ongoing
source of worry for the worker. “It was … instant relief for that
person,” recalls the leader. “It was not a big problem, but it was
big to her.”
Scouting To scout effectively, external leaders must demonstrate three behaviors: seeking information from managers, peers and
specialists; diagnosing member behavior; and investigating prob-
lems systematically.
Seeking information from managers, peers and specialists.
Superior leaders appeared to be significantly more likely to seek
information from others in the organization, whether as advice
or simply in response to technical questions from the team.
Sometimes the leaders used that information to influence team
decision making, especially when they wanted to persuade peo-
ple to take into account broader organizational considerations.
For example, when a team wanted to hire a colleague who had
filled in for absent members in the past, the group’s external
leader wisely decided to step in. The leader wanted his team
members to be able to make their own choice, but he also sensed
that their lack of knowledge and respect for a new hiring policy
at the company could create problems with management. “I
could tell this was going to be a sticky situation,” he recalls,
because the new policy was more formal and favored candidates
with greater seniority. So the leader talked to HR as well as other
external leaders as to how they filled their jobs. He then
informed his boss about the situation and invited him to the
team’s next meeting. At the meeting, the team members were
able to persuade the external leader’s boss to delay implement-
ing the new policy so that they could hire the person they
wanted. By seeking and relaying all the pertinent information,
the leader was able to enable his team to make its own decision
(without disrupting the organization), which helped boost the
team’s morale.
Not surprisingly, external leaders who routinely sought
information from the broader organization were able to advo-
cate more effectively for their teams. They were able to help
their teams gain valuable political awareness and build social
capital for them — all of which would often pay off in less obvi-
ous, but no less important, ways. The team members themselves
realized the importance of having an external leader who could
get information faster than they could, had access to data they
didn’t have and could easily make contact with upper manage-
ment. On the other hand, when team members felt that an
external leader was not keeping them adequately informed, they
tended to develop an “us against them” attitude. As one such
member put it, “[They] don’t want to give up information; it’s
their power.”
Diagnosing member behavior. Because external leaders are
typically responsible for the performance of several teams, they
are rarely on the scene when something critical occurs within a
specific group. As a result, they must often gain insight after the
fact. To do so, they frequently need to add to their incomplete
information by analyzing and making sense of verbal and non-
verbal cues from team members. One leader described an
Average leaders tend to see team members’ personal problems as impediments, whereas superior leaders view them as opportunities to build relationships.
SUMMER 2004 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 69
episode when his team had done months of benchmarking
research to suggest a policy change to the directors of the organ-
ization. But the directors quickly shot down the proposal and
instead told the team members that their time might be better
spent improving their quality and productivity. When the
leader heard the news he had mixed emotions. He was upset
because he knew how much time his team had spent on the pro-
posal, yet he also knew he had to support the directors’ decision
because, after all, he was part of management. So he went to the
team members and started to give them a pep talk but quickly
stopped himself. “I could tell they thought I was full of you-
know-what. You could see it in their eyes,” he recalls. So, he
instead offered people a sympathetic ear and acknowledged
their well-intentioned efforts.
Interestingly, both the superior and the average leaders in
our study talked about the need to read their team members
accurately. In fact, it was the leadership capability they most
commonly identified as important.
Investigating problems systematically. When superior leaders
got wind of a potential problem, they were significantly more
likely to deploy an inquisitive and systematic approach to inves-
tigate the matter. They would begin by asking the team members
myriad questions to collect data and identify the issues, after
which they might visit an external constituent to collect addi-
tional information. “You’ve got to be down on the floor,” one
superior leader asserted. “When the line is down, I’m over there
within a minute.” By collecting firsthand information from the
team members, superior leaders were able to fully understand
their group’s perspective, enabling them to make informed rec-
ommendations that would be acceptable to their teams as well as
to external constituents. In contrast, average leaders were more
likely to attempt problem solving with less data or input from the
team members.
Persuading With respect to external leadership, effective persua- sion requires two behaviors: obtaining external support and
influencing the team.
Obtaining external support. Teams often need support from
the broader organization, and superior leaders are able to per-
form this advocacy role more effectively. One such leader
remembered a time when his team members were having
equipment problems. After talking with them, he used their
ideas to sketch a new piece of machinery and came in during
other shifts to gain additional input from other teams. He was
then able to obtain management’s authorization to build the
new piece of equipment. In our study, team members agreed
that leaders were most helpful when they were able to get the
attention of important external constituents. Average leaders
seemed to seek such external support less frequently, and when
they did they were less successful in obtaining it. One average
9 Delegating authority
10 Exercising flexibility regarding team decisions
11 Coaching
Team- Focused Behavior
Organization- Focused Behavior
Organization/Team Boundary Team
Effectiveness
Relating Scouting Persuading Empowering
1 Being socially and politically aware
2 Building team trust
3 Caring for team members
4 Seeking infor- mation from managers, peers and specialists
5 Diagnosing member behavior
6 Investigating problems systematically
7 Obtaining external support
8 Influencing the team
External leaders must perform 11 behaviors that can be grouped into four categories: relating, scouting, persuading and empower-
ing. The behaviors are distinct but mutually reinforcing, and they require the external leader to continually cross the border between
the team and the broader organization. In this model of external leadership, social and political awareness of the broader organiza-
tion provides access to the individuals and groups that can help the leader best meet the team’s needs; strong relationships allow
the leader access to information in the team and the organization, which aids the leader in making sense of the needs of both par-
ties; good information enables the leader to encourage or persuade the team to behave in ways that facilitate the organization’s
effectiveness; and the sense of control afforded by that influence allows the leader to empower the team more fully, resulting in
greater team effectiveness.
The Work of the External Leader
70 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW SUMMER 2004
leader remembered an incident when he pleaded with the
scheduling department to make a change for one of his teams.
But because he had not built relationships with that department
and had not expended the effort to obtain the information nec-
essary to support his case, his request was denied.
Influencing the team. Effective external leaders were also adept
at swaying their teams to decisions that best met the needs of
the organization. Keep in mind that prior to doing so, these
superior leaders had already established trust with their teams,
had systematically investigated the problem at hand and had
used their external contacts to obtain all necessary information.
One superior leader, for example, collected statistics from the
accounting department to persuade his struggling team to think
of ways to improve its productivity. Using that data, the leader
impressed upon his team how much the company lost in prof-
its every minute a manufacturing line was down. “This is the
money that we didn’t make,” the leader told the team. “If some-
body is cutting the line off just to eat a sandwich, it is costing
everybody.” Three months later, the group’s performance had
improved markedly, and whenever the team was about to fall
behind schedule, people would work a little longer to stay on
track. Interestingly, those team members were going the extra
distance without their leader having to ask (let alone demand)
that they do so.
Empowering External leaders of self-managing teams can empower those teams by demonstrating three behaviors: dele-
gating authority, exercising flexibility regarding team decisions
and coaching.
Delegating authority. External leaders typically have great dis-
cretion over the amount and type of authority that they dele-
gate. In general, the superior leaders tended to empower their
teams with more responsibility. For example, when one team
was told by management that it had to move its assembly line,
its leader left it up to the team to work out the details. “They
very much had ownership,” remembers the leader. “They knew
what we needed to do and took it from there. This needed to be
their baby.” However, average leaders tended to be more fearful
about delegating authority, and they would often make deci-
sions for the team and solve its problems covertly. It is impor-
tant to note that the average leaders’ reluctance to delegate
authority was not because they were leading the poorer-per-
forming teams. In fact, many of the superior leaders in our
study had been transferred to a problem team and had worked
with it until they felt comfortable delegating authority. Eventu-
ally, as the team gained more and more ownership, its perform-
ance improved.
Exercising flexibility regarding team decisions. Sometimes a
team proposes something that is outlandish or that appears to
reflect poorly on its leader. In such situations, average leaders
were likely to express their reservations, whereas superior leaders
frequently replied with comments such as, “It’s not what I think;
it’s what you think.” One of the teams in our study, for example,
wanted to present its quarterly performance results at the depart-
ment meeting by performing a skit. At first, the team’s leader was
a little hesitant because nothing like that had been done before
and the meeting would be attended by all of the managers in the
organization. “I thought, ‘Oh, we could look so foolish on this,’ ”
she recalls. But she gave the team her approval and, as it turned
out, the skit went over well, which boosted the team’s sense of
cohesion and identity. Of course, teams don’t always make good
decisions, and a major responsibility of external leaders is to pre-
vent serious mistakes. But even when a team has to be reined in,
superior leaders did so only after considering the proposal as
open-mindedly as possible.
Coaching. Coaching involves a number of activities, including
working one-on-one with employees, giving feedback to the
team and demonstrating certain behaviors (such as effective
meeting facilitation) for others to model. Past research has
found that superior leaders tend to be active in educating and
coaching others,12 and our study confirmed that. In particular,
superior leaders focused on strengthening a team’s confidence,
its ability to manage itself and its contributions from individual
members. A common coaching behavior was for leaders to
work with people who had just taken on roles of greater respon-
sibility. For example, after a meeting in which people argued
for 20 minutes about coffee, one superior leader helped the
team member in charge to run more efficient meetings, first by
developing an agenda and then by keeping the group focused
on that agenda.
Superior leaders develop strong relationships inside the team and across the organization; average leaders tend to relate well to one of those parties but not to both.
SUMMER 2004 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 71
Self-Management in the Long Run For external leaders to relate, scout, persuade and empower,
they must frequently — but quietly — cross the boundary
between the team and the broader organization. The idea that a
leader must manage this boundary is certainly not new; past
research has linked it to the effectiveness of traditionally man-
aged teams,13 and several studies of empowered teams have
proposed that it is the central focus of the external leader’s
role.14 Our own research supports those findings. Specifically,
the superior leaders in our study were able to develop strong
relationships both inside the team and across the organization.
In contrast, average performers tended to relate well to the team
or to those in the broader organization, but not to both.
The four functions — relating, scouting, persuading and
empowering — are important for the leader of any group but
particularly so for those in charge of self-managing teams.
(After all, if a team has not been empowered, how can it man-
age itself?) And the same process would be useful for leaders of
geographically dispersed teams, given their similar challenge of
having to rely on imperfect information to influence behavior
from a remote location.
An important thing to remember about team autonomy is
that self-management is not an either-or condition. Instead, it’s
a continuum, and external leaders should also be constantly
guiding and developing their teams so that they become
increasingly independent. In fact, the ultimate goal of the exter-
nal leader should be the delegation of all 11 of the behaviors
described. For example, external leaders should be developing
their teams’ relationships with relevant individuals and other
groups in the broader organization, eventually relinquishing
that primary activity to the teams themselves. And when teams
do become less dependent on their external leaders, the leaders
will theoretically be freer to assume the responsibility for an
even larger number of groups.
The teams in our study had made the transition to self-man-
agement five years before our research commenced. At that
time, the superior participants were already performing the 11
essential behaviors of external leadership. We would not be sur-
prised to learn today that those individuals have since moved
their teams further along the continuum of increased autonomy
and independence. In fact, we would be greatly surprised if that
were not the case.
REFERENCES
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6. C.C. Manz, “Searching for the ‘Unleader.’ ”
7. M.M. Beyerlein, “Introduction”; and J.R. Hackman, “The Psychology of Self-Management in Organizations,” in M.S. Pallack and R.O. Perloff, eds., “Psychology and Work: Productivity, Change and Employment” (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1986), 89-136.
8. See, for example, E.E. Lawler III, “High Involvement Management”; R.E. Walton, “Work Innovations at Topeka”; and R.E. Walton, “The Topeka Work System.”
9. R.I. Beekun, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Sociotechnical Inter- ventions: Antidote or Fad?” Human Relations 47 (1989): 877-897; and R.E. Walton and L.A. Schlesinger, “Do Supervisors Thrive in Participa- tive Work Systems?” Organizational Dynamics 8 (winter 1979): 24-39.
10. S.G. Cohen, L. Chang and G.E. Ledford Jr., “A Hierarchical Con- struct of Self-Management Leadership and Its Relationship to Quality of Work Life and Perceived Work Group Effectiveness,” Personnel Psychology 50, no. 2 (summer 1997): 275-308; B.L. Kirkman and B. Rosen, “A Model of Work Team Empowerment,” in R.W. Woodman and W.A. Pasmore, eds., “Research in Organizational Change and Development,” vol. 10 (Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1997), 131-167; and B.L. Kirkman and B. Rosen, “Beyond Self-Management: Antecedents and Consequences of Team Empowerment,” Academy of Management Journal 42 (1999): 58-74.
11. S.G. Cohen, G.E. Ledford Jr. and G.M. Spreitzer, “A Predictive Model of Self-Managing Work Team Effectiveness,” Human Relations 49 (1996): 643-676; B.L. Kirkman, “Beyond Self-Management”; and R.E. Walton, “The Topeka Work System.”
12. C.C. Manz, “Leading Workers To Lead Themselves”; R. Wageman, “Critical Success Factors for Creating Superb Self-Managing Teams,” Organizational Dynamics 26 (summer 1997): 49-61; and R. Wageman, “How Leaders Foster Self-Managing Team Effectiveness: Design Choices Versus Hands-On Coaching,” Organization Science 12, no. 5 (2001): 559-577.
13. D.G. Ancona and D.F. Caldwell, “Bridging the Boundary: External Activity and Performance in Organizational Teams,” Administrative Sci- ence Quarterly 37, no. 4 (December 1992): 634-665.
14. See S.G. Cohen, “A Hierarchical Construct of Self-Management Leadership”; J.L. Cordery and T.D. Wall, “Work Design and Supervi- sory Practice: A Model,” Human Relations 38, no. 5 (1985): 425-441; and J.R. Hackman, “Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Per- formances” (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).
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