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Empowered
Empowered self-management and self-management
the design of work teams
Richard Cooney
Department of Management, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia 677
Keywords Empowerment, Team working, Job design Received December 2002
Revised July 2003
Abstract This paper explores the theoretical implications of empowered self-management as a Accepted November 2003
teamwork design concept. It explores the multiple definitions of empowerment and
self-management that have been used in the design of work teams and it attempts to locate
empowered self-management within the relevant traditions of work design. The paper provides a
critical appraisal of empowered self-management as a team design concept arguing that its unique
contribution to the work design literature, has been the development of concepts that focus upon
task enlargement as the basis of enhanced role accountabilities within teams. Empowered
self-management as a team design concept has little to say about employee or group autonomy but
in fact reflects the design of teams to provide for the normative self-regulation of employees within
management directed systems of control.

Introduction
The empowerment of employees to enhance self-management has become a catch cry
of modern management. Empowerment is one of those broad ranging management
ideas that cover a wide variety of practices that are deployed in a wide variety of
contexts. Empowerment has been seen as a property of organizations (Byman, 1991), of
organizational teams and groups (Katzenbach and Smith, 1994) as well as a property of
individual employees (Ford and Fottler, 1995).
Empowerment has been viewed from many different perspectives and it has drawn
upon a variety of sources for both practical and theoretical inspiration. Empowerment
has been approached from the perspective of management practice (Osterman, 1994),
organizational culture (Vogt and Murrell, 1990), employee participation (Lawler, 1986;
Lawler et al., 1995) and employee work motivation (Spreitzer, 1995, 1996), and yet for all
this discussion of empowerment there is no settled idea of what it actually is. There are
many different views of what empowered self-management is and there is seemingly no
dominant or accepted view of what constitutes empowerment, of when, where and for
whom it happens (Claydon and Doyle, 1996; Collins, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998).
When we examine empowerment in relation to employee self-management within
work teams, the ambiguities that surround the concept of empowerment do not
disappear. When discussing empowerment we must ask whether it is the practice of
team working that is empowering, the organisational context of the team that creates a
culture of empowerment or whether it is the enhanced self-concepts of the team
members themselves that empower. Added to the lack of clarity surrounding the
concept of empowerment, is the lack of agreement surrounding the practice of
teamwork itself. In common with the concept of empowerment, teamwork designs Personnel Review
Vol. 33 No. 6, 2004
suffer from a lack of clear definitions of key terms, a mixed practical and theoretical pp. 677-692
heritage, and they too have been subject to regular calls for the clarification of team q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
design concepts (Buchanan, 1989). DOI 10.1108/00483480410561556
PR It is perhaps fitting then that concepts of team working and empowerment have
33,6 come together in the form of the empowered work team, but exactly how empowered
self-management may be said to function as a team design concept requires some
further investigation. This paper commences such an investigation by examining the
development of concepts of work group self-management. Unlike much of the
teamwork literature the paper does not necessarily seek to address issues of work team
678 effectiveness but rather to identify the continuities, and more importantly, the
discontinuities between the early concepts of self-regulation and contemporary
concepts of empowered self-management. The perception of a strong continuity in
theory development may do little more than normalise concepts of empowered
self-management, when what is required is a clearer understanding of current trends
(Sewell, 2001). The current paper thus seeks to analyse the changed task environment
within which contemporary teams operate and it seeks to examine the recently
developed team constructs of empowerment, self-efficacy and group potency. This task
is undertaken in the hope that we may begin to explore in greater depth, some of the
means and mechanisms of contemporary team working.

The focus of contemporary team working

The past decade has seen a renewed interest in teamwork and the extensive application
of teamwork practices has been amongst the most significant of the recent changes to
work practice. This surge of interest in the use of teamwork has been focused upon
improving performance outcomes from business processes. The available evidence
indicates that managers use team working to reduce costs and improve outcomes such
as quality, productivity and process dependability (Cunningham and Hyman, 1999;
Lawler et al., 1995; Osterman, 1994). As Moldaschl and Weber (1998, p. 372) note, the
distinguishing feature of contemporary teamwork is that:
. . . for the first time in the history of industrial group work, efficiency and rationalisation
goals were explicitly pushed to the foreground.
The contemporary use of teamwork to lift performance has led to a change in focus of
teamwork design, with an interest in the humanistic outcomes of group work being
overtaken by an interest in the performance related ones (Buchanan, 1989; Guzzo,
1996). Optimising the performance of employees and of the core operational systems of
the enterprise, has been the clear objective of many team interventions and the use of a
variety of teamwork practices to achieve different outcomes and the frequent coupling
of teamwork with other new operational practices, reflect the contemporary search for
new ways of organising work and production in order to improve performance.
Teamwork has been coupled with other new management practices such as lean
manufacturing (Womack, 1996), total quality management (Osterman, 1994), business
process reengineering (Buchanan, 2000) and team-based organisational restructuring
(Shonk, 1992; Tjosvold, 1991). What these programs share in common is a drive to
redesign employees’ work roles to incorporate a greater range of functional
responsibilities and to align these seamlessly with the wider organisational mission.
The objective of using team working in lean manufacturing, for example, is to align
teams and their members with the organisational mission by transferring frontline
management tasks to them; as Womack puts it:
 The basic objective in converting from mass to lean is to reorganise work by transferring Empowered
indirect tasks (including a substantial portion of what used to be called “management”) to the
primary work team while linking the efforts of the teams working on a product so that the self-management
product moves quickly and without interruption from design to production launch and from
raw material into the hands of the customer (Womack, 1996, p. 120).
Work roles have expanded as new management practices have been introduced and
managerial hierarchies have shrunk. Front line jobs now incorporate enhanced 679
responsibilities for quality, process improvement and the self-management of work
unit performance. This change in focus for the use of teamwork has led to the creation
of new, performance-based, teamwork concepts. These concepts are based on new
work design concepts, such as that of empowered self-management, and they take a
more instrumental approach to team implementation and team performance
management than did the teamwork concepts of the past. The job redesign practices
associated with the quality of worklife (QWL) movement – job enlargement, job
enrichment and autonomous group working – were seen as a means of enhancing
employee satisfaction at work, but these redesign techniques have now been
supplanted by a contemporary focus upon teamwork design as a means of enhancing
employee accountability.
As management develop more explicitly contractual arrangements with suppliers,
business partners and internal business units following the adoption of practices such
as total quality management, business process reengineering and lean manufacturing,
so it seems that the employment relationship itself is being reshaped to become more
explicitly contractual. Work standards, improvement goals and expected outcomes are
now more tightly specified and responsibility for their achievement has been
increasingly transferred to employees.
The redesign of individual jobs has now been subsumed by the redesign and
formalisation of work roles within contemporary teams. Work roles within the team
have expanded in functional terms as new responsibilities have been delegated to team
members, they have been formalised as they are linked more closely to performance
outcomes and employee orientation towards the work role has become a significant
concern for management. These changes to work design are reflected in the new
teamwork concepts that have been developed to account for the contribution of
teamwork towards improving performance outcomes.

The development of teamwork design concepts

The changing focus of contemporary teamwork design is reflected in contemporary
teamwork design concepts. The autonomous work group concept derived from the
QWL movement has been overtaken by a plethora of team concepts focusing on
increased employee responsibility and improved group performance. Contemporary
group concepts of: self-directed teams (Ray and Bronstein, 1995); self-managing teams
(Bryant et al., 1994, Katzenbach and Smith, 1994); self-leading teams (Manz, 1990);
empowered teams (Wellins et al., 1991); high performing teams (Rayner, 1993); and
superior teams (Kinlaw, 1991), all have a focus upon increased employee
responsibilities and improved group performance outcomes.
Cummings (1978) had originally seen the self-regulating work group as a way of
improving employee job satisfaction whilst optimising the performance of a
technological system:
PR Self-regulating work groups are a direct outgrowth of socio-technical systems theory and
design . . . The primary aim is to design a work structure that is responsive to the task
33,6 requirements of the technology and the social and psychological needs of employees: a
structure that is both productive and humanly satisfying (Cummings, 1978, p. 626).
However, two decades on, Katzenbach and Smith (1994) see self-managing teams
simply as a way of optimising employee responsibility and performance:
680
Teams are discrete units of performance . . . they are a unit of performance that differs from
the individual or the entire organisation. A team is a small group of people with
complementary skills committed to a common purpose and set of specific performance goals
(Katzenbach and Smith, 1994, p. 21).
The new teamwork design concepts of “empowerment” (Dunphy and Bryant, 1996;
Kirkman and Rosen, 1997; Wellins et al., 1991) and “self-management” (Katzenbach
and Smith, 1994; Manz and Sims, 1993) that are reflected in the performance oriented
team designs, have not been subjected to close theoretical scrutiny. There is indeed a
naive assumption that the new team concepts represent a natural evolution from earlier
design concepts of autonomy and self-regulation. There is a perception of an unbroken
lineage from autonomy to empowerment and from self-regulation to self-management.
In a changed context where performance is paramount, however, the ambiguities that
surround concepts of empowerment and self-management may simply serve to cover
up the real discontinuities between the old and the new. Upon deeper investigation, the
discontinuities between the old and the new may be more significant than the
continuities.
The early work group designs aimed to produce a psychologically satisfying
structure of predominantly manual tasks that complemented the automated equipment
available to the work group. Group self-regulation involved the internal regulation of
these manual tasks by the group, rather than the allocation of group members to tasks
by managers or supervisors. In this sense work group members became more
independent of direct supervision and control. They informally regulated their own
activities, based upon the predominantly tacit knowledge and skill of work group
members about group tasks. The development of autonomous work groups, indeed,
enabled the group to mobilise its collective knowledge and experience in the service of
the group task and to self-regulate task performance (Herbst, 1962; Trist and Bamforth,
1951).
This concept of self-regulation is, however, a far cry from the kinds of
“self-management” that are undertaken by contemporary work teams. Whilst
empowered teams are still nominally independent of direct supervision, the tacit
knowledge and skill of team members is increasingly codified and made explicit. The
task performance of the team becomes transparent as work methods are codified in
standard work procedures, inspections are codified in standardised quality procedures
and improvements are codified using standardised problem solving procedures. As the
tacit task knowledge of team members is made more explicit, it is also directly linked to
standards of task performance. Quality standards, work standards and team
performance targets are increasingly used to hold teams and their members
accountable for their task performance. Such performance is often measured not only
in output but also by a range of business metrics covering unit cost, quality, delivery,
and so on. Far from being enhanced by empowered self-management, employee
discretion over task performance has declined in the new task environment as Empowered
standards of task performance have become transparent within and without the team self-management
(Adler, 1992, 1993; Adler and Borys, 1996; Dawson and Webb, 1989; Delbridge, 1995;
Klein, 1991).
The increased level of task transparency in the changed task environment of work
teams is linked to other changes in the organisation of work. Contemporary work
teams are no longer solely engaged with technological systems to achieve the group 681
task. They are rather engaged with a raft of management control systems from
production, maintenance and quality management systems, through performance
management systems, to systems for monitoring innovation and improvement. The
expansion of the individual work role is reflected in the expansion of the team role,
whereby, as Womack observes above, a lot of what were formerly management tasks
embedded in management control systems, are transferred to the team. These
management tasks, and their associated control systems, formerly reached to the first
level of supervision and control but now penetrate the work team. Team members now
collect and input data to management systems and also generate local reports based
upon that data, to guide the self-management of work within the team. This has led to a
greater formalisation of work roles within teams, as specific team members take
responsibility for designated activities and identifiable areas of team performance.
These formal roles may have functional and behavioural aspects as employees take
responsibility for both a functional area (e.g. health and safety) and their interpersonal
“role” in the functioning of the team (Belbin, 1993). Indeed it is the orientation of team
members towards their role and the team that is increasingly a concern for
management. Much of the training that is given to team members focuses upon the
development of the behavioural and attitudinal “skills” necessary to work in a team
and this is often complemented by training designed to develop a positive orientation
towards the company. This increased emphasis upon employee orientation towards
the work role is a significant feature of the new task environment. Much of the training
that formerly occurred within the group as tacit task skills were passed on, is now
codified and passed on through employee development programs that are conceived
and delivered external to the group. Specialised on-the-job training to work and
production standards is supplied by dedicated trainers and there is a greater emphasis
on development of behavioural and attitudinal skills in team building activities
delivered through off-the-job team development training. The expansion of the work
role for employees thus includes not only direct management tasks but also
management orientations.
New forms of task control are now evident within performance oriented work teams
and it is these forms of task control that should be the focus of team design concepts
rather than any nominal autonomy from direct supervision. The new forms of task
control may be direct as employees are trained, assessed and monitored against task
standards or they may be indirect as employee orientation to the work role is developed
and monitored through training and team development activities. These changes in the
task environment of work teams, however, are not reflected in the new teamwork
design concepts such as those of empowerment and self-management. By continuing to
focus principally upon the issue of direct supervisory control, teamwork design
constructs gloss over the issues of normative control that affect employees working in
PR teams where they are required to self-manage task performance when that task
33,6 performance is transparent to management (Barker, 1993, 1999; Sewell, 1998).
Rather than being more independent of direct supervision and control and internally
self-regulating tasks, contemporary team members are increasingly accountable to the
next level of management for the methods and the outcomes of task performance. It is
the tasks that the team works on and the performance standards of those tasks that are
682 now subject to increased management supervision and control, rather than the team
members themselves. Task self-monitoring on the part of employees has become a
feature of the new work designs and this is complemented by the normative
self-regulation of the team as it monitors task performance and team member
orientations.
In order to grasp the significance for contemporary teamwork design of the changes
currently taking place in the task environment of work teams, it is useful to review the
development of teamwork design concepts. The balance of the paper undertakes this
task, reviewing first the ways in which “autonomy” has been conceptualised before
moving on to examine the dimensions of “empowered self-management” through the
development of constructs of empowerment, self-efficacy and group potency.

Autonomy as a group design construct

The autonomous or composite work group was the first of the formal group concepts
advanced for the conscious design of group work systems (Herbst, 1962; Trist and
Bamforth, 1951). Based upon socio-technical work design theory, the concept of the
autonomous work group emphasised the organisational independence of the work unit.
Work units were decoupled from organisational systems of monitoring and control
(supervision) in order to internally self-regulate work tasks (Cherns, 1976; Emery,
1972).
Much of this self-regulation was based upon the tacit knowledge of group members
about work tasks. Knowledge of work methods was passed on informally within the
group and informal self-organisation was practiced. As Herbst (1962) makes clear from
his study of coal mining shift gangs, autonomous work group members did not have
fixed work roles, nor did they have standardised ways of recording and specifying task
performance.
The composite work organisation may be described as one in which the group takes complete
responsibility for the total cycle of operations involved in mining at the coal-face. No member
of the group has a fixed work role. Instead, the men deploy themselves, depending upon the
requirements of the on-going group task. Within the limits of technological and safety
requirements they are free to evolve their own way of organising and carrying out their task
(Herbst, 1962, p. 4).
The internal control of work methods, job scheduling, job assignments and job
supervision that characterised the autonomous work group was later supplemented by
attention to the importance of skill formation and training within the group (Blumberg,
1980). The multiskilling of group members became a defining characteristic of
autonomous work groups alongside the internal control of work tasks, leading
Cummings and Blumberg (1987) to identify “autonomous”, “self-managing” and
“self-regulating” group designs as those that:
 . . . involve multi-skilled members controlling their own task behaviours around an overall Empowered
group task. The task forms a relatively self-completing whole, and members are given the
necessary autonomy, skills and information to regulate task behaviours and environmental self-management
exchanges. The group may help determine production goals, as well as perform such
functions as inspection, maintenance, purchasing, and hiring new members (Cummings and
Blumberg, 1987, p. 45).
Such self-control and self-regulation of tasks is a feature of autonomous group working 683
that has, by and large, disappeared in the new task environment. Employees are now
expected to produce a standardised task performance and so have less discretion over
the execution of tasks. Contemporary task self-management entails the management of
work tasks to achieve performance standards rather than the informal self-regulation
of work activity.
The widespread application of the autonomous work group concept by the quality
of worklife movement during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in the development of
varieties of the autonomous work group concept (Tubbs, 1994). The full work unit
autonomy delegated to the coal mining crews could not always be replicated in other
environments, with the interdependencies between manufacturing operations in a flow
system, for example, limiting the extent of work unit autonomy. Consequently,
varieties of autonomous, semi-autonomous, self-directed and self-regulating work
groups appeared.
The designation of work groups as: “autonomous”, “composite”, “self-maintaining”
or “self-regulating”, reflected differences in the approach to the definition of work
group autonomy.
Gulowsen (1972) treated autonomy as a one-dimensional attribute and identified a
hierarchical scale of work group autonomy which was based upon the extent of group
decision making over group goals, group leadership, work methods, process
technologies, task assignments and group member recruitment. Davis and Wacker
(1987) also focused upon the extent of group decision making as a criterion for the
identification of self-maintaining teams, but used a non-hierarchical set of job design
attributes as the yardstick. Davis and Wacker identified task assignment, work
methods, work pace, work hours, member discipline, internal information flows,
internal leadership and team membership, as job design decisions to be made by
self-maintaining teams.
Susman (1976), on the other hand, treated autonomy as a multi-dimensional
property and developed a typology of “autonomy” based upon the extent of group
decision making. Susman’s typology included autonomy relating to:
.
decisions on the self-regulation of the work system within the group;
.
decisions on the self-determination of the work unit within the enterprise; and
.
decisions on the self-management of the group within the hierarchy of the
enterprise.
Hackman (1986) used the extent of work group autonomy to identify particular kinds
of autonomous work group. Hackman identified group decision making regarding the
performance of work, the monitoring and management of production processes, the
design of the group itself and the leadership and direction of the group, as being
indicators of manager-led, self-managing, self-designing and self-governing groups
respectively.
PR More recently, Ulich and Weber (1996) have proposed an activity-based approach to
33,6 the identification of work group autonomy. Ulich and Weber identify 39 different
group activities – which range from purchasing and planning tasks through machine
set-up, quality control and rework activities – and they correlate these with six
decision making categories – the group alone, the group together with other functions,
a particular group member alone, a particular group member with other functions, the
684 group with supervisors and specified other persons – in order to develop a scale of
work group autonomy.
Despite the different ways in which the concept of work group autonomy has been
defined, there is a clear focus in autonomous group design concepts upon the internal
self-regulation of the group and the autonomous self-control of work tasks,
independent of management systems of supervision and control. Autonomous
design concepts emphasised the operational independence of the work group and this
independence was strengthened by the operational deployment of work groups in
de-coupled flow systems (Berggren, 1994; Jürgens et al., 1993; Pruijt, 1997). Where there
were clear limits to autonomy, for example in continuous flow systems, the partial
autonomy on offer was clearly acknowledged through the use of designations such as
the “semi” autonomous group.
The differing approaches to autonomy also sought to highlight the differences
between internal group self-regulation and the structural participation of the group in
enterprise decision making. In some situations, internal self-regulation was enhanced
by the broader involvement of group members in organisational decision making.
Participation through employee involvement programs or industrial democracy
programs typified this extension of group decision making but here again the focus
was upon the extension of self-regulation rather than upon the integration of the group
into organisational systems of management and control.
The teamwork design concepts based upon group autonomy then, focussed upon
the internal self-regulation of group tasks and upon the limits to that regulation that
existed in some work environments. They focussed upon the extension of that
self-regulation within the enterprise through democratic decision making and
industrial negotiation, again recognising the limits to such negotiation in many work
environments. The autonomous work group design concepts were based upon a clear
concept of self-regulation and of the limitations to that in practice.

Empowerment as a team design construct

Concepts of team empowerment depart from these concepts of group autonomy in
significant ways. Despite the seeming continuity of autonomous self-managing group
concepts with empowered self-management, the two take different positions on the
question of the operational independence of the group. The empowerment concepts
focus upon the way in which the team and team members interpret and self-manage
their work role within the organisation, whilst the autonomy concepts focus upon the
way in which the group and group members self-regulate work tasks. The one concept
focuses upon the way the group is related to the broader systems of the organisation
and the other upon the independence of the group from the broader systems of the
organisation. Rather than focusing upon the independent self-regulation of tasks by the
group, the new design concepts focus upon the internal orientation of team members
towards their work role and the structural integration of the team within the Empowered
organisational hierarchy. self-management
Manz and Sims (Manz, 1990, 1992; Manz and Sims, 1987, 1993) argue for the efficacy
of empowered teamwork concepts, noting that the internal control of work methods
which characterises the varieties of the autonomous work group, has its limitations.
Self-management frequently promises more than it can deliver because whilst
employees may exert influence over how things are done, they have no influence over 685
what things are done or why. Despite the promises of “self-management” employee
influence is, in reality, frequently limited by power relations outside the group.
The solution for Manz and Sims is the further “empowerment” of the team and team
members, within the organisation itself. They argue that the intrinsic motivation of
employees can be enhanced by addressing the extent of team power in the
management and control hierarchy of the enterprise. The self-leading team, they argue,
should represent a further advance in empowered self-management over and above
internal self-management. Self-leading groups should:
. . . add a further incremental advance toward workforce empowerment beyond traditional
self-managing characteristics. Direct involvement in the decision of the team purpose and
goals, empowerment to choose external group leaders, an emphasis on employee
self-leadership skill development, passing even more information down to lower levels of
the organisation, and in general charging workers with responsibility and authority to make
strategic decisions, are clear examples of this movement (Manz, 1992, p. 1132).
Manz and Sims (Manz, 1990, 1992; Manz and Sims, 1987, 1993) conceptualise autonomy
and self-management in a different manner to that of earlier applications. Manz (1990)
treats self-management as a motivational property rather than a decision making
attribute, with the degree of member “self-influence” being the defining characteristic
of the team. The team is defined in terms of its potential for the intrinsic motivation of
team members by developing a positive orientation to their work role, rather than in
terms of the extent of group decision making autonomy over work tasks. Manz (1990)
distinguishes between work groups exhibiting the self-regulation of work processes,
the self-management of individual behaviour and the self-leadership of member
participation within the broader enterprise and sees the latter types as being
characteristic of empowered designs.
In the new group designs, participation within the enterprise occurs upon the back
of expanded individual work roles. Task enlargement and role expansion are
characteristic of empowered work designs. Dunphy and Bryant (1996, p. 681) identify
group member multiskilling “where team members may broaden their technical skills
. . . to perform a wider subset of the team’s task” and group self-management “where
members take over many of the operational responsibilities previously performed by
managers and supervisors” as attributes of the empowered team and Wellins et al.
(1991, 1994) focus on self-management or “self-governance” as a defining characteristic
of “empowered, self-directed”, natural work teams. Along with enlarged job
responsibilities for the quantity and quality of production, Wellins et al. (1991, 1994)
see the delegation of management responsibilities to teams as being critical for team
empowerment. If supervisory and managerial responsibilities are delegated to the
team, then the group is said to be an empowered, self-managing, natural work team.
Levine (1995) identifies employee problem solving as a characteristic of work group
empowerment, whilst Ford and Fottler (1995) identify problem solving and product
PR design tasks, as the new responsibilities of empowered work groups. Ford and Fottler
33,6 observe that:
. . . employees are being asked to expand their traditional job role to include responsibility for
the quality of their output by reporting problems and offering possible solutions . . . by taking
responsibility for anticipating changes in the marketplace that could have an impact on their
product, and developing product designs that will allow the company to remain
686 technologically competitive (Ford and Fottler, 1995, p. 21).
Manz (1992) and Dunphy and Bryant (1996) add employee responsibility for strategic
planning and direction to the list of new responsibilities but this is regarded as
“provocative” by Ford and Fottler (1995, p. 23) who suggest that such empowerment
may be an “ultimate goal of empowerment” that is rarely achieved.
The expansion of work roles to incorporate what were previously managerial
responsibilities is characteristic of empowered self-managing teams and in fact
provides the mechanism through which the integration of the team with management
systems and organisational hierarchies occurs. The team no longer stands apart from
the enterprise in order to exercise autonomy but is empowered to work within it, to
achieve organisational goals and missions. Empowerment, as Spreitzer (1996, p. 484)
observes “. . . is based on the assumption that individuals can have a high level of
‘voice’ in shaping and influencing organisational activities.”

Empowerment and work motivation

The broad expansion of the work role to enable participation is seen to be intrinsically
motivating for employees. Kirkman and Rosen (1997), for example, define the
empowered work team in terms of its enhancement of individual team member
motivation:
We define empowerment as increased task motivation due to an individual’s positive
orientation to his or her work role (Kirkman and Rosen, 1997, p. 132).
Teamworking is seen to be a mechanism of individual enablement allowing the
individual to take on an expanded work role, but concepts of empowered work teams
go beyond this to posit the collective motivational potential of task enlargement and
role expansion within work groups. The role efficacy of the team itself within the
enterprise is also seen to be motivational. The collective self-concept of group
members, the perception that the team as a whole is effective, is an important feature of
empowered teams. Work group empowerment is identified, not only by the structural
empowerment of the group – the extent to which it participates in decision making –
but also by the potency of group self-efficacy, or the “collective belief of a group that it
can be effective” (Guzzo et al., 1993). The development of the group self-concept, as
reflected in the development of design features such as group potency (Cohen et al.,
1996; Kirkman and Rosen, 1997) is critical for group empowerment.
The self-concept theories of motivation that underlie concepts of group potency
draw upon a wide variety of approaches to the psychology of the “self” and
consequently the concept of empowerment, like that of autonomy before it, carries a
wide variety of meanings. Empowerment may refer to task competence and mastery
(Bandura, 1977), goal setting and feedback (Gist, 1987) intrinsic interest (Thomas and
Velthouse, 1990) or outcomes and performance (Kirkman and Rosen, 1997).
 Following Bandura’s “self-efficacy” theory where self-efficacy is defined Empowered
(Bandura, 1977, p. 191) as the “experience of mastery arising from effective self-management
performance”, empowerment is seen as the experience of the self in the mastery of
tasks. The experience of competence in the execution of tasks is what is seen to
provoke feelings of self-efficacy and Gist (1987), following Bandura, identifies
enactive mastery or repeated task success, vicarious experience or task modelling,
verbal persuasion and individual perception as mechanisms for enhancing the 687
experience of self-efficacy.
The experience of competence, however, involves a high level of individual and
group self-monitoring. Monitoring the self in the performance of tasks (one’s ability
and task competence) and monitoring the outcomes of task execution (their impact) is
critical to the experience of mastery and several attributes of performance
self-monitoring have been identified:
.
activity;
.
concentration;
.
initiative;
.
resiliency;
.
flexibility (Thomas and Velthouse, 1990); and
.
effort and persistence (Spreitzer, 1995).
The sources of information about self-efficacy are, however, not merely internal.
Self-efficacy expectations and experiences are also dependent upon feedback from
superiors, peers and subordinates. Self-efficacy experiences are constructed in relation
to others – fellow work group members and the managers to whom one is accountable
– and hence such motivation is not entirely internal. The group and the individual
must make constant reference to others to reinforce their self-concept and hence the
motivational power of empowerment is dependent upon the development of work
identities that have internalised organisational goals and missions.
The empowered work designs are reliant for the motivation of employees, not upon
the collective self-determination of the autonomous work group and its members, but
rather upon the identification of the empowered work group with managerial missions,
goals and objectives. Self-efficacy is only experienced if the “self” is successful in the
achievement of those tasks that are positively regarded by peers and superiors.
Empowerment should, as Spreitzer (1996, p. 485) observes: “. . . facilitate employees’
trust in an organisation and increase their sense of control, ego involvement, and
identification with it.”
Self-efficacy is then not merely a construct derived from internal psychological
processes, but is one equally derived from social constructions of efficacy attributes.
Empowered self-management as a work group design construct focuses as much upon
the development of a work identity constructed with management as the reference
group as it does upon the participation of employees in organisational decision making.
Spreitzer (1995) found that access to information about the organisational mission was
strongly related to the experience of empowerment, as was information about unit
performance and rewards. Endorsement by management of group goals and group
performance was also strongly related to experiences of empowerment (Spreitzer,
1996).
PR Empowered team designs then aim to align individuals, teams and groups more
33,6 closely with management systems of control. They do this by enabling structural
participation within the organisation on the basis of enlarged work roles that
incorporate managerial responsibilities and by developing work identities that are
based upon the internalisation of managerial norms and missions. These processes
operate in relation to both the individual work role and the group work role. Both
688 individuals and groups are enabled to participate in decision making related to
performance and both are empowered to develop self-concepts with a positive role
orientation. These twin features of empowered self-management are identified by
Conger and Kanungo (1988) as motivational and relational empowerment or the
“motivational” empowerment of employees towards their work role within the group
and the “relational” empowerment of the group within the organisation. Parker et al.
(1997) similarly identify the development of a “strategic orientation” on the part of
employees towards organisational goals and missions and a “role orientation” based
upon the internalisation of these goals within the work role.

Empowerment and teamworking research

Empowered team designs with their emphasis upon the expansion of work roles and
the role orientation of employees, represent the development of a new paradigm of
teamwork design, one that is qualitatively different to that associated with
autonomous team designs. The task environment of teams has changed, the
management rationale for the use of teams has changed and teamwork design criteria
have changed. In order to analyse the dimensions of this new paradigm of team
working, a rethinking of the approaches to teamwork research that have developed
historically, is required. Recent studies of job designs in high technology
manufacturing environments have questioned the continuing relevance of dominant
job design theories in the new task environment and a similar review of team work
designs is now required. Positing a motivational basis for the evolution of team work
designs can only take us so far in understanding the causes and consequences of the
changes currently taking place (Cordery, 2003; Jackson et al., 1993).
The contemporary changes to team working require researchers and those involved
in the implementation of team working to shift their focus from one examining the
execution of tasks to one examining the regulation and control of task performance.
Rather than examining the modes of task autonomy found within teams as the
previous literature has done, what is now required are studies that take the means and
modes of individual and group accountability as critical. What is needed are studies of
how systems of accountability function, of how it is organisationally determined what
employees are to be held accountable for and what impact this has upon their work role
orientation and their identity at work. It is the modes of accountability for task
performance in teams that now need to be assessed.
This proposed change in the focus of team research means that some different
questions are highlighted for researchers of team working. What is the nature of work
roles within the team? Is there an emphasis upon interpersonal roles and normative
orientations or is the emphasis upon functional responsibilities and forms of task
control through standardisation? What kind of training is given and how are the
requisite skills and knowledge developed? How are task performance standards set
and how is accountability established – through management direction or through the
negotiation of some agreed set of goals and objectives? These are some of the Empowered
important questions facing scholars of teamwork and the work design literature can self-management
only advance if it explores how accountability is achieved and the effect that this has
upon employees’ sense of vocational identity and their normative orientation towards
their work role and the wider organisation.

Conclusion 689
Empowered self-management as a team design construct is frequently presented as a
natural development of autonomous team working. Structural participation and
involvement in decision making, indeed, are often seen to be greater within empowered
teams, when compared to that available to autonomous teams. This superficial
similarity of the two design concepts, however, masks the fact that participation in the
empowered team is increasingly on management’s terms. Empowered teams are
delegated managerial responsibilities and are encouraged to identify with
management’s goals and objectives. Empowered teams are closely integrated within
managerial systems of control rather than being autonomous from such systems of
control. When we look at empowerment as a team design construct we must conclude
that team empowerment comes at the expense of team autonomy, rather than being
built upon the back of it.
This and other changes in the task environment of work teams necessitate the
development of a new approach to the study of work design. The means and modes of
individual and team accountability for performance need to be understood in much
greater depth and conceptual frameworks that elucidate the differing ways in which
accountability is achieved, need to be developed. New questions need to be asked and
new design concepts developed, in order for the work design literature to progress.

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