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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how implementation of a management concept is interpreted by a team within a multinational company. The headquarter “rolls out” a standardized version of teamwork within a lean production system. The authors want to investigate what happens.

The paper is based on a case study approach in a single company with available data over a long period of time.

Instead of being a vehicle for involvement and responsibility through the increased visibility, the tools and techniques become a perceived control mechanism because of a lack of connection between norms and values and tools. Despite the initiating enthusiasm of manager stating that “we are now at day one of a new life”, the system is perceived as yet another management concept, and the tools implemented did not represent any meaningful improvement.

The paper is based on a single company, describing a particular phenomenon.

The paper highlights the importance of involvement when new concepts are transferred into a new social context.

The in-depth study of a team within a multinational corporation implementing a management concept is unusual. The main theoretical contribution is to combine conceptualization of both social context and management principles.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on teamwork by focusing on the influence support systems, like industrial relations, have on teamwork. Teamwork is conceptualized through three dimensions; technical, governmental and normative.

The paper is based on a case study approach in a single company with available data over a long period of time.

Industrial relations conceptualized as local representation and partnership had a strong influence on all three dimensions of teamwork; technical, governmental and normative. Especially important is the union's involvement in the introduction of teamwork, shaping the arrangement and interpretation of it.

The paper is based on a single company, describing a particular phenomenon. Also, the contextual environment with a strong partnership culture with cooperative industrial relations is important.

The practical implications emphasize the importance for members of an organization to be involved in the introductory part of new organizational development such as teamwork in order to have an influence on arrangement of teams and the interpretation of teamwork.

The social implications are connected to industrial democracy and high level of involvement, which has consequences for the work environment in a company working along these lines.

There are not many available cases of semi‐autonomous teams working over a long period of time, and the paper gives an in‐depth understanding of the strength of this way of working. The main contribution is to highlight how local representation and labor‐management partnership has influenced the dimensions of teamwork.

The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the special issue from the IWOT conferences in 2012, focusing on teamwork within the Nordic model.

The paper identifies the content of the Nordic model and discusses how it is relevant for high performing autonomous teams, especially connected to teams with a high level of autonomy.

Shared leadership is positive for team performance when team autonomy is high. The paper identifies eight important variables for creating high performing cross‐functional teams, the role of trust between workers and supervisors in order to unlock standards, and emphasizes the role of industrial relations as an important support system for team work.

This editorial provides an overview of the Nordic perspective of autonomous teams contained in the special issue which comprises four original articles that are examples of latest developments in this research area. Each of these articles contains a brief introduction on how they contribute to filling in gaps in the literature.

Previous studies show that sharing leadership in teams offers potential performance benefits across various contexts. This paper aims to investigate moderators of the effectiveness of shared leadership. In particular, it seeks to explore the moderating effects of team work function – manufacturing versus knowledge team work – and team autonomy.

In order to test the hypotheses, the authors conducted hierarchical regression analyses and ran moderated two‐way regression analyses using a field sample of 552 employees comprising 81 teams in a Danish manufacturing company.

Contrary to expectations, the results demonstrated a non‐significant relationship between shared leadership and team performance. However, as expected, work function significantly moderated this relationship such that shared leadership exhibited a negative relationship with manufacturing team performance and a positive relationship with knowledge team performance. Moreover, team autonomy was positively related to performance, and it significantly moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance.

The study provides a potentially useful framework for understanding boundary conditions for the effectiveness of shared leadership. However, since the design of the study is cross‐sectional, direct causation cannot be inferred. Moreover, the study took place within a single organization in a Danish context and, therefore, care must be taken in generalizing the findings without additional evidence from further research.

To the authors' knowledge, the study is the first to obtain evidence which indicates that the success of shared leadership may depend on the team work function and the level of team autonomy.

The purpose is to provide explanations for why some self-managing teams survive and develop over a long period of time.

The research design is longitudinal, having worked with several research projects over a period of 20 years. Interviews, observation, field notes have been widely used, and also participative methods while one of the authors has worked on the shop floor for six weeks.

The authors offer several explanations: the maturity of teams; the process of institutionalization and creation of strong normative values; practices being “infused with meaning” and decoupling of practice from official policy.

The weakness is that the research presented is from one company, and within a Norwegian context which has certain characteristics. The contribution is the emphasis on institutional elements and the methodological implications regarding informal practice where explicit information is incomplete.

By offering an explanation for why self-managing teams can survive, one can also prescribe some important learning. Mutual cooperation and high level of autonomy prove to be important.

The main contribution is the authors' access to unique empirical data, and that they show and explain the social mechanisms for institutionalization of teamwork through participative observation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if a manufacturing concept such as total productive maintenance (TPM) can be copied from one location to another.

Qualitative data were gathered from a single case. This includes interviews, participatory observation and document collection.

The authors present a company with an intention to make a pure copy from one location to another, and with identical technology, production equipment, owners, customers and products, the conditions for copying should thus be as sufficient as possible. However, several minor adjustments led to a translated version showing better results than the original.

The paper provides a deep understanding of a unique case, but should be supplemented with more data in order to reach general conclusions. The main theoretical contribution is to develop an understanding of translation processes different from copying concepts by expanding models of change and transfer from a purely planned perspective to explaining success through the unplanned change of organizational vehicles better fit to the intended tools and techniques.

Many companies struggle with implementing total productive maintenance, and implementation and translation aspects are lacking in the literature. The paper provides an understanding on how TPM-practice was changed and adjusted when travelling from one location to another within the same company.

Few case studies on TPM and implementation have been described. The authors show in detail how minor adjustments led to wider changes, arguing that a pure copy is not possible. By including institutional theory focusing on translation, new insight on implementation of TPM is provided.

Companies with routine operations often pursue team‐based continuous improvement in the context of standardized work. Continuous improvement requires that work standards are periodically “unlocked”, i.e. made objects of reflection and improvement. This paper aims to theorize and empirically explore a method for unlocking standards which has received little attention in the literature: systematic work observation. It identifies which factors constitute and promote a work observation practice that supports continuous improvement.

The paper presents an explorative, qualitative case study of an industrial company in which systematic work observation is practiced. Empirical material was collected from two principal sources: company documentation and teaching material; and interviews with workers, managers and work design experts from three of the company's major plants.

Systematic work observation supports continuous improvement when there is genuine two‐way communication between the worker being observed and the supervisor acting as observer. Through dialogue, the appropriateness of the standard procedure is reflected on. Systematic work observation is supported by frequent day‐to‐day interaction between supervisors and workers. Frequent interaction builds relationships of trust and a shared purpose. A necessary requirement is that supervisors are technically competent and know the details of the operating procedures. The results also indicate that supervisors, not fellow workers, should preferably take the role as observers.

Systematic work observation as an instrument for continuous improvement has not yet been explored in a serious scholarly manner. The findings of this paper have practical implications for companies that wish to implement systematic work observation.

Companies desire to improve their team organization by learning from other companies in their sector and adopting “best practice”. Researchers and consultants, who are called on to facilitate these learning processes, are confronted with the real world ambiguity and multiple meanings of “team” and “team organization”. A shared understanding of team organization is a precondition for learning and knowledge transfer between companies. This paper seeks to ask how this common understanding can be constructed.

The paper uses participatory research and a literature review. Based on a research project involving Norwegian manufacturing companies, the paper presents and discusses a participatory process, in which a graphical profiling tool was developed and applied in order to make sense of different forms of team organization.

The paper finds that companies were actively involved in deciding what the relevant dimensions of team working were. In reflection seminars, systematical comparison between companies dissolved conceptual ambiguity and supported reflection.

The paper reports experiences with the mapping tool from two companies. Both are characterized by cooperative industrial relations, and openness to researchers. More research should be done in order to investigate the general workability of the process proposed here.

The proposed process for constructing and using a mapping tool are relevant for consultants and researchers, who aim to facilitate learning in a multiple company context. In particular, it is relevant for dealing with popular, but unclear concepts such as “team” and “team working”. To be workable, the process should take care to involve relevant stakeholders and the profiling should avoid technical language.

Through a participatory approach, all participants in an organization can take part in a dialogue on team working. By introducing a common language, power distances may be reduced.

The general idea of using graphical profiling to support reflection is not original. The contribution is presenting and discussing a concrete participatory process for how graphical profiling can be made relevant and useful.