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Following health-care organisations, many mental health-care organisations nowadays consider starting to work with self-managing teams as their organisation structure. Although the concept could be effective, the way of implementing self-managing teams in an organisation is crucial to achieve sustainable results. Therefore, this paper aims to examine how working with self-managing teams can be implemented successfully in the mental health-care sector where various factors for the successful implementation are distinguished.

This qualitative case study is executed by analysing 18 interviews within two self-managing teams in a mental health-care organisation located in the Netherlands. A coding process is executed in two steps. The first step is open coding, to make small summarising notes within each interview section. The second step is refocused coding, where the open codes were collected, categorised and summarised by searching for recurrence and significance. The coding process is made visible within a code tree. This code tree formed the basis for writing the findings.

Success factors for the implementation of a self-managing team that resulted from this research are a clear task portfolio division, good relationships within the team and a coaching trajectory with attention for a possible negative past.

By having used a specific change management model, the Change Competence Model, it can be concluded that a high change capacity will positively influence the success of a self-managing team in the context of a mental health-care organisation.

Firms around the world are facing an ever‐increasing array of employee‐related problems, such as decreasing productivity, faltering quality of products, persistent absenteeism, worker dissatisfaction, and high levels of turnover. Exacerbating this situation, there is a worldwide recession and explosive geopolitical developments, which have led to great uncertainties in world markets. For many organizations, the need to respond effectively to these problems is of paramount importance, as their economic viability hangs in the balance. To deal with the challenges of today′s global environment and to stay competitive in the world marketplace, organizations need to look beyond the sphere of traditional directive management and the limited application of participative management. One concept, which is showing particular promise in this regard as a comprehensive solution, is that of self‐managing teams (SMTs). Explores the essence of this concept, the unique role which it assigns to management, some of its drawbacks and benefits. Also suggests some critical requirements for successful implementation.

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.

Quality empowering management is to the future of renewed worldwide competitiveness what quality control, participative management programmes and zero defects were to quality improvement. Empowerment holds that promoting employee involvement empowers workers to perform as whole, thinking human beings. Empowerment is the glue by which the elements of customer focus, quality process and products, continuous improvements, self‐managing teams, quality measurement, and utilization of the total workforce abilities are held together. Self‐managing teams are one of the major keys in the innovative organization to solving complex problems, increasing productivity, and heightening creativity. For most organizations and managers, quality empowering management is a new responsibility and a radical change in style of management and change in culture requiring new methods and systems.

This paper deals with the leeway organizations have to develop and design self‐managing teams by using a model containing four modal verbs: must, may, can and will. “Must” refers to the need for local decision making and is considered to be the result of diversity in environmental demand and variety in work processes. “May” pertains to organizational and work designs that facilitate local decision making. The skills and abilities of the workers are covered by the modal verb “can”, while “will” refers to the attitudes of the workers towards self‐managing teams. The model may help to find and realize a match between these “modalities”.

Documents the utilization of the self‐managing work teams concept throughout the world. Specifically, explores such utilization in Australia, Canada, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Also investigates the pioneering use of that concept by the unions, e.g. the Communication Workers of America. Demonstrates the value of this new concept in enhancing global competitiveness. Also looks at the impact of the dominant cultural paradigm and its possible effect on the success (or lack thereof) of this concept in the various countries. Finally, suggests the need for further research to ensure an increased understanding of the successful utilization of self‐managing work teams throughout the world.

The Gaines Dog Food plant in Topeka KS is built around self‐managing work teams. It opened in 1971 and has been 20% more productive than similar, traditional plants for two decades. The Procter & Gamble Co.'s Paper Products Division implemented self‐managing teams at the same time; by 1975, it knew that the division was significantly more productive than traditionally organized plants. In the mid‐1980s, AT&T's American Transtech subsidiary cut its prices to customers by 50%, then avoided layoffs, then became even more profitable by moving to more fully self‐managing teams. And tiny Litel Communications (now LCI) used teams to cut time to process a service order from two weeks to one day.

The purpose of this paper is to perform empirical tests to explore the influence of social integration mechanisms on organizations’ absorptive capacities theorized by Zahra and George.

This study uses a cross‐sectional design to test the relationships between potential absorptive capacity, three social integration mechanisms (cross‐functional teams, participation in decision making, and self‐managing teams), and realized absorptive capacity, in a sample of 92 organizations that bid competitively to provide products and services to a US university.

An organization's use of cross‐functional teams is negatively related to its realized absorptive capacity and negatively moderates the relationship between potential and realized absorptive capacity. Self‐managing teams negatively moderate the relationship between an organization's potential absorptive capacity and its realized absorptive capacity.

The cross‐sectional design allows tests of relatedness but does not support cause‐and‐effect inferences.

Managers who follow the prescriptive implications of using social integration mechanisms to enhance their organization's absorptive capacity may actually hinder it. The type of social integration mechanism is an important consideration for managers of firm strategies.

This study extends and challenges the literature on absorptive capacity through its empirical analysis of the role of social integration mechanisms on an organization's absorptive capacity. Social integration mechanisms can have mixed moderating effects on the absorptive capacity development process, and potential absorptive capacity is not easily transformed into realized absorptive capacity. This study expands the context of absorptive capacity beyond R&D settings and incorporates a task environment that allows a direct linking of inputs and outputs.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between team psychological capital (PsyCap) and team process improvement (TPI) by focusing on the mediating role of team self-managing behaviors (TSMBs) and the moderating effect of the team reward system.

Data were collected from 514 members and their immediate superiors nested in 135 action teams working for a Canadian public safety organization. Hypotheses were tested using a path analytic procedure.

Team PsyCap was positively related to TPI, and this relationship was mediated by TSMBs. In addition, the team reward system positively moderated the first stage of this relationship.

This study highlights the important role that motivational factors play in the effectiveness of action teams. Specifically, the present study reveals that the psychological resources of action teams interact with the level of recognition and reward they receive to predict members’ engagement in self-managing behaviors and in improvement processes.

Findings suggest that to promote the capacity for process improvement of actions teams, managers should focus on their positive psychological resources, their capacity to self-manage and on the level of recognition and reward they receive.

Considering the dynamic and complex environments within which action teams operate, the finding that team PsyCap promotes their optimal functioning is particularly noteworthy. Furthermore, this study clarifies why and when team PsyCap enhances TPI.

Integrating organizational development (OD) and technological intervention into a total system is one of the more difficult tasks for an executive or consultant to execute. Organizations are profoundly affected by technological advancements and require a flexible customized change model to fit the social network of the specific organization into which technology is being introduced. Examines sociotechnical systems (STS) theory and presents classical organization theories of Burns and Stalker, Woodward, Perrow, Thompson and Trist to develop a contemporary OD intervention in terms of self‐regulating work groups (self‐leading or self‐managing teams) performing interrelated technological tasks. Finally, presents some pointers for executives and consultants in assessing STS interventions via 31 diagnostic questions intended to identify interactions among elements of the system.