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This article addresses social dimensions and implications of the rise of the information, skill‐intensive economy based on self‐managing teams. The basis of the paper is an historical analysis of how “Taylorist” industrialization suppressed the self‐directing, team‐based labour process which had characterized pre‐industrial America, in the process inflicting deep long‐term economic and social costs even as it helped produced unprecedented prosperity. Extrapolating from the historical analysis, in the second section of the paper social trends are discussed which seem likely to emerge in the future with the establishment of an information‐ and skill‐intensive economic organization based on self‐managing teams.

This paper seeks to review the history, development and utilization of self‐managing work teams (SMWTs) in business and library work environments.

Based on a review of both the relevant management and library literature, this paper broadens the library literature related to SMWTs with the objective of finding relevant insights applicable to the management of SMWTs in the library environment.

The paper finds that the use of appropriately designed and implemented SMWTs has the potential to increase employee productivity and workplace satisfaction while reducing absenteeism and employee turnover. Organizational democracy and managerial support are the primary drivers of successful SMWTs. However, the use of SMWTs by library administrators appears to be underutilized.

While the organizational and administrative benefits associated with the use of SMWTs are clear, the reasons why library administrators have not used this tool more frequently remains obscure. Additional research is required to understand the factors – both personal and institutional – that lead library administrators to either adopt or reject innovative managerial tools and techniques generally and SMWTs specifically.

This paper provides an important review of the library and management literature related to the use of SMWTs. The information is presented with the objective of increasing awareness, debate and additional research on the application of SMWTs in the library environment.

The introduction of employee empowerment through a self‐managed work teams programme into an organization further requires the introduction of multifaceted changes in person‐job relationships and the whole organizational hierarchy. The self‐managed teams concept can be seen as a strategy to increase motivation, quality, productivity, customer satisfaction and to sustain high performance. Self‐managed teams serve as the main building blocks of the organization. However, they are not simple or easy to create, develop and support. Companies must realize that it takes time, training and resources to implement teams and reap their rewards.

Conflict and resistance on the part of employees assigned to teams have accompanied the recent increase in the use of work teams in organizations. Previous empirical research identified several sources of employee resistance including violations of fairness, increased work‐load concerns, uncertain manager support, unclear role definitions, and lack of team member social support. From a literature review, we identified additional sources of employee resistance including trust, cultural values, and low tolerance for change. Empirically, we conducted a content analysis of 1,060 open‐ended comments of employees in two Fortune 50 organizations who were newly assigned to self‐managing work teams (SMWTs). The results suggest that employees' concerns did reflect issues of trust and low tolerance for change, but not cultural values. We discuss the implications of our findings for conflict management scholars as well as managers who are charged with handling increased conflict due to employee resistance to teams.

This paper signals departure from a theoretical perspective on organizational culture in mergers and acquisitions based on a binary opposition between coherence and pluralism. The paper aims to outline another, dialogic perspective on cultural transformations in mergers and acquisitions, based on an assumption that individuals occupy temporary positions in dynamic dialogue, negotiating equally transitory, but temporarily cohesive allegiances.

The dialogic perspective derives from a constructionist approach and involves ethnographic research methodology. It is developed to track the complex contests of interests in post‐merger pluralist cultures and to reconstruct their dynamics. While some events in the merger process contribute to cultural pluralism and contest of interest, others appear to render allegiance to cohesive cultural elements seductively appropriable.

Two situations are presented. The first poses a view of culture during mergers in which contest over meaning is central and whereby the representation of a cohesive organizational culture is appropriated for political purposes. The second situation illustrates cross‐cutting cultures in action, presenting the development of a “working culture” a notion based on flitting cross‐organizational allegiances in the interest of confronting a central team.

The paper contributes to critical work on organizational culture in merger integration. It points to the inseparability of binaries, the limits of cultural attribution and the tension instigated by the conflation of culture's “differences”. In closing, it points to a future direction with a relational emphasis to merger integration.

The purpose of this paper is to help clarify the actions of effective emergent leaders in self-managing work teams (SMWTs). Multiple methods were used to test hypotheses that leader's behaviors consistent with the development of emotionally competent team norms (interpersonal understanding, caring behavior, creating an optimistic environment, and proactive problem solving) would be more strongly linked to team trust, open communication, personal task engagement, and team effectiveness than traditional task-focused leader's behaviors (directive statements, using questions). Most hypotheses were supported. Directive leader's behaviors were for the most part negatively associated with team trust, open communication, and personal task engagement. It is argued that in SMWTs that have a history and a future together, emergent leaders who engage in behaviors that build emotional competence in the team are more likely to create team effectiveness than emergent leaders focused on directing team members.

This study seeks to identify the relationship between leader behaviour and the effectiveness of the members of a self‐managing team (SMT) in terms of perceived individual performance and emotional exhaustion. In particular, it aims to examine the moderating role of individual team tenure.

A questionnaire study was conducted involving 154 team members of 21 SMTs. Two leadership dimensions were measured, plus team tenure and effectiveness (in terms of perceived individual performance and emotional exhaustion) of the individuals involved.

Team members with a short team tenure reported higher levels of individual performance when their team leader demonstrated directive behaviour. Conversely, these relatively new team members reported lower levels of individual performance and experienced greater emotional exhaustion when their team leader adopted coaching behaviour. For team members with longer team tenure, however, individual performance was greater and emotional exhaustion less when their team leader exhibited a coaching style of behaviour.

The data were self‐reported and the cross‐sectional design of the study precludes conclusions about the direction of causality.

Leaders of SMTs can benefit from insights into how the team tenure of the individual team members affects their responses to their leadership behaviours. By adapting their leadership styles to suit the characteristics of individual team members, leaders may be able to increase the effectiveness of the individual team members.

This study has examined the effectiveness of different leadership styles within real‐life SMTs and shown the importance of attending to the moderating effect of individual team members' team tenure.

Presents an interview with J. Richard Hackman, Cahners‐Rabb Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology, Harvard University. Covers areas of the selection of leaders in companies and the way that personal attitudes and behaviour patterns of team members complicate the chances of a team's success. Also discusses the definintion of a self‐managed performing unit, and whether the design and support of a successful self‐managed team typically take into account the individual skills and characters of team members. Concludes with a discussion of how productivity gains from self‐managed teams can be assessed.

This paper aims to illustrate how employees in self‐managing teams handle the fact that each self‐managing team includes traditional as well as non‐traditional team members.

This paper, based on two case studies from Post Danmark A/S, the Danish national postal service company, examines the work organization of self‐managing teams as well as the mobility of self‐managing teams' traditional and non‐traditional employees in the teams.

In terms of its contribution to research, this paper illustrates the paradox of an organization using self‐managing teams consisting of traditional and non‐traditional employees. This article argues that two characteristics contribute to this situation. First, self‐managing teams are unique in the sense that they are open to the participation of employees with different qualifications and with varying levels of contribution and, second, the position of “traditional” and “non‐traditional” employees means that non‐static mobility is allowed in both directions, contributing to cohesiveness and conflict reduction, as the empirical study shows.

One of the limitations of the research presented is its focus on only one organization, Post Danmark A/S. Identification of this limitation is based on available indicators in the absence of quantitative evaluations of the team's performance.

This paper provides an example for researchers and practitioners (e.g. managers and HR personnel) on how production teams can handle the challenge of dealing with teams that consist of traditional and non‐traditional employees.

Based on empirical data, this paper describes the positions, internal mobility and relationships between traditional and non‐traditional employees in self‐managing teams comprising skilled and unskilled workers.

The aim is to explore in the Egyptian context the incidence and pervasiveness of teamworking, the types of teams in use, and to gather information on some of the factors perceived by researchers in the West to be influential in determining team effectiveness.

This paper reports and discusses a preliminary inquiry in a sample of 20 manufacturing and service organisations in Egypt. The research was conducted by way of face‐to‐face semi‐structured interviews with between three and five managers in each of the organisations. Comparisons are drawn with much of the western literature and further research needs are identified.

This initial survey has provided evidence of the utilisation of teamworking in a sample of employing organisations in Egypt, which in several respects appears to reflect trends and developments in the more developed economies of the West.

In this survey only some of the factors identified as influencing team effectiveness were investigated and further research is required to examine in more detail the relevance of the various models of team effectiveness devised by researchers in the western context.

The research was exploratory and is the precursor to a wider and deeper study concerning team effectiveness in the Egyptian context.

The study reported is initial and exploratory in nature and, as far as the authors are aware, the first study of teamworking in Egypt.