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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.

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.

Self‐managing teams have been credited with many positive payoffs. These include increased quality, productivity, employee quality of work life, and decreases in absenteeism and turnover. Significant attention has been devoted to the actual benefits derived from these group applications. What is typically lacking is exploration of the road‐blocks to self‐managed team success. Examines an important challenge to SMT success – the threats that groups face when making decisions. Notable evidence indicates that cohesive groups (such as self‐managing teams) tend to create internal pressures towards conformity that interfere with constructive critical analysis and ultimately lead to dysfunctional decisions. The term groupthink has been coined for this process that threatens effective group decision making. Addresses this challenge in some detail. In particular, proposes a new effective group condition – teamthink – a group decision‐making process that enables groups to make effective decisions while avoiding the pitfalls of groupthink.

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”.

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.