Section Five
effort to increase delegation of work are likely to
benefit by improving their operational
outcomes.^52Self-Managed Teams or Autonomous Work Groups
Teams and teamwork have become critical to the success of
many organizations, and self-man-aged teams fit with greater
decentralization.^53 Self-managed teams are different than
traditional work teams in that the team itself governs the
sequence of work needed for the performance of a series of
interdependent tasks. Such teams may order materials, perform
maintenance, and perform inspections of the quality of the
output. A recent study examined the impact of teams on quality
and labor productivity in four different manufacturing areas of a
unionized Fortune 500 company. The teams in this study did
not have all of the autonomy of self-managed teams, but they
had substantial latitude in problem solving and were provided
with budgetary information about their plant and with
information about the products of their competitors. In
addition, team membership, which ranged from 4 to 18, was
involuntary as members were assigned to their teams. The
researchers termed these teams “High-Performance Work
Teams.”^54