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Charles M. Slem and Daniel J. Levi
Psychology and Human Development Department
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
email:cslem@cymbal.calpoly.edu
Introduction
The development of team work was one of the important management goals of the 1980s;
and the development of self-managing teams (SMT) is the goal for many organizations
in the 1990s (Wellins & George, 1991). Self-managing teams place the entire task
under the control of the team members (Hackman, 1986). This shifts the responsibility
for team success on to the team members. Self-management reduces the need for managers
and allows the organization to reduce the levels in its organizational hierarchy.
This requires that team members handle the internal social relations of the team.
When they are successful, self-managing teams encourage the empowerment of employees
and further improves the team member's professional and managerial skills.
Most of the examples of SMT are with production and service workers. These work teams
perform complex, but relatively routine tasks. Employees are cross-trained so that
they can work on different parts of the production process. They also receive training
on team work skills so that they can manage work assignments and internal relations.
In most cases, these production SMT exist as part of an organizational development
program which provides a protected or supportive environment for them.
Very little research has investigated the utility of using self-management practices
in professional/technical teams. This type of team is very different from production
teams because of their task differences. They work on complex projects requiring
vastly different skills in a dynamic and complex work environment. Concurrent Engineering
represents an opportunity to investigate the success of SMT under these conditions.
Concurrent Engineering
The increasingly competitive nature of the global economy has stimulated research
aimed at improving global manufacturing capabilities and rapid product development.
Concurrent engineering (CE) is one approach used by a number of corporations in the
1990's to shorten cycle time for new products and meet customer expectations. Concurrent
engineering aims to achieve a parallel design and manufacturing process which allows
all of the factors associated with the life-cycle of a product to be simultaneously
considered (Winner et al., 1988).
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