Anisha Mandhana 43654192Arthur Gaist 43349500

Haiyan Lu 43303025Michael Huisinkveld 43994571

Disciplining a Team Member- Control in Self-

Managing Teams

Agenda

• Roleplay one (initial situation)• Case study• Theory• Traditional vs concertive control• Impact of Concertive Control on self-managed teams• Concertive Control & SMT’s

• Roleplay two (groups’ reaction)•Analysis• Recommendations and conclusion

Case Study• Technicom (computer circuit board manufacturer)

• Self-managed teams

• Sharon (single mother, already fined for running late)

• Team (other single mothers, had to work overtime and cancel private plans)

Problem of control•Necessity of Individuals to subordinate their own desires to the collective will of the organisation.• This can be problematic. • organisations must engage in processes of negotiation in which various strategies are developed

Edwards 3 strategies of control

• direct, authoritarian, personal control of workers

• limitations- worker alienation and dissatisfaction with despotism.

Simple control

• physical technology (assembly lines in traditional manufacturing)

• limitations- worker protests, slow-down and assembly-line sabotage

Technological control • hierarchically

based social relations

• systematic rational and legal rules

• Limitations- red tape, no regard for people involved, form of dominations.

Bureaucratic control- Iron

cage

Introducing Concertive Control as Fourth Strategy•Dawn of Postbureacratic age where control emerges from values based actions of organizational members. •Decentralized, participative and more democratic systems of control. • Flatten hierarchies, cut costs, boost productivity and increase speed. •Workers use values based discourse to infer proper behavioural premises.

• Concertive control becomes manifest as the members act within the parameters of the value systems they themselves create. Thus, proving to be more effective than traditional control.

Self managing teams (SMT’s): Exemplar of Concertive control

•Different experience for workers.•Workers act on their own• 10 to 15 people in each team• Top management provide only parameters and premises.• Popular in manufacturing and service industries.• All members are cross-trained

QuizQ1- Which are the 3 strategies of control identified by Edward? - Simple control- Technological Control- Bureaucratic control

Q2- Which form of control has been termed as “iron cage” by Weber? - Bureaucratic control.

Q3- Which are the three phases of control? • - Value consensus• Emergence of norms• Formalization of rules

Q4- Which of the following is not a characteristic of Concertive control?•Workers act on their own• Top management do not provide general parameters and premises.• Popular in manufacturing and service industries.• All members are cross-trained.

Q5- Which is the system of rules that constrains and slows the bureaucracy?- Red Tape

Q6- Which was a direct and authoritarian form of control best seen in nineteenth century?- Simple Control

ReferencesBarker, JR 1993, 'Tightening the iron cage: Concertive control in self-managing teams', Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 408-37. Barker, JR 1999, The discipline of teamwork: Participation and concertive control, Sage Publications Inc, US (Summon). Edwards, R 1978, 'Social relations of production at the point of production', The Insurgent Sociologist, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 109. Summers, J 2004, 'A lexicon of conflict under concertive control conditions', Economic and Industrial Democracy, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 447-73.