Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Purpose - The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of superleader behaviors in self-managed work teams, on organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self-esteem.
Design/methodology/approach - Data were collected on-site over a period of three days from employees working in a non-union paper mill located in a small rural community in the northwestern region of the USA. The survey was completed by 141 employees, representing a 9 per cent response rate. Self-leadership, organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self-esteem were all measured using different instruments.
Findings - The results indicated that teams groups that were led by a supervisor who exhibited the characteristics of a superleader had higher levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction, and organization self-esteem.
Research limitations/implications - The study is based on a small sample and relied on self-report data, thereby allowing for the possibility of same source bias. However, this is a common problem with cross-sectional designs.
Practical implications - Leading in a self-managed work team environment requires a unique approach to leadership. The results of this study illustrated that superleader behaviors result in some beneficial outcomes for organizations including enhanced levels of organization commitment, job satisfaction and organization self-esteem. It behoves organizations to encourage, through training programs, the development of these behaviors.
Keywords Leadership, Job satisfaction, Self esteem, Team working
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Autonomy in work teams has become more important to both researchers and practitioners in recent years (Guzzo and Dickson, 1996; Langfred, 2000). The use of work teams has grown considerably in the USA and it has become an important management innovation over the past decades with up to half of all employees soon to be working in a team environment (Manz and Sims, 1993; Stewart and Manz, 1995). Studies have indicated that work teams have been central to the effectiveness of organizations (Dunphy and Bryant, 1996), and based on a 1993 survey (Lawler et al., 1994) found that 68 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies use self-managed work groups and 28 percent use employee participation groups of some sort.
Stemming from the concept of socio-technical systems developed by Emery and Trist (1969), self-managing work teams are relatively small groups that take complete responsibility for making a product or delivering a...