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Communal-Rational Authority, Control, and Self-Managing Teams: Implications for Leadership
Communal Authority in the Concertive Organization
Weber's view of traditional authority as lying in the power of a patriarchal figure does not readily apply to the established organization that changes to a concertive design. The connection does lie, however, in the value intensive nature of team member activity and the "traditions" set in motion by the corporate mission statement so critical to concertive designs.Advocates of self-management strongly advise executives in organizations converting to teams to draft and articulate mission statements based on traditional values (e.g., Peters & Waterman, 1982). These mission statemetns present the compnay's values in an abstract manner (We are principled organization. We are an ethical organization, etc.) so organizational members can perceive them in different ways to meet different conditions. The value statements in the mission form premises for what is and is not acceptable behavior in the organization. Organizational members will identify with these value statements and develop patterns of behavior congruent with these values (Barker, 1993). And, this process will have a powerful effect on the behavior of team workers. According to Mintzbers, a strong, behavior-governing, ideology begins to emerge from this process:
Behaviors reinforce themselves over time, and actions become infused with value [from the mission]. When those forces are strong, ideology begins to emerge in its own right. (1989, p. 226).
Thus, in the concertive design, a system of vlaues set in motion by the mission statement, rather than the patriarch, becomes the legitimate source of influence. The mission's abstract values have strong, positive connotations and call out behavioral parameters general enough to guide behavior in a number of different situations ("what should we do" as opposed to the rational-legal "this is how we should do this"). The mission statement, normally formed and presented by senior executives, focuses on values "tradionally" seen as good and positive. No one wants to be thought of as begin unethical, unprincipled, or unconcerned with metting customer needs. As Mintzber suggested, when employees enact these values they will identify with the values and thus incorporate them into their identity. Bullis and Tompkins (1989) explained and provided empirical support for this process:
As members identify more strongly with the organization and its values, the organization becomes as much a part of the member as the member is part of the organization. Members then allow organizational decision premises [which come from the shared value systems presented by the mission statement] to be inculcated into them. (P. 289).
The mission statement, then, essentially serves the same funciton as Weber's patricarch. Because of its set of traditional values, employees give the mission statement legitimacy and feel obligated and expected to act according to its tenants. Through their actions, they internalize the "traditional" authority of the mission statement. They take ownership of these corporate values and begin to develop their own sets of values to guied their collective actions on the team. The leader's role now becomes one of cultivating the teams obligations to their values and developing their expectations of each other's behavior.
The company mission statement sets in motion a complex set of value-based worker activity. A new team, faced with learning self-management, will have to learn how to work together as a team, a process that the team leader must facilitate. They do this by reaching consensus on a set of important, team-defined, values. For example, assume that this new team has a company vision statement that says: "We are a self-managing organization that prizes the effective contributions of every member." The team members will have to reach consensus on what exactly constitutes "effective member contributions." They will have to decide for themselves what constitutes good teamwork on the team. They will have to reach consensus as to proper support of each other on the team, such as coming to work on time or learning all the different job skills required by the team. Thus, the team is creating a system of value-based authority that they see as a legitimate source of control.
As the team members negotiate consensus on a set of workable values, they also create a set of normative parameters that will help them put those values into action. If the team reaches consensus on the value that "for our team to be effective, we all have to come to work on time," then behavioral norms will soon follow. Team members will note whether or not their teammates are arriving at work on time and confront those workers who are violating the norm.
For example, a self-managing team has reached consensus on the value that "meeting customer needs is our top priority." On a Friday, the team discovers that an unforeseen parts shortage means that they can not finish an important customer shipment until the next day when new parts arrive. The team leader call everyone together for a brief meeting to determine how to deal with this problem. The team wants to meet the customer's needs and get the shipment to the customer as soon as possible. The team decides to work on Saturday to finish the shipment. The team selects one team member to coordinate with the stockroom so they can get the parts as soon as they arrive. Another team member volunteers to coordinate shipping the order on Saturday. Another team member arranges to have the production building open and the heat turned on while they are working overtime. The team draws from the influence of their value consensus to help them decide how to behave in ways functional for the organization.
In my study of teams as "ISE Communications" (Barker, 1993), I described the importance of the team members' ability to control their own behavior through agreeing on values and establishing behavioral norms:
The teams will develop behavioral norms that put their values into action in consistent patterns applicable to a variety of situations, just as team members applied their norm of working overtime to meet customer demands to a variety of situations requiring extra work. Thus the teams could turn their value consensus into social norms or rules. The teams had manifested the essential element of concertive control: Their value-based interactions became a social force that controlled their actions, as seen in Larry's willingness to forego his plans in order to work overtime for the team. Authority had transferred from ISE's old supervisory system to the team's value consensus. (Pp. 423-424)
The power of this value-based form of authority as a legitimizing agent for normative control is so strong that workers in the self-managing environment sometimes become "possessed" by the process. They begin to view the workplace as if it were a traditional home and the team members were family members:
The employees develop a family feeling. The integration processes eventually results in a situation where everybody speaks alike concerning the same things. This happens regardless of their region of origin or position in the organization. (Soeters, 1986, p. 305)
The concertive design offers a different source of traditional authority than seen in Weber's classical view. Instead of a patriarch, employees identify and grant authority to a system of values that they created and to which they hold allegiance. Their consensus on these strong and compelling values creates a feeling of family, or more aptly, community. Team members want to act in ways functional for their team, their organizational community. They enjoy the sense of community they feel in working together effectively as a team. This is the communal base for authority in the concertive system. And, team leaders must cultivate this communal attribute and keep the team continually focused on their values.
The value intensive influence of communal authority allows the self-managing team to function without the direct supervision that marks bureaucratic and hierarchical organizations. The value-based communication found in a concertive system provides team members with the parameters they need to manage themselves. This is what allows the organization to accrue the benefits of the self-management such as streamlining costs by eliminating supervisory positions, by increasing productivity and quality through increased employee involvement and commitment, and by eliminating bureaucratic procedures thus speeding decision making and employee action. The team members identify strongly with their values, and this communally-based authority becomes a legitimate force for controlling their actions.
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Reprinted with permission from James R. Barker