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Communal-Rational Authority, Control, and Self-Managing Teams: Implications for Leadership
Conclusions
In this paper, I have argued that we must consider the leadership of self-managing teams in terms of the form of authority and system of control that "fits" a team-based environment. Authority in the team-based organization rests with the values and rational rules of the team members themselves. Control in the team environment is concertive in nature. That is, a system of control develops from the team members working in concert to control themselves in terms of communal-rational authority. This is a different form of authority and a diferent system of control than exists in other types of organizations. And this form of authority and ystem of control have their own requirements for leadership.What I ahve done here is to illustrate communal-rational authority and to demonstrate its importance in determining appropriate leader actions. I have also described how control works as a system with its functions of directing, monitoring, and eliminating deviation and how this system of contorl also requires appropriate leader actions in a team environment. Finally, I have idenified some of the problems that leaders on teams face and offered some initial suggestions for how leaders can act in ways consistent with communal-rational authority and concertive control.
I also offer this depiction of concertive control requirements as a useful framework for organizing our current knowledge about team leadership. For example, Hackman's (1986) concepts of "clear, engaging direction" (p. 101) and monitoring and action-taking (pp. 120-123) as essential elements of team leadership readkily complement the framework I have discussed here. Much of our other practical and theory-based knowledge about leading teams also complements this system fo control. I encourage writers on teans to consider this model as an anchor for their suggestions about leadership in the self-managing organization.
Last, we should always be cautious in our thinking about the mixture of authority, control, and leadership in the team-based organization. The concertive organization still draws much of its authority from the rational rules, and as such, will always be closely related to the familiar bureaucracy in terms of control and authority. And, the concertive organization will always be pressured by time to become more and more bureaucratic, a point Mintzbrg also described:
In effect, time blunts ideilogy, converting enthusiasm into obligation, traditions into dogmas, norms into rules. Adminstration thereby replaces ideology at the center of power (1989, pp. 287-288)
The concertive organization faces a constant tension that pulls it toward a purer type of bureaucratic control, a system of control that the self-managing organization was designed to transcend. But, dealing with that tension is part of the "art" of leadership in the team-based firm.
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Reprinted with permission from James R. Barker