Team Empowerment Essay -- Business Administration, Team Building

ANTECEDENTS OF TEAM EMPOWERMENTPrevious research has identified several organisational characteristics that may act as antecedents to group empowerment. Frequently cited antecedents include autonomy (Chen et al., 2007 Langfred, 2000 Campion et al., 1993), task meaningfulness (Stewart, 2006 Thomas & Velthouse, 1990 Hackman, 1987 Hackman & Oldham, 1980), and squad-based human resources practices (Kirkman & Rosen, 1997 Mathieu et al., 2006), such as rewards (Balkin & Montemayor, 2000 Kirkman & Rosen, 1999). To build effective teams, an organization has to redesign the work put to work and to modify a wide range of organisational systems to support the design (Wellins et al., 1991). In the following discussion, I divide the antecedents into two groups organizational design and organizational support. The reason for such a generalized dichotomy lies in the fact that many antecedents are interdependent with each other within the same group. For example, cross-functional team will enhanc e employees task meaningfulness and both practices contribute to increasing employee autonomy. However, there are other factors that may increase employee autonomy, such as expanded responsibilities by dint of improving role clarity. Also, in many case studies the implications involved not only one antecedent. Thus, a broader discussion framework is used as it purify accommodates these interdependent antecedents and practices that employ different approaches to team empowerment. Organizational Design Multi-functionalism is the best approach.Empowerment often requires taking a new look at the organizational design. The ultimate goal is to improve organizational effectiveness by promoting ownership of work. The fundamental approach, and also ... ... created a greater sense of ownership and responsibilities among hospital professionals.BSD, a software inventory control firm (Belasco, 1991), reorganized its team into multidisciplinary teams, which include sales, service, and technic al experts, and each is in charge of a specific customer. By introducing the cross-functional teams, the community give its employees greater empowerment for being responsible for making all decisions.Another corporate practice for cross-functional team is to integrate different department, such as human resources, finance, and information technology, into one shared serviced team. Shared serviced team is often viewed as an alternative to outsourcing (Janssen & Joha, 2006). By integrating multiple functions into one team, shared operate team is able to deliver more efficient service to internal customer, and the team members.