7 Core Action Research Projects
7.4 Thesis writing reflection cycle 3 after sample 1 involving Teams E1–E4
A third reflection cycle was done after the evaluation and presentation of the results for the four different teams under investigation.
7.4.1 Personal reflective pause: After data evaluation of four teams
After contacting the responsible manager in the telecommunication company via e-mail, asking whether an investigation of shared leadership would be allowed using one or perhaps two teams, it was surprising to find that six self-organising teams indicated interest in participating in the study.
An introductory session was arranged; all the teams were invited to participate. Since a large enough meeting room was not available, the canteen was booked. Over 50 people took part in the introductory session. A presentation about the practitioner’s research was given, and the research study and the aims of the research as well as the benefits for the teams were illustrated. Finally, four teams agreed to take part in the study; i.e. 37 team members responded to the survey. This meant that over 2000 questions had to be evaluated. A crucial aspect of the research methodology was the number of teams to be evaluated. Initially, the goal was to evaluate one or two teams; therefore, there was no need to automate the data evaluation since it could be easily done by hand. However, with over 2000 questions, the data evaluation involved a lot more work than had been anticipated. Omitting data, i.e. evaluating only one team although four teams had volunteered would have been one option. However, the decision was made to consider all the four teams so as to strengthen the results of the study. Once the data of the first team was evaluated, the evaluation process became kind of routine since all the methods were in place; therefore, the evaluation could be completed faster for the other teams.
7.4.2 Description: Concrete experience
After evaluating the first sample of self-organised teams at the R&D centre of a Swedish telecommunication company, it became clear that all of the evaluated teams had rather low values for the shared leadership competency of decision making; some of them had low values the shared vision factor as well. All the teams showed shared leadership abilities for coordination and shared communication.
7.4.3 Reflective observations
There seemed to be a pattern in the shared leadership behaviour of the teams. It could be assumed that there is a dependency and influence from outside the organisation that
influences the self-organised teams and the behaviour and ability of the team members to share leadership. All of the investigated teams belonged to the same organisation. Even when teams are self-organised, they are embedded in an organisation.
7.4.4 Conceptualisation
Teams are part of an organisation, and they derive their objective/purpose from the organisation of which they are a part; the teams contribute to the organisation’s purpose by achieving their objectives to meet the team’s and the organisation’s goals (West, 2012). A self-organising team is a team that exists in an organisational system; the surrounding organisational system with its operational objectives can have a significant influence on how these teams function (Tata and Prasad, 2004). According to Hackman (1986), the influence on team effectiveness and the ability to take over shared leadership depend on the team’s design and the organisational resources. An organisation provides an employee with a vision, values, and beliefs that depend on the organisation’s objective as well as on the rules, policies, and organisational procedures (Manz, 1986). Some prior researchers have examined the influence of organisational structure and rules on self-organising teams (Campion et al., 1993; West, 2012); they reported that organisational structure influences self-organised teams and their effectiveness. Other studies questioned whether self-organising teams are more effective than other teams are (Bergmann and De Meuse, 1996). The people in a self-organising team were found to be reluctant to make decisions, as decision making was previously executed by the leader of the team. When a self-organising team exists in an organisation, its shared leadership function would be good only as long as it is mirrored in the organisational context in which the organisation’s management team lives.
With this knowledge in mind, the practitioner decided to perform the TMLQ and the shared leadership survey on the organisation’s management team in order to evaluate their shared leadership behaviour and to learn more about the organisation. With this knowledge, the individual shared leadership results of the different teams might be seen in a different light and could be explained further because the team behaviour is a mirror of the organisational management team’s behaviour.
7.4.5 Action plan
To investigate how the surrounding management team of the investigated self-organising teams was evaluated, the plan was to apply the evaluation on the management team as well. The result of the shared leadership, especially the result related to decision making, might be
an important indicator for interpreting the low values of decision making and for understanding whether they are potentially inherited from the management team.