Abstract

Purpose – Many organisations remain adverse to self-organised teams. The reasons are non-trivial and complex, but it is suspected that not willing to let go to direct control by senior management is at the root cause. There is a perceived security in following traditional, hierarchical chains of command under the guise of reducing risks and maintaining efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a research agenda that will empirically test in the field a range of widely held assumptions around leadership of self-organised teams. In total, 23 companies have agreed to participate in the proposed longitudinal research. Design/methodology/approach – An extensive literature review has identified extant theories, frameworks, and methodologies adopted by researchers to gain greater understanding of self-organised teams. This knowledge will be used as the basis for generating hypotheses for subsequent testing in the field. Findings – There is a considerable knowledge base established for self-organised teams. However, there is limited understanding of the benefits or detrimental effects of self-organised teams on organisational productivity and the appropriate style of leadership. This initial research has identified several hypotheses that will be used to develop questionnaires and instruments for information collection. Research limitations/implications – The tools and techniques presented in this article need to be adapted to the organisation’s specificities as well as to the contextual situation.