This paper tests a theoretically-driven model of self-managing work team effectiveness. Self-managing work team effectiveness is defined as both high performance and employee quality of work life. Drawing on different theoretical perspectives including work design, self-leadership, sociotechnical, and participative management, four categories of variables are theorized to predict self-managing work team effectiveness: group task design, encouraging supervisor behaviors, group characteristics, and employee involvement context. Data is collected from both a set of self-managing and traditionally managed teams from a large telephone company, and the model is tested with structural equations modeling. Support is found for hypotheses concerning group task design, group characteristics, and employee involvement context, but not encouraging supervisory behaviors.
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