Changes in South Africa's political and economic sphere demand the
democratisation of the workplace, participation and empowerment of the work force.
Flatter hierarchical structures, as a result of downsizing, enhance involvement but
also demand that workers function in a more autonomous manner. The use of self-managing
work teams has increased in response to these competitive challenges.
Self-managing work teams are groups of employees who are fully responsible for a
well-defined segment of finished work that delivers a product or a service to an
internal or external customer. The functioning of self-managing work teams, in terms
of the systems model, can be described as certain inputs that help the team to
perform certain tasks and follow processes in order to achieve certain outputs.
Inputs include the motivation, skills and personality factors of team members, while
the tasks and processes refer to problem solving, conflict resolution, communication
and decision making, planning, quality control, dividing of tasks, training and
performance appraisal. These inputs and processes lead to outputs such as
efficiency, productivity and quality of work life.
To date empirical studies regarding self-managing work teams in South Africa
focused on the readiness of organisations for implementing these teams. Little
research has been done on characteristics of successful self-managed work group
members. Findings regarding members of self-managing work teams elsewhere in
the world couldn't uncritically be applied to South Africa, because of widely different
circumstances. Research on dispositional factors such as sense of coherence, self-efficacy,
locus of control and the big five personality dimensions could therefore help
to identify predictors of effectiveness that can be validated in consecutive studies for
selection purposes in a self-managing work team context in South Africa.
The objective of the research was therefore to determine the relationship between
dispositional characteristics of members of a self-managing work team and the
effectiveness and quality of work life of these members. A cross-sectional survey
design was used. The sample included members of self-managing work teams (N =
102) from a large chemical organisation and a financial institution in South Africa.
The Orientation to Life Questionnaire, a Self-efficacy Scale, the Locus of Control
Questionnaire and Personality Characteristics Inventory were used to measure the
dispositional variables. Quality of work life (measured as consisting of satisfaction,
commitment to the organisation and commitment to the team) and self-rated team
member effectiveness were used as dependent variables. Descriptive statistics,
Pearson and Spearman correlations, canonical correlations and structural equation
modelling were used to analyse the data and investigate the relationships between
the various dispositional characteristics quality of work life and effectiveness of the
team members.
The results showed practically significant positive relationships between sense of
coherence, self-efficacy, autonomy, external locus of control and internal locus of
control on the one hand, and quality of work life and effectiveness of the team
members of self-managing work teams on the other hand. Of the big five personality
dimensions only openness was associated with commitment to the team in terms of
the quality of work life. Stability, extraversion and openness were associated with
the self-rated effectiveness of the team members of self-managing work teams. The
structural equation modelling showed that there is a positive path from the
dispositional characteristics to the satisfaction, commitment and self-rated
effectiveness of the team members. The dispositional characteristics will also
enhance the members' experience of role clarity and mediate the effects of job-induced
tension on the members' self-rated effectiveness. Satisfaction of the team
members moderate the relationship between the dispositional characteristics and
commitment, as well as mediate the effects of job-induced tension on the
commitment of the team members.
Organisations implementing self-managing work teams can benefit from developing
and enhancing these dispositional characteristics in their selected team members
and could also validate these dispositional characteristics in terms of selection
criteria for self-managing work team members. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/261 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Coetzee, Susanna Catherina |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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