Diffusion and Effectiveness of Self-Managed Work Teams (SMWTS) in Municipal Management

This research draws from new institutionalism and organizational behavior to address questions regarding how self-managed work teams (SMWTs) are diffused among jurisdictions and how effective they are when adopted. This work first reviews a diverse set of public management literature that comprises the state of knowledge about the diffusion and effectiveness of self-managed work teams. On this foundation, a conceptual model of the combination of self-managed work team diffusion and effectiveness is developed that includes the diffusion model of self-managed work teams and the effectiveness model of self-managed work teams. National survey data from a sample of 204 municipal governments are analyzed from the institutionalism perspective. The question, "why do organizations use self-managed work teams?" is explored using the logit regression method. Another set of national survey data from a sample of 176 participants in self-managed work teams is analyzed from the organizational behavior perspective. This analysis explores how workers perceive the effectiveness of self-managed work teams by using the structural equation modeling method. The key findings of this dissertation include the following: professional networks and city employees' shared belief in service quality increases the likelihood of using self-managed work teams. Also, the empirical findings reveal that the level of teamwork has a positive direct effect on all three dimensions of effectiveness (i.e., job satisfaction, resource attainment, and team performance). The level of self-management, however, is positively directly related only to resource attainment. This work contributes to public sector scholarship and practice. In the realm of new institutionalism, the key gap this effort helps to fill is the empirical specification of the diffusion of organizational practice. From the perspective of organizational behavior, the contribution of this work is the development of a key aspect of a more realistic model of the effectiveness of self-managed work teams. Further, the findings of this project imply that sophisticated, professional management can improve the effectiveness of organizational practice. The teamwork factor, better described as 'esprit d'corps', is a more powerful tool to increase organizational effectiveness than the self-management factor.