Break into teams of four or five. Assume you work for a large tech company that has recently acquired a local start-up firm with more expertise in a market your company is trying to enter. To utilize employees from the startup fully, you are forming new teams with members from the parent company and the newly acquired firm for your research and development (R&D) division. Many of the employees from the start-up were part of self-managed teams before the company was acquired. You must decide whether or not to adopt a traditional management style or allow the teams to be self-managed.

Questions

1. Answer these questions as a team. What issues could affect the productivity of a self-managed team? Are these issues likely to occur in a team with members from different companies? How could these issues be related to members from a new company? How could these issues be resolved? 

2. Answer these questions as a team. How would you change, if at all, the reward structure for performance if the team were self-managed? Why? 

3. Each member of the team should explain what aspects of the team he or she would allow team members to self-manage if they were a supervisor in this company. Then, as a group, compare your responses. Does everyone agree on what duties and responsibilities should be self-managed, or are there differences? If you could, would you make a team fully self-managed? Why or why not?