Barker, James, R. 1993. "Tightening the iron cage: concertive control in self-managing teams." Administrative Science Quarterly 38:408-437.
He shows how an organization evolved from a hierarchial system to a concertive control of self-managing teams. Concertive control evolved from a the value consensus of the company's team workers to a system of normative rules that became increasingly rationalized.
People in this company feel they are more strongly watched by their peers in the self-managed team system.
Concertive Control
Participative, decentralized, more democratic systems have become popular. People will work via cultural norms rather than bureaucratic rules. Workers develop the means for their own control.
They are generally are groups of 10-15 workers who take on the responsibilities of their former supervisors. They are cross-trained to perform each others tasks. They set their own work s
The authors ethnographic study was a company of 150 people making telecommunications equipment and circuit boards. After some struggling the CEO decided to move to a self-managing team concept. With one test group a success, he initiated it with the whole company.
Phase One: Consolidation and Value Consensus
Over time the teams value-based interactions became a social force that controlled their actions.
Phase Two: Emergence of Normative Rules
After a period of downsizing they started hiring again, which required them to form many new teams. The experienced members turned their value consensus into normative rules that the new people could readily understand and to which they could subject themselves. They switched from talking about "meeting" team values to "obeying" them. Team meetings became more confrontational, new workers vs old workers.
New members who followed the "rules" were rewarded with a feeling of "belonging", those who didn't were punished through guilt and peer pressure. Their norms became rational rules. "You either obeyed the rules that team welcomed you as a member or you broke them and risked punishment.
Teams also started electing coordinators to six month periods, which made them more like supervisors. They had invested their human dignity in the system of their own control.
Phase 3: Stabilization and Formalization of the Rules
The norms became formal rules with penalties. The coordinator's role became more specific and formalized. It received an official title of facilitator, and a 10% bonus. Interestingly, the workers wanted this system. The team controls began to resemble the old system of control. It had the elements of rationalized control without the hierchical elements.
The employees said they felt under more stress with the new system than the old one. The new ones complained of the constant strain of self-management. People monitored each others actions.
The whole system followed Lewin's "unfreezing - moving - freezing" system. It appears that concertive control may be much stronger than the bureaucratic system.