DiscussionA central question concer

Discussion

A central question concerning the empowerment of work groups is just how much decisionmaking power should be granted. Proponents of empowerment have argued that groups should be given the responsibility of self-management, including the power to take action in response to poorly performing group members. In essence, the group would replace the formal manager in managing group performance; however, the implication of transferring such power from managers to groups has been essentially unknown. One fear among upper level management is that, relative to formal managers, groups will be overly lenient in handling poor performance cases involving their own group members. Although not empirically documented, the assumption often made is that lenience will translate into lower subsequent group performance. Our results showing the similarity between manager and group disciplinary decisions suggest that empowerment efforts including a transfer of responsibility for disciplinary decisions from managers to work groups may not result in greater leniency toward poor performers.

In fact, there are reasons to believe that groups may make more accurate disciplinary judgments than do formal managers. Due to the increasing spans of control for managers that often accompany downsizing and empowerment, groups, when compared to managers, may possess much richer information on the task behaviors and performance of each group member. Group members may be in a better position to evaluate peers than are formal managers. Groups are capable of recalling more information about one another because they work together daily and because they can pool information. Also, groups may be less prone to unfair performance rating bias due to the removal of any one individual's biases by the rest of the group. Thus, our findings indicate that groups may be capable of making fair decisions regarding group member poor performance.

While group members may be capable of making these decisions, the survey results showed that just as managers tend to dislike disciplining subordinates, group members may not enjoy being empowered with this responsibility. It follows that if managers decide to delegate disciplinary decisions to work teams, advantages of that transfer of power need to be communicated to the group members.

To the extent that our findings concerning disciplinary decisions for poor performance generalize to ratings of performance, there may be implications for the use of peer ratings as well. Our results suggest that accuracy may be enhanced by having all group members, except the person being rated, reach consensus on the performance rating for the group member being rated. Group discussion of each member's performance may also serve a developmental function, as each member gains an understanding of the ingredients of suc- cessful job performance. An additional benefit of participating in group discussion of each group member's performance is that acceptance of one's own performance rating might be enhanced, thus reducing the possibility of negative reactions to peer ratings.

Despite the comparability between managers and groups on the severity of their disciplinary actions, individual group members working alone arrived at decisions that were markedly more lenient when compared to those made by managers and groups. This suggests that granting responsibility for making disciplinary judgments to individual members of the group may result in excessively lenient decisions. Such lenience may subsequently lead to lower performance for the group. This is because our study specifically suggests that individual group members may feel that they can produce lower quality work and/or not complete assignments on time and not suffer disciplinary action if an individual team member is responsible for disciplining the work team members.

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DiscussionA central question concerning the empowerment of work groups is just how much decisionmaking power should be granted. Proponents of empowerment have argued that groups should be given the responsibility of self-management, including the power to take action in response to poorly performing group members. In essence, the group would replace the formal manager in managing group performance; however, the implication of transferring such power from managers to groups has been essentially unknown. One fear among upper level management is that, relative to formal managers, groups will be overly lenient in handling poor performance cases involving their own group members. Although not empirically documented, the assumption often made is that lenience will translate into lower subsequent group performance. Our results showing the similarity between manager and group disciplinary decisions suggest that empowerment efforts including a transfer of responsibility for disciplinary decisions from managers to work groups may not result in greater leniency toward poor performers.In fact, there are reasons to believe that groups may make more accurate disciplinary judgments than do formal managers. Due to the increasing spans of control for managers that often accompany downsizing and empowerment, groups, when compared to managers, may possess much richer information on the task behaviors and performance of each group member. Group members may be in a better position to evaluate peers than are formal managers. Groups are capable of recalling more information about one another because they work together daily and because they can pool information. Also, groups may be less prone to unfair performance rating bias due to the removal of any one individual's biases by the rest of the group. Thus, our findings indicate that groups may be capable of making fair decisions regarding group member poor performance.While group members may be capable of making these decisions, the survey results showed that just as managers tend to dislike disciplining subordinates, group members may not enjoy being empowered with this responsibility. It follows that if managers decide to delegate disciplinary decisions to work teams, advantages of that transfer of power need to be communicated to the group members.Sejauh bahwa temuan kami mengenai keputusan disiplin untuk kinerja yang buruk menggeneralisasi untuk peringkat kinerja, mungkin ada implikasi untuk penggunaan rekan peringkat juga. Hasil kami menunjukkan bahwa akurasi dapat ditingkatkan dengan memiliki semua anggota, kecuali orang yang dinilai grup, mencapai konsensus mengenai penilaian kinerja untuk anggota kelompok yang dinilai. Diskusi kelompok kinerja masing-masing anggota juga dapat melayani fungsi perkembangan, seperti setiap anggota memperoleh pemahaman tentang bahan kinerja kerja suc-cessful. Sebuah keuntungan tambahan dari berpartisipasi dalam diskusi kelompok kinerja masing-masing anggota kelompok adalah bahwa penerimaan sendiri penilaian kinerja mungkin ditingkatkan, sehingga mengurangi kemungkinan reaksi negatif terhadap peringkat rekan.Meskipun keterbandingan antara manajer dan kelompok pada tingkat keparahan dari tindakan disipliner mereka, anggota kelompok individu yang bekerja sendirian tiba di keputusan yang nyata lebih longgar bila dibandingkan dengan yang dibuat oleh manajer dan kelompok. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa pemberian tanggung jawab untuk membuat penilaian disiplin untuk anggota perorangan dari kelompok dapat mengakibatkan keputusan terlalu lunak. Lenience tersebut kemudian dapat mengakibatkan kinerja untuk kelompok yang lebih rendah. Hal ini karena penelitian kami khusus menunjukkan bahwa individu anggota kelompok mungkin merasa bahwa mereka dapat menghasilkan lebih rendah kualitas kerja dan/atau tidak menyelesaikan tugas pada waktunya dan tidak menderita sanksi disiplin jika anggota tim individu bertanggung jawab untuk mendisiplinkan anggota tim kerja.