Module 5-1

Effective Coordination of Shared Leadership in Global Virtual Teams

EMMA S. NORDBÄCK AND J. ALBERTO ESPINOSA

EMMA NORDBÄCK ([email protected]; corresponding author) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Management Studies at Aalto University School of Business, Finland. She received her doctoral degree from Aalto University School of Science. Her research focuses on virtual work arrangements ranging from globally distributed teams to workplace flexibility, with a special emphasis on technology, leader- ship, and boundary-spanning practices for innovation. Dr. Nordbäck’s work has been published in such journals as Journal of Organization Design, Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, and in various leading academic conference proceedings.

J. ALBERTO ESPINOSA ([email protected]) is a Professor of Information Technology and Analytics at the Kogod School of Business, American University. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He has co-authored two books on work coordination across time zones, and on big data and analytics for service delivery. He has published in leading journals, including Management Science; Organization Science; Information Systems Research; the Journal of Management Information Systems; IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management; Communications of the ACM and others. He also has many years of experience as a senior manager for global organizations.

ABSTRACT: In this study we investigate how shared leadership is coordinated in global virtual teams and how it relates to team effectiveness. Based on 71 interviews with team members and leaders from eight teams from two global software development companies, we found that shared leadership had a more positive effect on team effectiveness when shared leadership was coordinated both implicitly and behavio- rally. Implicit leadership coordination is about members sharing same perceptions or cognitive schemas regarding who has leadership over what, and influences whether leadership actions are acted upon. With a mix of national cultures in the team, members are less likely to share the same leadership expectations, which may make shared leadership less effective. In turn, behavioral leadership coordination is associated with the explicit actions aimed at coordinating the leadership activities taking place in the team. This behavioral coordination increases in importance with a higher degree of shared leadership. Our findings contribute to theory and practice by showing that when leadership is highly shared in the team and uncoordinated, it may actually lead to detrimental effects in terms of lower team effectiveness. In contrast, shared leadership may reap its potential benefits if it is well coordinated.

KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: global virtual teams, team leadership, team effectiveness, shared leadership, online leadership.

Journal of Management Information Systems / 2019, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 321–350.

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN 0742–1222 (print) / ISSN 1557–928X (online)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2018.1558943

Suddenly I am like “hey what it this?”… and then Mikko (pseudonym) is working on something completely different than we agreed upon and tells me that “Benjamin (pseudonym) [the formal team leader] told me that I should do this now,” and I am like “hey why did I not get informed?.” This is very confusing and not a sustainable solution!

This quote from a global team member illustrates an instance of uncoordinated shared leadership in which a member has been re-directed by the formal leader in another direction than what was agreed upon with an emergent leader, which in his opinion, has therefore led to uncoordinated action. This situation may arise in teams with multiple leaders, a leadership structure commonly referred to as shared leadership (e.g., [60]). While leadership entails “a process whereby intentional influence is exerted over other people to guide, structure and facilitate activities and relationships in a group or organization” [74, p. 2], shared leadership distributes this influence process over multiple individuals. Shared leadership has been found to be particularly important for team effectiveness [32, 56] in global virtual teams (GVTs) in which members collaborate through technology over spatial, temporal, and cultural bound- aries [47], partly because such boundaries hinder communications. At the same time, the visibility of leadership actions in GVTs will be generally lower than in co-located teams, potentially leading to misunderstandings and uncoordinated actions. Given these barriers for coordination, we argue that it is important to develop a nuanced understanding of how GVT leaders coordinate their shared leadership actions, which will lead to team effectiveness and achievement of desirable outcomes. The extant research on shared leadership has paid virtually no attention to how GVTs coordinate their leadership activities (or fail to do so). Our study aims to fill this gap. Organizations are increasingly relying on GVTs to perform their core work

activities [26], which come with many leadership challenges. For instance, indivi- dual leaders have reduced ability to exert direct influence on team members due to the diminished communication opportunities that come along with increased vir- tuality [1, 55]. Also, GVT members may vary in their expectations for leadership because of cultural differences, which may lead to diverse leadership expectations across locations [76], making vertical (i.e., single) leadership less effective. Especially when the degree of virtuality is high, shared leadership may be more effective than vertical leadership [32]. Previous research on shared leadership has focused primarily on its relationship to

team effectiveness and several studies have found a positive association (see [15, 69] for recent meta-analyses), particularly with GVTs [32, 54]. On the one hand, studies have formulated this association between shared leadership and team effectiveness through mediators such as: enhanced participation and information sharing; increased team cohesion and team consensus; and better team functioning [15, 69]. On the other hand, other studies have found opposite effects (e.g., [6, 51, 63]), indicating that shared leadership may as well have negative effects on team effectiveness. For instance,

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Robert [63] found shared leadership to decrease team performance in GVTs and Carte et al., [10] found that leadership behaviors, such as producer behaviors, aimed at motivating completion of the group’s task, led to lower team performance when GVT leadership was shared. Together, these contradicting findings suggest that there might be some interaction effects at play, which may explain this seemingly inconsistent association between shared leadership and team performance. For instance, Mehra and colleagues [51] identified the importance of formal and emergent leaders to perceive each other as leaders for shared leadership to be beneficial to performance. Drawing on Mehra’s study and the extant literature, we argue that for shared leadership to be beneficial to team performance, it must be effectively coordinated, above and beyond traditional task coordination. That is, we investigate whether coordination of the leader- ship itself can explain why and how shared leadership is effective in some cases and detrimental in others, helping us fill this gap in the research literature. Our rationale follows from coordination theory [44, 45], which we discuss next. Task coordination has been found to mitigate the negative effects of global bound-

aries (e.g., spatial and temporal) [14, 17] on GVT performance, particularly when the task activities have dependencies. In fact, task coordination is defined precisely as the management of these task dependencies [45]. In a similar vein, we argue that shared leadership generates additional coordination needs. Thus, consistently with coordina- tion theory we define shared leadership coordination as the management of dependen- cies among leadership activities, above and beyond task coordination.While leadership in general has been regarded as a key mechanism for overcoming task coordination challenges faced by GVTs [43], shared leadership coordination is not about task coordination, but about the coordination that the multiple leaders themselves and their followers need to achieve in order for the overall leadership to work as a cohesive whole. When a single leader enacts influence on the whole team (vertical leadership, see Figure 1), only task-dependencies needs to be coordinated. But when multiple leaders enacts influence on the team (shared leadership, see Figure 1), leader- ship dependencies needs to be coordinated, in addition to task dependencies. While it has been argued that shared leadership influences team effectiveness in

GVTs positively through an increase in task coordination [54], it has also been argued that shared leadership decreases team effectiveness in GVTs, through increased coordination problems [63]. However, we lack empirical evidence and a nuanced understanding about the suggested relationship between shared leader- ship and coordination, and we still know very little about how shared leadership creates additional leadership coordination needs, above and beyond the task. Given this gap in our knowledge, we set out to address the following research questions:

Research Question 1: How do global virtual teams coordinate shared leadership?

and

Research Question 2: How does this leadership coordination influence global virtual team effectiveness?

IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 323

By answering these questions, our work advances organizational theory in several important ways. First, we address the previously under-theorized relationship between shared leadership and team effectiveness in GVT’s by uncovering how leadership coordination acts as an important intervening factor to influence the effect of shared leadership on GVTeffectiveness. Second, while the extant literature is inconclusive on the effect of shared leadership on team effectiveness, our study examines the role of shared leadership coordination as the explanation for these prior contradicting results. Moreover, we explore two main forms of shared leadership coordination: implicit and behavioral; thus providing a more nuanced understanding of how shared leadership operates in teams. In doing so, we integrate shared leadership theory with coordination theory. None of these perspectives have been adequately investigated yet. We first present our theoretical foundations. We then describe our methods,

followed by our results. Last, we discuss our results and the implications and limitations of the study.

Theoretical Foundations

Shared Leadership in GVTs

There is a general consensus in the literature that leading GVTs successfully is challenging, yet vital for team effectiveness (e.g., [27]). In the context of teams (including GVTs), leadership is about fulfilling team needs, which may entail motivating and monitoring team processes, with the ultimate goal of enhancing team effectiveness [32, 53]. Prior research has commonly focused on leader traits and behaviors, as well how various situational variables influence leadership effectiveness [38, 74]. While the majority of prior research has focused on vertical solo leadership, more

recently, scholars have begun to question these top-down, hierarchical and formal leadership roles. However, the notion that leadership does not reside in a single individual is not new. Gibb [23, p. 884] articulated in the 1950s that: “leadership is

Figure 1. A completely vertical vs. a completely shared leadership structure. Note: An arrow from one node to another means that leadership moves in that direction.

324 NORDBÄCK AND ESPINOSA

probably best conceived as a group quality, as a set of functions which must be carried out by the group.” Gibb was hence among the first to pave the way for the emergence of the concept of shared leadership. Later, Pearce and Conger [60, p. 1] defined shared leadership as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achieve- ment of group or organizational goals.” While other definitions exist (e.g., [9, 15]), they all collectively suggest that leadership responsibilities are shared and distrib- uted over more than one person in the team. However, which of these leadership responsibilities are being shared varies from one study to another. Research on shared leadership has focused primarily either on the aggregation of

leadership contributed by leaders or on the specific leadership behaviors integrated into the entire collective leadership (see [69] for a meta-analysis). Within a behavioral approach, leadership has been conceptualized using a wide variety of actions aimed at satisfying team needs with the goal of enhancing team effec- tiveness [75]. For example, Yukl and colleagues [75] classified leadership behaviors into three categories: task-oriented (e.g., providing directions and monitoring per- formance), relations-oriented (e.g., providing support and encouragement), and change-oriented (e.g., proposing a new strategy or vision). All of these behaviors have been found to predict GVT success (e.g., [40, 59]). Consequently, this behavioral approach provides a useful theoretical lens to investigate how leadership is shared and coordinated in GVTs. Consistent with this approach, we study shared leadership manifested through task, relations, and change-oriented leadership beha- viors, as well as through cumulative leadership influence [69]. For the most part, studies on shared leadership in GVTs thus far have been

theoretical, offering propositions and predictions (e.g., [31, 42, 55, 56]). These studies have suggested that shared leadership increases team effectiveness in GVTs. A few recent empirical studies [32, 34, 54] also found that shared leadership leads to increased team performance in GVTs, while a few other studies showed the opposite effect [63], especially with some leadership behaviors [10]. Robert [63] offers reasons such as: having multiple members in charge resulting in no one being in charge; too much focus on trying to accommodate everyone; and potential coordination problems. In contrast, Muethel et al. [54] theorized that shared leader- ship leads to increased task coordination and improved communication practices in teams, which in turn affects team performance positively. Hoch and Kozlowski [32] reasoned further that shared leadership: creates stronger bonds among team mem- bers; facilitates trust, cohesion, and commitment; and mitigate disadvantages of GVTs, for example by helping members to overcome communication challenges [3, 60], leading to team performance. Based on these conflicting accounts, it is difficult to draw a unified conclusion on the effect of shared leadership on team effectiveness in GVTs. In this study, we argue that employing a coordination perspective may help reconcile these seemingly contradictory findings. In line with coordination theory [45], if we decompose leadership into its multiple func- tions, and distribute these functions across various members, either by adopting

IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 325

a shared leadership structure or by letting shared leadership emerge informally, we anticipate that these leadership functions will need to be tightly coordinated in order to be effective. In other words, we argue that how well shared leadership enhances team effectiveness is contingent on how well the shared leadership is coordinated within the team. We now discuss the role of coordination in shared leadership.

Coordination in GVTs

When team member activities can be accomplished independently, there is a minimal need to coordinate. But when such activities are interdependent, team members need to coordinate their work. In fact, coordination has been defined as the management of such dependencies [45]. Our focus in this research is on coordination processes associated with shared leadership in GVTs. There are two streams of research on coordination. The first stream is from the classic organiza- tional literature going back several decades, which argued that coordination is carried out mechanistically (e.g., plans, programs, schedules, procedures) or orga- nically (e.g., feedback, communication, mutual adjustment) [46]. These two types of coordination are referred to as “behavioral” [68], because they are based on what people do to coordinate. Behavioral coordination of workflows has been shown to be especially important for GVT performance [48]. The second stream comes from the team cognition literature in the psychology

field. While there is an abundance of team cognition labels and constructs in the literature, they are all based on some form of knowledge team members share about the task and each other [7]. Team cognition thus refers to the collective knowledge structure that enables team members to acquire and share knowledge within the team. Team cognition has been deemed important for coordination because it helps teams coordinate implicitly through a better “synchronization of member actions based on unspoken assumptions about what others in the group are likely to do” [71, p. 129]. Once team members have developed intra-group knowledge [12] through prior communication and working together [61], this familiarity helps them anticipate each other’s actions more accurately [62, 71]. Prior research has shown that behavioral and implicit coordination are particularly

important for GVTs, partly because of the communication barriers caused by global boundaries [19]. Compared to vertical leadership, shared leadership requires addi- tional coordination within GVTs above and beyond what is necessary for pure task coordination because global boundaries generate the need for local leadership in each location, effectively breaking down the team’s leadership structure from a single individual into multiple individuals (see Figure 1). This creates dependencies between the multiple leaders’ actions. Hence, when leadership is enacted by several individuals in the team in a decentralized coordination structure [44] the individual leadership activities need to be coordinated into a coherent whole in order to be effective. In line with Malone’s decentralized coordination structure [44], shared leadership

is likely to create high coordination costs when a large number of team members

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participate in the leadership, requiring most leaders to interact frequently, which has been linked to reduced GVT performance [17]. On the other hand, shared leader- ship may decrease task production costs because team members may themselves engage in leadership, rather than consulting a formal leader who may not be available when needed, thus reducing the overall time to complete their respective task activities. Consistently, Malone suggests that decentralized coordination sys- tems have least vulnerability costs in the event of a task failure because task activities can be quickly reassigned to another member, minimizing disruptions [44]. This also applies to shared leadership activities because leaders can substitute for each other as needed. In sum, based on coordination theory, we expect that shared leadership will increase some coordination related costs and decrease others, which will have differential impacts on team effectiveness, and we argue that shared leadership coordination can explain these differences. We also argue that the need for leadership coordination is influenced by the global

boundaries spanned by the team. GVTs need to bridge multiple boundaries, such as time zones, geographic distance, functional, organizational, and national [30]. As more global boundaries are bridged by team members, the collaboration environment becomes more complex [18, 41] making task coordination and shared leadership more difficult [40]. For instance, an individual’s implicit view of leadership is likely to be related to cultural specific values, such as power distance [29], which can be defined as the extent to which a person accepts and endorses authority, inequality in power, and status privileges [8, 35]. Team members in high power distance cultures are more likely to accept unequal distribution of power in organizations [35] and accept their social status as followers [5], making them less equipped and less likely to participate in the team’s leadership (e.g., [11, 29, 55]). On the other hand, team members from low power distance cultures are more likely to attempt to minimize inequalities and favor less centralized leadership approaches [11, 29, 55]. Therefore, having members with differing power distances in the GVT, may hamper the development of shared mental models [64] about the shared leadership in the GVT. Moreover, the distribution of leadership across global boundaries may cause leadership actions to go unnoticed because communication is hindered.

Methods

We conducted a qualitative multi-case study to investigate how eight GVTs coor- dinate their leadership activities or fail to do so, and how this coordination impacts team effectiveness. Using multiple cases is a recommended method to develop theoretical constructs and propositions from case-based empirical evidence [16]. We treated the eight cases, ranging from high to low levels of shared leadership, and excellent to poor team effectiveness, as a series of “natural experiments,” each case serving to confirm or disconfirm the inferences drawn from the others [72]. Yet, the study was designed to be open-ended and to allow new themes to emerge. This inductive approach has been regarded particularly suitable for the study of

IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 327

social influence processes such as leadership, and for the study of phenomena that are not well understood [52, 58]. Therefore, we applied interpretive research methods for answering our research questions.

Cases and Data

This study is based on 71 in-depth interviews conducted with members and leaders of eight GVTs of two organizations. Both organizations developed software and provided support to their customers worldwide but operated on different markets. TechAlpha (pseudonym) employed 170 workers and TechBeta (pseudonym) had 600 employees at the time of the study. While both organizations provide technol- ogy-mediated support to their customers, TechAlpha also provides installations and on-site support to customers. The organizations have headquarters in Finland and area offices throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. Table 1 provides information on team composition, communication media, and temporal distribution for the participating teams. All teams had one formal team leader, while the rest of the teams’ leadership was more informal. Team A’s task was to provide technology support and on-site training to custo-

mers, whereas Team B focused on delivering products and supporting customers during the initial usage period of the product. The sub-locations in Teams A and B operated quite independently within their specific geographical areas providing services to local customers in their native languages, but team members shared resources and provided support to each other, working together in a moderately interdependent manner. Teams A and B used a common information and customer management tool, which brought transparency to the team both in terms of provid- ing information about customer cases as well as information on who was working on what. In addition, the teams followed a series of work processes that guided their work. Team B had weekly global meetings, while Team A lacked meeting routines and rarely gathered for formal meetings. Teams C, D and E (from TechAlpha) developed software and worked together in

a highly interdependent manner across sub-locations. They followed the agile work process Scrum, which is a development process for team tasks consisting of short iterative rounds, where the team is given significant autonomy to carry out their tasks in whatever way they find necessary [65]. Scrum consists of a series of meetings, such as daily status, planning and retrospective meetings, so it requires intensive communication. In addition, the teams we studied used an issue tracking management tool (commonly used in Scrum), listing all the team’s tasks and each member’s current task, to enable task sequencing and delegation. The teams had two assigned roles: Product Owner (PO) and Scrum Master (SM). The SM facili- tated teamwork by removing obstacles, keeping the team focused on the task, and ensuring that the team adheres to team rules. The PO represented the voice of the customer and was ultimately responsible for team success or failure. In our sample, the PO also functioned as the formal team leader.

328 NORDBÄCK AND ESPINOSA

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IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 329

In TechBeta, Team H developed software in a moderately interdependent manner, but unlike the software teams of TechAlpha, Team H did not follow Scrum, and rarely held meetings together in the whole team. Instead the two sub-locations met separately on a daily to weekly basis and communicated primarily through the formal leader in Finland and a sub-leader in the United Kingdom, acting as bridges between the two locations. Teams F and G, specialized on specific products and provided support and input to software development teams, customer support teams and sellers of the product. Their team members provided: material and guidelines to the custo- mer support area offices; development requirements to the product development division; and technical support to sales. While Team F had monthly face-to-face meetings, Team G met face-to-face four times a year. Apart from these meetings, Team F had sporadic virtual meetings on an as-needed basis. The teams were moderately interdependent, although dyads within the teams work together interde- pendently on a daily basis. The eight teams were chosen based on principles of theoretical sampling [25]

along the following dimensions that seemed important for the experience of shared leadership in GVTs. The teams worked in a globally dispersed manner (i.e., members were located in different countries, and communicated in the GVT mainly via information and communication technologies, listed in Table 2), and the teams displayed some degree of shared leadership. Therefore, we selected two companies with similarities in work cultures; both companies were medium-sized and operated according to low hierarchical leadership structures. All selected teams consisted of knowledge workers with interdependent task activities (requiring coordination), collaborating toward a common goal. We selected the specific teams based on initial discussion with team leaders and HR-personnel of the companies. The teams created a spectrum from high to low degree of shared leadership. To

arrive at the degree of shared leadership in each team, we employed network analysis to uncover the extent to which leadership was shared within each team. We asked participants to identify who they viewed as leaders in their team. We used their responses to calculate in-degree centralities for each member within each team using Freeman’s [22] measure, by counting the number of incoming ties into that member. Because leadership is about direct influence on others, in-degree centrality is most appropriate to identify leaders in a network. All measures of “centrality” (i.e., a network actor level metric) have a counterpart measure of “centralization” for the whole team network, which measures the distribution of the respective member centralities across the network. We computed Freeman’s normalized in- degree leadership centralization for each team as the sum of the differences between the largest member centrality score and all other’s within the team, divided by the maximum possible sum of the differences [70] (i.e., that of a maximally centralized network with a “star” configuration). This normalized centralization score repre- sents the degree to which leadership is concentrated in one member (i.e., a centralization score of 1, representing a “star” network with one “vertical” leader and everyone else as a follower, left side in Figure 1) or widely distributed (i.e.,

330 NORDBÄCK AND ESPINOSA

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.

IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 331

a centralization score of 0 represents a fully connected and totally decentralized network with everyone sharing leadership, right side of Figure 1). We observed shared leadership in all the teams in our sample, but to varying degrees. The network centralization scores (CS) for each team were: Team A = 0.57; Team B = 0.41; Team C = 0.29; Team D = 0.39; Team E = 0.42; Team F = 0.19; Team G = 0.44, Team H = 0.5. From this we concluded that shared leadership was highly shared in teams C and F (CS < 0.3), moderately shared in teams B, D, E, and G (0.3 < CS < 0.5), and little shared in teams A and H (CS > 0.5).

Data Collection and Analysis

We conducted semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions about mem- bers’ experiences with their team’s work routines, communication, team dynamics, and leadership, including benefits and challenges of the team’s leadership. To uncover the distribution of leadership within the team, and to better understand the relationship between leadership and coordination we asked participants to name the team members they perceived to be most influential in the team and explain how and why (see network analysis in the previous section). Following Yukl et al.’s [75, 73] taxonomy of leadership behaviors, we asked members to talk about how specific leadership behaviors, such as task-oriented (e.g., planning of new tasks, task-delegation, and scheduling), relations-oriented (e.g., provision of support and encouragement and consulting other members for decision-making), and change- oriented (e.g., proposing a new strategy to the team) leadership behaviors were carried out within the team. Each interview lasted between 37 to 128 minutes and was 64 minutes long on average (resulting in a total of 76 hours of interviews, 1,207 pages, with 568,854 words). All interviews were audio recorded and tran- scribed verbatim. Throughout our research process, we followed the recommendation by Yin [72]

to increase the validity and reliability of our findings. The validity of our findings has been ensured through 1) several rounds of iterations, 2) validity checks with informants, participating researchers and external reviewers, 3) cross-case analysis over multiple cases, and 4) connecting conclusions to existing literature. The reliability has been ensured by strictly following a case-study protocol as well as establishing a case study database, which would enable not only replication for others, but also for ourselves to replicate the same procedures from one case to another. We report each step taken in the single-case and cross-case analysis next. First, we analyzed each team in context as a separate case, each providing

a unique “story.” The first step in crafting these stories was to describe the different practices of shared leadership coordination in each team and then analyze them inductively. Consistent with an inductive approach [16, 52], we first conducted open coding of the transcribed data to uncover emerging dominant themes. Using NVivo [66] we identified terms, concepts, and categories in the data. Next, we conducted axial coding to relate categories with one another and formed “second

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order” categories, representing themes and dimensions of theoretical interest. For instance, we folded the first-level excerpt “we monitor everyone’s progress over technology” into the second order category “Mechanistic leadership coordination” and the first-level excerpt “we collectively shape our vision by discussing in the team” into the second order category “Organic leadership coordination.” Finally, we searched for relationships among these second order categories and arrived at our final aggregate dimensions, “Behavioral leadership coordination” and “Implicit leadership coordination.” The final coding structure with the emerging themes about leadership coordination is illustrated in Figure 2. We arrived at this coding structure through constant comparison of the occurring concepts across all teams. We assigned a score of low, moderate, or high, depending on how much each type of coordination process was used in the team, by consensus among the researchers. Finally, we analyzed the effectiveness of each team. Team effectiveness has com-

monly been divided into two parts in the management literature; performance (e.g., quality and quantity) and members’ affective reactions (e.g., satisfaction and commit- ment) [49]. In the context of IS teams, performance outcomes have commonly been divided into process performance (including affective outcomes) and product perfor- mance [13]. In this study, we focus on process performance specifically and measure it consistent with prior IS research (e.g., [13, 57]) by asking members and leaders questions about how well the team achieved outcomes on-time, in line with team goals, and with overall efficiency (which we label work process performance) and how satisfied members were with their team and their tasks (which we label affective process performance).We separated these two into two process performance categories because we found that the various shared leadership coordination types had separate effects on affective- and work process performance. In this analysis, we grouped first-

Coding Structure

We use a tool for work allocation Our work processes forces people to bring forth problems Continuous improvement is built in our process

During meetings we make decisions together Meetings brings transparency into what everyone is doing

Mechanistic leadership

coordination

Organic leadership

coordination

Behavioral leadership

coordination

1st Order Concepts 2nd Order Themes Aggregate Dimensions

Implicit leadership

coordination

It doesn’t bother them what I try to say They are unsure about who the leader is Everyone can voice their opinion and influence

Although Annika is my supervisor I can still go and ask, hey could you do this for me It’s not possible that a member participate in leadership

Perceived legitimacy of

emergent leader shared in the team

Own perceived legitimacy

Figure 2. Coding structure. Note: Data representation format was inspired by the Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton [24] “Gioia Methodology.”

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level codes such as “The team performs its work on time” and “The team performs its work aligned with its goals” under the second level code “Work process performance,” and first-level codes such as “I am satisfied with my team and our work” and “I am more motivated when no one tells me what to do all the time” under the second-level code “Affective process performance.” These two second level codes together formed the aggregate dimension “Team effectiveness.” In this analysis, team effectiveness was also ranked as low, moderate, or high (see Table 2), by consensus from the participating researchers. A score of low in terms of work process performance was given if the team had substantial problems with staying on track, had big delays, and overall worked inefficiently, while a score of high was given if the teamworked in alignment with their goals, with no delays, andwith high efficiency. A score of moderate was given to teams falling somewhere in between. Similarly, for affective process performance a score of high, moderate, or low was based on how satisfied and motivated the team members were in the team. We further validated our interpretations by presenting the results and ideas to the study participants and getting their feedback on the analysis [16, 52], and for work process performance, we specifically asked the formal team leaders for their evaluation to validate our own interpretations. We noticed differences in implicit leadership coordination based on members’

national cultural dimension power distance [35]. Since the effects of cultural norms are stronger and more accurate when measured at the individual level [67], we did not automatically assign a value of low or high due to members’ country of origin. Instead, we assessed power distance values through interview questions directly with the team members, which increased the validity of our measurement. We categorized each member’s power distance as high or low, based on their own reports of how they reasoned around people in higher positions, related to status differences and decision-making power [35]. First order codes related to low power distance included “Here, we are all on the same level,” and first order codes related to high power distance included “It’s not possible for a member to participate in leadership.” After categorized each individual, we investigated each team in detail to see how power distance influenced leadership coordination. After the single team case analyses, we performed comparative thematic analysis

across all eight cases. The single cases revealed the unique team patterns and amounts of shared leadership coordination in each team and, in all cases shared leadership had an impact on team effectiveness, but it varied depending on how well the team coordinated its shared leadership activities. We used these differences in our compara- tive multi-case study. As recommended by Eisenhardt [16], we looked for patterns of within-case similarities and cross-case differences by comparing the leadership coor- dination mechanisms in each team and how they subsequently related to team effec- tiveness. These comparisons enabled us to reconcile why shared leadership had differing effects on team effectiveness in different teams, and the explanation always centered on how shared leadership was coordinated within each team. For instance, we were able to trace differences in the underlying reasons for and how teams used organic leadership coordination. Some teams used it in a proactive fashion to build

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awareness and a rhythm for leadership to take place, while others used it in a more reactive fashion to correct issues due to lack of mechanistic coordination in the team (see * in Table 2). The effect on team effectiveness differed among these. The following section reports the results of our cross-case analysis. The names of partici- pants (in quotes) have been changed to pseudonyms to ensure confidentiality.

Results

Our results provide a nuanced understanding on how GVTs coordinate shared leadership. Table 2 provides an overview of the levels of shared leadership, shared leadership coordination mechanisms, and team effectiveness in each team. It also lists the amount of low and high power-distance members as well as time zone span in each team. In what follows, we describe how the studied teams coordinated their leadership implicitly and behaviorally, and link these to team effectiveness.

Shared Leadership Coordination

Leadership coordination is about managing dependencies among the various leader- ship behaviors distributed across the team into a coherent leadership whole. Implicit leadership coordination is about members sharing same perceptions or cognitive schemas about who has leadership over what. In turn, behavioral leadership coor- dination is associated with actions aimed towards more synchronized and aligned with team goals and outcomes.

Implicit Leadership Coordination

Implicit leadership coordination had an impact on both work- and affective process- performance. Implicit leadership coordination was often mentioned to affect the effectiveness of leadership influence, as a member in Team B commented:

It is visible in the Asian culture, like when I am not anybody’s formal leader, it doesn’t bother them much what I am trying to say. The directive has to come from someone being their boss so that they would take it seriously.

Different perceptions of the team’s leadership structure among members can hence be wasteful when followers are not accustomed to take orders from other team members or do not know which leaders to follow. This happened in teams A, B and E in particular. The leader of Team B commented on how important knowing who one’s leader was, especially for members accustomed to vertical leadership:

It has been a bit blurry on who is whose leader for the Asian members, which has caused a lot of confusion and bad climate at their local offices. Not knowing clearly who your leader is seems to have a much bigger influence on them than it has here [in Finland].

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In other words, Asian members expected more formal leader roles, but Finnish members established a more informal shared leadership structure, which was not well received by Asians, leaving some Finnish members feeling powerless. Consequently, lack of implicit leadership coordination was common in GVTs with a mix of high and low power distance members, leading to lower satisfaction in the team. Conversely, most low power distance culture members did not perceive the

formal role of the leader to be as important and accepted shared leadership more readily. A member of Team A described how he had just found out about who his immediate leader was:

His title came quite as a surprise a few months ago when he [a team member] had been named as our sub team leader … I was just like, okay haha [laughing]… and this shows how important titles are in Finland, they don’t play a big role. I don’t even anticipate that he will begin to take any more leadership responsibility.

Interestingly, no one in the Finnish team recognized that a recent introduction of this local sub-leader in Team A and B would have changed the team’s leadership. Instead, the common view among Finnish members was aligned with the following comment from a Finnish team member: “Anyone who has a good argument has influence on the team, independent on his or her position.” Furthermore, another Finnish member in Team A explained his relationship to the formal team leader: “Although Annika is my leader I can still go and ask, hey could you do this for me…Although she is in a leader position, we are still pretty much in the same boat.” This demonstrates how anyone is able to influence (and willing to be influenced by) others in the team without the need for leadership roles to be clearly defined or designated. Low-power distance team members (such as the Finnish members) were thus more likely to have an implicit coordination cognitive schema assuming and accepting shared leadership from the outset. In contrast, higher power distance team members were more likely to have an implicit coordination cognitive schema centered on vertical leadership. Such differ- ences in leadership perceptions led to dissatisfaction to both sides, and also to process losses because a considerable amount of time was spent on processing misunderstand- ings and duplication of efforts. In Team E, which had low implicit leadership coordina- tion, an Indian member commented on the perceptional differences:

We had been asking too many questions and directives from Finnish people, so they were getting [mad (edited)] because of that, since they had to spend a lot of time guiding us… but they had the PO, they had the Scrum Master in their site, so it was a natural choice to us.

The Finnish members of this team in turn reported how they did not want to offer all the leadership, as they expected the Indian members to participate in leadership themselves:

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We did not want to do that, because we are a self-managed team… But what happened is that a few members from Finland ended up having to constantly be in contact with them and offer leadership. This led to frustrations and decreased productivity for these persons.

Overall, this was problematic for Finnish members because they perceived distant team members to slowing things down. In turn, Indian members saw this as problematic because they were not comfortable sharing leadership, and cited insecurity and doubts in their own legitimacy as their main concerns. Such differ- ence in role expectations and a lack of implicit leadership coordination led to both work- and affective process performance losses. In general, the majority of members in high power distance cultures gravitated to

persons they perceived closest to them, before enacting any leadership activities. In Team B, for instance, Finnish members described how Asian team members tended to turn to them to suggest a change to a leader: “Sometimes you get these questions like ‘I have been thinking about a change suggestion a little, is it okay if I ask Tapio [team leader] about it?’” Similarly, in Team D, the Scrum Master explained about his Indian team members: “They are a bit unsure about who the leader is…and they are afraid that we will go on to complain to someone they don’t know if they are not taking care of their tasks properly.” As a result, the Indian members generally relied on leadership from a senior member locally, who often then escalated the issue to the Finnish site. This sometimes caused a day of delay due to time zone differences. Considering that many members of Teams A, B, D, and E had years of

experience working together, the limited direct influence and alternative routes of communication suggested a lack of implicit leadership coordination in the team, with members having different perceptions on who were allowed to participate in leadership. As members became bridges between different persons, the result was an unnecessary long chain of leadership communication. These bridging activities often consumed a lot of time and frustration among everyone involved, providing evidence of how lack of implicit leadership coordination results in diminished process performance, both in terms of work- and affective process performance (see Table 2). In contrast, in GVTs with an implicitly coordinated shared leadership, team

members freely participated in leadership, and contacted the person who was most likely to have the knowledge to answer their request and this did not differ by role or location. Team C is a good example of successful implicit leadership coordination, where all members (independent of their culture) expected leadership to be shared, as this Indian member commented:

If I have a problem that needs to be solved in let’s say a few hours, it doesn’t matter who I ask, everybody answer[s] the same… and in influencing deci- sions there is no difference, everyone who has the strongest and more concrete opinions gets taken into account.

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This shows that a mix of high and low power distance cultures in the teammatter less for shared leadership, when the GVT is able to implicitly coordinate its shared leader- ship. But while Team C, G and H with high implicit leadership coordination demon- strated high levels of team effectiveness, other teams did not (see Table 2), especially Team F. The difference is explained in the next section by the level to which the shared leadership is being behaviorally coordinated, on top of being implicitly coordinated.

Behavioral Leadership Coordination

Behavioral leadership coordination is concerned with the explicit actions aimed at coordinating the leadership activities taking place, and was needed in addition to implicit leadership coordination. For example, Team F had implicitly coordinated shared leadership perceptions; yet, this team’s shared leadership was not efficient, due to the uncoordinated nature of leadership activities resulting in work redun- dancies, as a team member described: “Anders was supposed to manage my resources … like prioritize for me, but now it’s just messy… I really don’t know who to take on tasks from and when.” Anders again explained:

Suddenly … he [Mikko] is working on something completely different than we agreed upon and tells me that Benjamin [the team leader] told me that I should do this now,’ and I am like hey why did I not get informed. This is very confusing and not a sustainable solution.

This comment illustrates how low behavioral leadership coordination can result in conflicting leadership actions, resulting in reduced team effectiveness through delays and confusions that demotivates team members further from engaging in shared leadership. Naturally, the need for behavioral leadership coordination varied depending on

the degree of distribution of leadership across team boundaries. If only one or a few persons handled all leadership in the team, then there was little need for behavioral leadership coordination. For instance, in Teams A, and H, which were characterized by more vertical leadership structures, we did not observe a strong need for behavioral leadership coordination (see Table 2) for the team to be effective. The few persons who participated in leadership were able to synchronize their efforts appropriately. Conversely, for the GVTs with largely shared leadership across temporal and spatial boundaries, there was a stronger need for behavioral leadership coordination. As we discuss next, behavioral leadership coordination can be achieved both through mechanistic as well as organic coordination, often through a combination of both.

Mechanistic Leadership Coordination

Mechanistic leadership coordination is about managing the dependencies among leadership behaviors through plans, programs and artifacts. Team C and D were

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both following the Scrum work process and hence held daily scrums and other Scrum meetings. They used an issue tracking management tool (ITMT), which facilitated transparency within the team. Especially Team C was able to take advantage of these for coordinating the team’s shared leadership, which an Indian member explains:

All our work tasks are described here [ITMT], you see who is working on what and what the progress of the work is, and if a task requires someone to do testing. For work allocation it’s an excellent tool and it hinders duplicate work allocation … although we have decided that all work is open to anyone. Even though people have special areas of expertise it is good in the long run if people does a little bit of everything.

A Romanian member of Team C described how task delegation had become more mechanistic and empowered by technology: “Earlier we had the leader helping us with [a task assignment], but now … we have a backlog [in the ITMT] and each one starts picking from it, which is really efficient.” This illustrates how mechanistic coordination through defined processes and technol- ogy helps teams carry out task leadership functions, such as delegation and work sequencing [75, 73] with minimal coordination costs. The functionality and wide- spread use of the ITMT tool made duplication of leadership behaviors less likely, fostering effective behavioral leadership coordination. For instance, two members could not assign the same task to different persons simultaneously, nor could a person delegate any other tasks to the team than those that had been agreed upon. These same problems were prevented in Team A and B through the use of customer support tools used to handle assignment and scheduling of cases. In addition to offering highly effective ways to tackle temporal and spatial disper- sion, mechanistic leadership coordination also helped Team C (and to a lower degree in Team D) to legitimize their shared leadership. As a result of shared leadership becoming the expected norm in the team, the team’s implicit leadership coordination was improved. Several members explained that the Scrum work process and their ITMTs empowered them to participate in shared leadership, which they would not have done if following their own high-power distance cultural norms. In contrast, lack of mechanistic leadership coordination was noticeable in teams

D, E, and H which had a few members either refusing the Scrum process and tools, or not realizing that they were not adhering to the established process rules, and in teams F and G where members completed task activities more indepen- dently, forgetting to inform their cross-site colleagues about them (see Table 2). The formal leader of Team D outlined how it was difficult to know if distant team members were actually working on things they were supposed to, as they did not rely on the ITMT tool to share information about their respective independent decisions:

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One guy sometimes informs like, “hey now I have developed this kind of thing” … But I would rather hear about the issue beforehand … Sometimes things get out of hand and sometimes … a member has worked for weeks on another issue than he informed us about.

In turn, such reduced transparency impaired the team’s effectiveness when mem- bers were unable to prioritize the right tasks in line with the team’s goals. Team D also had a few members who were reluctant to work according to Scrum. The frustrated Scrum Master talked about this:

It doesn’t matter whoever decides, they don’t follow the process, but does what they want … A lot of problems arise from that, for example, how can we know when something is getting ready? Like we don’t necessary know what they have been up to … and then suddenly the work pops up and we need to be ready to take care of the testing.

He also discussed how this led to additional effort to check upon team members, increasing coordination costs. Lack of mechanistic leadership coordination also explained why teams with highly shared leadership, such as Teams F and G, experienced work process performance losses. Since the team had no processes or technologies to facilitate the transparency of leadership actions in the team, the team often displayed redundant leadership, which was sometimes misaligned with the team’s goals, which in turn delayed the team’s other important work. In addition to a lack of mechanistic leadership coordination, the team rarely coordinated leadership actions organically through communication in a proactive fashion, which further decreased the team’s effectiveness. We discuss this in the next section.

Organic leadership coordination

Organic leadership coordination is about managing the dependencies among leader- ship activities through communication. This coordination was either proactive (i.e., focused on future actions) or reactive (i.e., focused on past actions). Organic leadership coordination took place primarily through formal of ad-hoc meetings, where team members discussed their work and aligned their intended or past leadership actions. During these meetings, team members could make decisions together, increasing the likelihood for the team to move forward in the same direction. Several members from each team pointed out that their team was able to achieve their goals better when the team considered opinions from more persons, and decisions were influenced by expertise rather than by a person’s position in the company. As a member of Team C explained: “A team has more experience … so it’s good to let the team decide. Because in the end, if one person’s idea is not good, then we have counter arguments.”

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Another member of Team C mentioned how in his old company, decisions tended to come down from the top, which made him question the quality of those decisions. This also lowered his motivation and commitment to the task and team. Therefore, including members in leadership through discussions kept the team moving forward in the right direction, “doing the right things,” as well as kept members satisfied. Furthermore, making decisions together helped reduce work process performance losses resulting from individual leadership actions that were duplicated or misaligned with team goals, delaying the work. Organic leadership coordination thus fostered awareness of and inclusion in the team’s shared leadership. Lack of organic coordination was visible especially in Team A (and in Team

H with moderate level of organic coordination) where the teams rarely met as a whole. In Team A and H, this did not cause problems because their leadership was shared the least (see Table 2). Nor did a moderate level of organic leadership coordination cause reduced process performance in Team C, due to the heavy reliance on mechanistic leadership coordination, reducing the need for organic leadership coordination. On the other hand, a high amount of reactive organic leadership coordination was highly problematic in Teams D, E, F, and G since the teams had little mechanistic leadership coordination in place. Hence, situations in which members performed duplicate leadership actions in conflicting directions often took place, as this comment from a member in Team G illustrates:

Sometimes you hear that a team member went to visit some company and then you are like, hmm, I was in that company the previous week, maybe we could have done it together? So it would be interesting to hear what folks are planning and in which projects they are being involved. Then it would be easier to sometimes coordinate … Now I don’t know for instance if we have communicated a fragmented picture of our company to the customer.

In other words, too much freedom in sharing the lead, led members of this team to make independent decisions without consulting each other. As this member of Team G further explained, many times members portrayed conflicting stories to external stakeholders, which they then later had to correct. Since there was no clear division between who took care of what leadership among this team’s members (and similarly in Team D, E, and F), and since they often neglected to proactively coordinate their leadership actions, this resulted in confusion and extra time spent on reactive organic leadership coordination (i.e., losses in process performance).

Reliance on Mechanistic and Organic Leadership Coordination Together

The amount of mechanistic leadership coordination in the team influenced the need for organic leadership coordination. When a team lacked mechanistic leadership coordina- tion (at least to some degree), as in Team D, E, F, and G (see Table 2), these teams commonly had to sort out their issues resulting from uncoordinated shared leadership with reactive organic leadership coordination. This led to decreased process

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performance due to things like additional back and forth communication, work delays, and dissatisfied team members. In contrast, teams such as Team A, B, C, and H (see Table 2) relied on proactive organic leadership coordination, in addition tomechanistic, to increase transparency in the team and to lower the risk for the team’s leadership to become uncoordinated. In general, there were less process performance losses in the teams that relied on organic leadership coordination in a proactive manner, and their team effectiveness was consistently higher. This was exemplified in Team C in parti- cular, where shared leadership had the strongest positive impact on team effectiveness. Mechanistic leadership coordination in this team, not only decreased the need for, but also enhanced the effectiveness of proactive organic leadership coordination by pro- viding a rhythm and a forum for the less-routine aspects of leadership. Several members of Team C commented on this, for example:

Our processes force people to bring forth problems, like I have myself a tendency to get stuck on a difficult task for several days … but in Scrum everyone every day has to bring forth what they are working on and tell about their problems.

Similarly, members talked about how change leadership was facilitated through biweekly meetings where the aim was to work together to make suggestions and decide upon changes to the team’s work practices. Hence, mechanistic leadership coordination helped facilitate continuity to organic leadership coordination in a proactive manner. On the contrary, when all members did not follow processes and did not use technology (e.g., Team D and E), reactive organic leadership coordination was used and necessary to account for the absence of mechanistic leadership coordination. This was evident in Team D, which had a few detractors refusing to follow the Scrum process, leading the Scrum Master to always check in on members: “I always have to call them separately, to see what’s going on.” This resulted in lower team effectiveness because much time was spent on extra com- munication, causing substantial coordination costs and reduced time for the Scrum Master to engage in software production himself to meet the team’s deadlines. Similarly, in TechBeta, Teams F and G have a minimum number of meetings and

most communication was ad hoc, one-on-one. Members often forgot to communicate about their intended leadership actions before carrying them out. Considering that neither of these teams engaged in anymechanistic leadership coordination, this resulted in a lack of global awareness in the teams and uncoordinated shared leadership, with redundant leadership actions, sometimes causing confusion, not only to those partici- pating in leadership, but also to the followers. As a consequence, the teams’ process performance suffered.

Discussion

Our study was motivated by the unresolved conflicts in empirical studies on the effects of shared leadership on GVT effectiveness, with many studies reporting

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positive effects while others showing detrimental effects (e.g., [15, 32, 63]). Our results resolve this conflict in the literature by confirming that when leadership is distributed and uncoordinated it can lead to detrimental effects. We found empirical evidence that when leadership is shared it creates leadership depen- dencies among leadership actions, which need to be coordinated for shared leadership to leverage its benefits for team effectiveness. Previous research [54, 63] has theorized about the potential relationship between shared leadership and task coordination, and preliminary research [33] has found that shared leadership improves team effectiveness when task coordination is low. But prior findings do not recognize the additional dependencies created by the shared leadership itself. Our study extends this previous research by integrating leadership coordination into the equation. Naturally, when tasks are uncoordi- nated in GVTs, effective leadership can fill this void [43], but our study demonstrates that the leadership activities themselves need to be coordinated to leverage the benefits of shared leadership. By introducing the concept of shared leadership coordination, conceptualized into

implicit and behavioral components, this work contributes to management informa- tion systems and organizational research in general by providing a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between shared leadership, shared leadership coor- dination, and team effectiveness. In line with what can be expected based on coordination theory [44], we found that shared leadership may increase coordination costs, while reducing production and vulnerability costs, affecting team effectiveness. However, more specifically, we found that the magnitude of these costs depended on the team’s ability to coordinate its shared leadership through implicit and behavioral leadership coordination in several important ways. First, with low implicit leadership coordination, vulnerability costs are likely to be high, as leadership influence may fail when it shifts from one member to another and members have different perceptions of who has leadership over what. Second, coordination costs (e.g., delays) are likely to be high in teams with low implicit leadership coordination and low mechanistic leadership coordination, because they will require costly reactive organic leadership coordination to compensate for such deficiency. On the other hand, reliance on mechanistic leadership coordination is likely to

reduce coordination costs powerfully to the following two reasons. First, there is less need for organic leadership coordination for routine aspects of shared leader- ship, including task related leadership, which is especially beneficial for GVTs with spatial and temporal distance having reduced opportunities for synchronous communication. Second, organic leadership coordination can be used in a more proactive way to create continuity for less routine aspects of shared leadership, including change related leadership. Finally, production costs are likely to rise when mechanistic and proactive

organic leadership coordination are low due to things like delays, duplication of work and re-work. With a right mix of shared leadership coordination mechanisms, total costs will be reduced, making GVTs more effective. Our study contributes to

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the literature by being the first one to find empirical support for this, and by introducing the distinction of proactive vs reactive use of organic leadership coordination. Prior research has acknowledged the importance of leaders viewing other leaders as

such for shared leadership to be effective [50, 51]. But there has been little attention to the role of followers who, along with emergent and designated leaders, are an integral part of the shared leadership structure in a team. Our work extends these endeavors by showing the importance of followers and leaders to have aligned perceptions of who the leaders are in the GVT for shared leadership to reap its potential benefits. This perspective is particularly important in GVTs in which single, vertical leadership is difficult due to communication barriers resulting from distance [1] and due to differing leadership expectations [76]. We found that GVTs with a mix of low and high power distance members commonly lacked implicit leadership coordination, with some members continuing to operate under vertical leadership, and others under shared leadership. This lack of implicit coordination caused process losses in the team’s performance, as well as dissatisfaction among leaders and members alike. In GVTs with an implicitly coordinated shared leadership structure in turn, cultural differences mattered less, and leadership actions were more likely to be understood, agreed upon and followed, increasing the team’s effectiveness. This study further extends previous research by showing that having an implicitly

coordinated shared leadership structure is not enough for improving team effective- ness. Leadership actions also need to be coordinated behaviorally, which is a dimension that has not been effectively acknowledged before. In particular, we show how behavioral leadership coordination facilitates task leadership functions effectively when the team is able to rely on mechanistic leadership coordination as much as possible, e.g. through the use of technology and predefined work processes. Consistent with prior research [17, 68], we show that coordination is cost effective when the team can rely on mechanistic coordination to manage the respective dependencies among leadership behaviors, such as organizing, delegating, among others. In addition, we show how GVTs use mechanistic leadership coordination to facilitate or enhance proactive organic leadership coordination. In sum, our findings show how mechanistic artifacts like technology and work processes, which have been viewed as substitutes for leadership in the past [39] may not be just that, but actually facilitate shared leadership. This is consistent with recent research which shows that IT may facilitate team processes, for instance, by enabling coordination of expertise [21, 28] and boundary spanning collaborations [2]. These results are good news for GVTs, who may empower their shared leadership coordination with mechanistic artifacts, as team communication is difficult due to temporal and spatial distance [48].

Implications for Practice

Despite the seemingly consistent positive promises of shared leadership in previous research, the empirical evidence is mixed. Managers need to be aware that sharing

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leadership responsibilities can cause the team to become uncoordinated and inef- fective [14, 17] if the actions of leaders are not in synch. This can result in frustration, duplication of work, delays and the need for rework, among other things. But with the right mix of leadership coordination mechanisms the team can synchronize their leadership actions and act as a cohesive whole leading to superior performance. These are good news for practitioners who have seen a proliferation of self-managed teams, which emphasize leadership originating from within a team. Practitioners also need to be aware that an appropriate mix of mechanistic and

organic coordination processes can help teams coordinate their shared leadership effectively. Mechanistic leadership coordination increases transparency in the team and decreases the need for costly organic leadership coordination. At the same time, proactive organic leadership coordination can foster more effective implicit leader- ship coordination due to stronger shared cognition and understanding of practices. Furthermore, given the unpredictable nature of work in GVTs, proactive organic coordination through communication among multiple leaders is also necessary to synchronize their respective leadership actions. As the cultural diversity in a GVT increases, it becomes more important to

facilitate implicit leadership coordination within the team, as the acceptance of a leader’s influence may be rooted in cultural values (e.g., power distance [29, 35]), as well as in organizational culture. In line with Kankanhalli and colleagues [37], we also found that cultural diversity in GVTs is likely to contribute to task and relationship conflict when implicit leadership coordination is low. These findings have implications for leaders and team members of GVTs, who need to influence each other over temporal, geographic and cultural distance. Perceiving each other as legitimate leaders is vital for the influence attempt to be effective. Leaders may evoke shared understanding in heterogeneous GVTs by supporting them more systematically aiming to better integrate members’ individual understanding into a shared understanding [4].

Limitations and Future Research

This study is not without limitations. First, as with any qualitative study, our findings might not generalize to other organizational contexts. However, our results are applicable to similar organizations with GVTs working in knowledge tasks, with team’s displaying varying degrees of shared leadership. Nevertheless, further research is needed in this area. While we did not find any differences in results with regards to task-type or level of task interdependence, we acknowledge that these might have an impact on the studied phenomenon. The lack of differential effects in the two task types in our sample however provides some assurance that our findings are applicable to more than one task. Another limitation is that this study does not account for the longevity of the team and the resulting team

IMPLICIT AND BEHAVIORAL LEADERSHIP COORDINATION 345

members’ familiarity with each other, which might have substantial impact on team processes, and needs to be studied more in future research. Further related quantitative studies can not only help validate and triangulate the

findings of our qualitative study, but can also help us understand whether different proportions of implicit and behavioral shared leadership coordination make a difference in enhancing team effectiveness. It is possible that different combina- tions of implicit, mechanistic and organic leadership coordination leads to similar outcomes, or that a different mix of coordination methods are more effective for a given team context. For example, we know from prior research [14] that the mix of coordination process types varies widely from team to team and that the specific mix is more a matter of preference. In addition, recent research suggests that vertical leadership may counterbalance shared leadership, for instance, by helping the team to coordinate from ideation towards conclusions [36]. Hence, future research would be useful to help us understand how vertical and emergent leaders together engage in shared leadership coordination. Moreover, future studies need to dig deeper into the structural underpinnings of

shared leadership to tease out how the shared leadership distribution over global boundaries influence team effectiveness. It is time to incorporate other contextual factors than national culture, for instance, organizational culture which may differ across sites, when studying the interrelation among shared leadership, leadership coordination and GVT effectiveness. Future research should also theorize about other conditions under which shared leadership enhances GVT effectiveness and those that undermine it. We offered initial insights to this, by introducing leadership coordination but there might be other important factors as well.

Conclusions

In conclusion, our study underscores the value of devoting further attention to study the relationship between shared leadership and intervening team processes in contributing to organizational outcomes. By offering leadership coordination as one intervening team process, and by providing a nuanced understanding of the complex nature of shared leadership and the coordination of it in GVTs operating over global boundaries, we expect that this study will help advance theory and practice. We have showed that solely positive outcomes are not to be expected from shared leadership in GVTs. When leadership is highly shared in the team and uncoordinated, it may actually lead to detrimental effects in terms of lower team effectiveness. If coordinated, in turn, shared leadership may reap its potential benefits. Our results provide evidence that the effectiveness of GVTs depends on the team’s ability to coordinate their leadership actions, through implicit and behavioral leadership coordination. When coordinated, shared leadership can help GVTs overcome other task coordination problems, as well as leading to more satisfied team members. Behavioral leadership coordination may take place through organic communication, as well as through mechanistic artifacts like technology

346 NORDBÄCK AND ESPINOSA

and work processes. While we found initial evidence that these mechanistic arti- facts me be especially powerful tools for facilitating leadership coordination in GVTs, we believe that this is just the beginning of what is to be seen in an age of digitalization. A growing use of machine learning and artificial intelligence will likely alter work and organizations in impactful ways, including taking on a more performative role in the future [20], even in leadership.

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Self-managed Organization: A Role of Business Process Management

Alina Ore Dept.of Business Process Development

Rimi Baltic

Riga, Latvia [email protected]

Oksana Kuznecova Supply Chain Development Unit

Rimi Baltic

Riga, Latvia [email protected]

Anna Jegorova IT department

Grindeks Group

Riga, Latvia [email protected]

Abstract—Among with process automation and

digitalization trends, which requires a strong structural and

process-oriented approach, new paradigm of self-managed

organization become a mainstream cultivating the value of

decentralization of decision power. With different titles as

Management 3.0, holacracy, teal organization or reinventing

organization, the same idea is spread – a transition from typical

hierarchical management pyramid to the flat organization of

self-organized teams with given authorities for decision making.

Ongoing discussions are both supporting and criticizing. Most

of them are focused on organizational changes, mind-set, and

methods to assist transition. Keeping attention to the social

component of the new management paradigm in organizational

ecosystem, an attention to its technical side is missed. It includes

business process and information system governance. The aim

of the paper is to start a discourse and consider if self-managed

organization benefit from a systematic approach of process

management, as well as consider risks what can bring to

business process continuity.

Keywords— business process management, self-managed

teams, teal organization

I. INTRODUCTION

Management 3.0, holacracy, teal organization, reinventing organization, self-managed organization, all this recently became mainstream in scientific and professional societies. With some slight difference, all have one element in common, i.e. organization of work without hierarchal model by inventing self-managed team of engaged employees in all decisions about company operations and development. Teal supplements this idea with evolutionary purpose as driver and common value for all employees. With different opinions, a question in ongoing discourse remains the same, i.e. if Teal management will become a common model in future and if it can be scaled up for large organizations.

A. Retrospective

Some organizations have been inventing decentralized management from mid 90s of the last century (for example, SME manufacturer FAVI). Another, as Zappos, Medium, GitHub started to apply it as a part of Holacracy, firstly developed at Ternary Software by Brian Robertson in 2007. Holacracy as organizational system was formulated based on company's best practices and suggest to distributes authority and decision-making throughout an organization. It defines people not by hierarchy and titles, but by roles. Holacracy is stated as enabler for fast and agile organisations that succeed by pursuing their purpose, not following a dated and artificial plan [1]. Holacracy consteitution was formulated, inventing specific roles for team set-up replacing hierarchy and managerial positions.

Another wave came in 2014 with a term of “Teal organization” introduced by Frederik Laloux in his book “Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating

Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness” [2]. Besides decentralization and wholeness, Laloux add a new principle of evolutionary purpose of organization. In total, he formulated following core principles for Teal organization [3]:

• No need for hierarchy, central command and control.

• Wholeness for enabling employees to present their full personas rather than ones following instructions.

• Evolutionary purpose as a core driver for organization growth.

B. Ongoing discurce

Most of articles posted are usually focused on main principles, which Laloux defined as a core of teal organization. Among in-depth discussions, there are topics about new organizational forms, communication set-up and information sharing, employee competences as well changes in leadership and management mind-set.

Inspired with several success stories of the Teal adepts, practitioners investigate benefits of teal management comparing with traditional set-up. Some suggests Teal and Holacracy as solution for companies looking for tools to improving way of working. Positive comments praise idea of Teal and in general express the hope that one day all companies will become Teal [4]. However, as stated in [5] the simplicity of transition is cognitive illusion and therefore there should be clear understanding, need and plan to convert existing organizational set-up to the new way of working.

The opposite opinion considers Teal as utopia and rises doubts to its sustainability in long-term perspective. The study of Laloux is criticized for the lack of critical thinking and not analysing the circumstances under which Teal wouldn’t work [6]. Some stress that radical decentralization should remain limited anyway, as non-limits may rise risks on business process continuity and people management, especially in large companies [7]. Another criticism is about the power of human consciousness that stated as vital factor in a whole success story around Teal. The implementation of Teal principles is stated as challenging in large companies. Oppositely, SME and Start-ups could adapt both Teal and Holacracy more easily as they naturally are involved in solving either scientific problems or being concerned on innovation in a small team. Teal is called as a platform for innovation and incubators [8].

Another aspect of teal success is explored within industry. In [9] authors stated that Teal organizations are present from different industries in Poland. Among them are IT, packaging, manufacturers, kindergartens, and internet portals. Authors state that whether the company apply Teal is not determined by the industries but by need and readiness.

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In [10] author proposes a model of Self-Organized Process Organization as a blueprint for self-organized process for companies. A qualitative research was done to get insights in several phenomena, that can help understand the underlying forces driving organizations toward new forms of organization, which make the satisfaction of the true needs of their key stakeholders. Another research [11] is done with the purpose of providing insights into how teal organizations work with respect to their common principles of wholeness, evolutionary purpose, and self-management. The study highlights relevant practical organizational aspects that can better facilitate the management of transition to the new way of working.

The scientific analysis of teal aspects discussed in literature is presented in [12] and states main discussion topics as follows: evolution and main rules, talents, competences and leadership, rules for organizational structures, values as employee driver for continuous improvement, communication model, and decision making.

The conclusion is that there is a scarcity of reviews, scientific studies, and in-depth empirical research on this topic. A particular lack is on business process management and development of information system in self-managed organizations. We discuss this in section IV. Prior to this, section II considers some success stories of self-managed organization on retail and manufacturing industry, as well as banking, as they the most have cross-disciplinary processes and strong process standardization needs to be followed in management model. In section III the roles of business process management is stated as enabler for business continuity and digitalization projects.

II. A NEED FOR SELF-MANAGEMENT

Although the idea of self-managed teams is the same both in Teal and Holacracy, preconditions for changing management model are different. Laloux connects it to the social and cultural factor and see the organization as a living entity with its own energy and sense of direction. People are then joining an organization when their values and goals are in line with company evolutionary purpose. Important is that evolutionary purpose is neither a clear purpose statement, nor company goals and targets, expressed in financial numbers.

Holacracy focus more on the business purpose and its customers. Being more customer-centric, it tries to decrease all bureaucracy in delivering product to end-customer and consider managerial approvals as one process waste, costly and having no value on product. In general, one can say that Holacracy is a part of the Teal movement focused on self- management, even it was formulated prior to Teal.

Zappos, internet retail in USA, uses Holacracy since 2014 as a tool that allows every employee to quickly surface and act on customer feedback for continuously providing “WOW service”. A switch to self-managed teams started with identifying slow service to respond to customer feedback, because of the layers of managerial approvals needed to go through. Important note within current paper is that Zappos moved from Holacracy to Teal setting focus on culture at the same time understanding that Teal will not help to set-up a structure which would support business outcomes and purposes. In Zappos power is distributed throughout organizational structure giving teams freedom while staying aligned to the organization’s purpose [13].

FAVI, SME automotive part manufacturer in France, presents its success story by introduction of mini-factories, a self-organized teams, resulted in productivity increase. The story says that all started once with “worker coupon” for new gloves a worker asked from his manager. Converting time spend for managerial approval for gloves into the idle time of production process lead to insight about skipping this step at all. Transition took 14 years with permanent and continuous mind-set and behaviour changes rituals. Middle management of the initial hierarchical pyramid was main resistance element. Support functions were also against innovations, as for example design office were resigned, instead salespersons got authority to discuss this with client. Important note is that continuous improvement methods were invented into manufacturing process along with ISO and OHSAS certification. This requires that core business processes are documented and followed [14, 15].

Tochka, a digital-only bank, embrace of Holacracy makes it the largest-scale use case to date in Russia, involving more than 2000 employees. A shift to Holacracy made a clear distinction from traditional way of working where processes and procedure had been at the forefront and supported by top management to the new one, where new processes are built around values. Transition to Holacracy started in 2014 when bank lost its operating license. Setting up a new on-line service, management team designed a process resulted in slow customer service of up to 7 days to open account for new client. Any request variance required alignment with predecessors in process chain. From customer perspective that meant communications with up to six different company representatives [16, 17]. To design a process from end- customer perspective, Tochka used customer journey mapping, a visual storyline of every engagement customer has with service, brand, or product. The work was organized by a set of self-managed teams or cycles, grouped into domains, as for example Product, Communication, New customers etc. Important note is about management tools. Tochka uses guidelines and policies with clear descriptions of process and ownership, as well as penalties for violating rules. This means that process documentation plays a vital role for business process continuity within given authority for changes without managerial approval.

Vkusvill is another Russian company, operating in Food retail and positioning its organizational form as Teal. Even though, wholeness as a core Teal principle is not present in Vkusvill due to its franchising business model. With own focus on dairy quality, co-founder of Vkusvill started to build business around the idea of providing the highest quality for dairy products for his customers. In fact, this is an evolutionary purpose by Teal. However, before Teal business was built with traditional model and used balanced score cards. Vkussvill started self-managed teams in 2012 inspired by Hamel’s book “First, Let’s Fire All the Managers” [18]. Personal mission statement was used a core idea of work organization. Statements outlines how employee will contribute to the company’s goal [19]. Also, every business process has its description and set of rules. As for example, new store opening includes up to 30 subtasks, or sub- processes to be performed.

Considering above mentioned case studies among with some others, we found that switch to self-management can be triggered by different needs, not just the mainstream to follow. Clarity should be in place about that improvements company

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expect to see comparing with its status quo. In most cases transition is triggered by inefficiency of current model expressed in business results. From work organizations, self- managed teams are well-structured by roles and ceremonies that ensures focus on operational excellence, information sharing and conflict solving. A novelty comparing with hierarchical organization is that structure can be re-shaped easily if there are new obstacles for serving customer or new business purpose is needed.

The most important finding is about business processes documentation. Despite illusion of less bureaucracy as no documents at all, critical business processes are well- documented and serve as warranty for business continuity in self-managed environment. A common practice is consulting with other knowledgeable associates before taking actions that might causing damage or change to the company. Although to ensure speed for decision making by autonomous teams there is a need to rethink about traditional ways of process management, including tools, roles, guidelines, and mind-set.

III. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT ROLE

Every business or organization can be considered as a set of processes and projects. Traditionally business processes, if described at all, are documented either from their ownership perspective (typically, department) or value-chain perspective considering that different department contribute to the entire business process (as for example Supply Chain SCOR, [20]). Processes are categorized into management, operational and support processes. Operational processes are strongly impacting on company’s Profit&Loss statement. Decision on process documentation depends on maturity of business process management within organizations. Scaling up business and/or its digitalization ambition, process documentation become vital for business process continuity.

A. Enabler for Business Continuity

Business process is defined as series of actions needed to achieve results. Business process management is set of skills and methods to examine end-to-end process and ensure its continuous improvements

As majority of organizations have financial targets and build business process to deliver them in the most efficient way. Business processes as strategic and operational assets should be designed for efficiency and competitive advantage. Furthermore, for providing best service for customers, good practices and process standards are documented as benchmark unless there is better way identified and agreed. To have continuous improvement culture and mechanisms for business processes re-engineering is decision based on company business process maturity level. Process documentation serves as a foundation for employees to know their role in end-to-end process, including impacts on other processes, IT and standards they must follow to react on internal or external regulations. Business process visualization supports in fast and qualitative onboarding of new employees as well.

Business process management enablers cross-department projects and activities. Having up-to-date process maps, business analytics foresee risks related with impact of change decisions to dependent processes. This is especially important projects related to process automation, digitalization, and information system implementation.

The bigger a company is (number and complexity of the processes, number of employees, teams), the vital is a role of

process management. Risks that company might face with are related to absence of critical information for continuous development and decisions made based on illusionary picture. This can lead to the following:

• Not secured business continuity.

• Financial results can be unpredictable and fluctuating.

• Product or service quality is not stable.

• Inefficient and less stable operational flows due to lack of understanding of process and related standards, instructions.

• Delays in project implementation and decision making. Specially in for IT system implementation.

B. Enabler for Process Automation

Process automation as a part of digital transformation is now in agenda in many companies. Though business process automation solutions are more and more created in a way to cover business needs for flexibility (allowing fast change implementation), they still require clarity about end-to-end process, high level of process standardization to minimize exceptions that have to be run manually and people “owning” a process to imbed it automated version into daily routines.

When there is no clarity and stability of the process (at least on the main process steps’ level), automation becomes more costly, not bringing as high benefits as it could with process standardization. Automation of processes with certain lack of details lead to the risk of not getting expected benefits from investments into the solutions. This can also result in overpaying for automation or getting low monetary benefits due to many exceptional scenarios not previously documented and therefore missed in business case.

Component heads identify the different components of your paper and are not topically subordinate to each other. Examples include Acknowledgments and References and, for these, the correct style to use is “Heading 5”. Use “figure caption” for your Figure captions, and “table head” for your table title. Run-in heads, such as “Abstract”, will require you to apply a style (in this case, italic) in addition to the style provided by the drop down menu to differentiate the head from the text.

C. Enabler for IT Development

Business process documentation is enabler for IT system development providing support at different phases, as stated below:

• Decision on the most appropriate solution requires clear business requirements based on proper understanding of the process and business needs towards the solution. Missing impacting or impacted processes from the scope can result in solution, which is not sufficient, complicated, overpaid, costly to maintain and not flexible for further development. Instead considering end-to-end process needs, the choice for solution can be different and supportive for entire process.

• Process documentation also supports development phase. It can help to release process owner for some extent in the discussions (i.e. save time and costs) in validating developed solution increments versus process.

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• During solution tests important are process scenarios. Documented in a proper way, they allow decreasing risk of delivering functionality not covering business needs.

• Solution handover requires some level of documentation for any organization to explain delivered functionality and serve as a base for instructions by this also supporting business continuity, especially in real-time transactional processes.

Important to mention that at the same IT itself enablers crucial functions for successful operations specially in non-IT industry, such as:

• Platform for collaboration between independent self- managed groups in one ecosystem.

• Information platform for a proper decision-making process.

• Information sharing and processing platform to ensure unified information flow and to avoid unnecessary specialisations, which tend to develop in information vacuum.

IV. BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN SELF-MANAGED

ORGANIZATIONS

A. Business Process transformation

Business process and information in teal organizations are transformed to free cross disciplinary process network supported with consulting and have evolutionary purpose as decision driver. Managerial hierarchy is converted into flat organization of self-managed teams and speed-up decision making by replacing manager approvals steps with clear value-based (or evolutionary purpose) to-go directions (i.e. business rules). With self-managed teams the coordination is done within the team or in ad-hoc meetings when the need arises. Teams work with organic prioritization and self- staffed projects. New organizational structures implement fully decentralized consultancy-based process. It is assumed, that networked structures and a vast usage of technology support team with information anywhere at any time to everyone. The innovations initiatives as digitalization and automation are more agile and scalable according to the current situation the organization is facing.

For understanding transformation of business process management, reinventing organization map can be used. It presents 20 attributes building the core of organization [21]. Impacting business process management are the following: processes, flow of information and communication, resource efficiency, decision making and meetings. The most important for the topic discussed within current paper are processes, information flow and decision making. Table 1 presents attributes’ description for several types of organizations using Laloux colour-based classifications [2]. Important to mention, that transition to teal organization can be started at any point (or colour), but organization would need to pass them all through.

Another point of attention before starting transition to new way of working is understanding how the processes are established and followed in organization. Even with a full responsibility power given to employees, the processes with strong decisions points will not become agile just after

announcing holacracy or teal as basis. In FAVI, it took years to change traditional manufacturing processes into agile and lean-based. A question of explaining values and keeping their correct interpretations among all employees is another challenge coming up with new organizational set-up.

TABLE I. PROCESS MANAGEMENT RELATED ATTRIBUTES

Organization

set-up

Attribute

Processes Information &

communication

Decision

making

Powerful chiefdom, impulsive (red)

Unscheduled and direct

Production at any costs

Boss decides

Formal hierarchies, conformist (amber)

Decentralized Working groups, meetings

Leaders (not transparent)

Effective- matrix, competitive (orange)

Flexible process with goal focus

Meetings, strategic information

Goals and strategy

Relationships, pluralistic (green)

Cross organizational processes with culture focus

Informal and formal communication platform transparency

Values

Self- management, evolutionary (teal)

Free cross- disciplinary process networks

Free networking, peer consulting

Evolutionar y purpose

B. Business Process management

Leaving apart a question about competences, even with appropriate mind-set and readiness to take over responsibility, the question remains how to protect critical business processes from discrepancy brought by anybody with the lack of x- disciplinary knowledge and de-synchronization of information shared versus decision taken. Following are main risks organization can face if changes are done without understanding of wide picture of processes interconnections:

• Financial and legal risks: this expertise requires a deep understanding of specific regulations and interpretation of them into decisions. Lack of understanding may lead to the process’s changes violating legal regulations. The question is either to ensure the corresponding expertise within every self- managed team or to have a competence centre consulting company’s employee.

• Quality risks for end-product or service: being customer-centric, teams which are more interconnected to customer should also have the expertise on the quality of product or service, especially for manufacturers. The lack of understanding of technological process and related regulations, may lead either to the product quality defects or cost, related to the delivering promised product.

• Business continuity risks: misunderstanding of what is end-to-end process, who are stakeholders, what are interdependencies can lead to unexpected side changes in the processes. People in different teams may make contradicting decisions, which leads to the waste of resources (time, money, people), chaotic processes (changes not synced between participants of the process), risk of dropping customer value and financial results.

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Altogether, above mentioned can lead to disruption of business process flows and unpredictable results, unless either decision power is regulated with some principles truly shared by everybody, or all organization members have extensive competences to mitigate the risks mentioned above.

Business process review and documentation review become also crucial if organizations among with transformation to the new way of working have expectations toward some efficiencies in employee numbers. For example, some managerial position previously supposed to be as approval or decision power are redundant in Teal-like philosophy. The decision of possible cut-off should be either synchronized with current As-Is business process or based on To-Be process design. Otherwise, it can again result in process continuity risks, delays or product defects. One more complexity is coming with a fact, that not all employees would agree to work in self-managed way. In some cases, up to 14- 20% of employee may leave companies. If their knowledge is not well-documented or people have “know-how” expertise, the business process is under the risk.

C. Business Process Documentation as Information source

Business process management is related to information sharing among the company. Business process documentations traditionally is a platform combining instructions, regulations, process descriptions and owners. Without a proper process management system, even with fully shared communication platform, there is a risk that changes will be based on out of date data. Especially it is critical for process automation and digitalization projects because team should follow on daily basis if there are upcoming changes from other inter-related processes. It is crucial not only to store, but also structure data to be enabler for autonomous decision-making. This data should be available and maintained 24 hours a day.

According to [10], business process orientation (as process -centric way of thinking within organization) positively impact on customer satisfaction, product quality, delivery speed, and time-to-market speed, that in fact correlates with expectations from inventing self-managed teams. Some research shows that business process orientation improves overall business performance, helps reducing inter-functional conflicts and improves inter-functional connectedness.

There is not much practical information about how business process management is established in self-managed organisations. Constitutions, regulations, rules are mentioned as some basis in sections II, considering success stories. All this should be available in organizations’ communication platform in easy-accessible way and preventing a risk, that decision is made during upcoming changes in other processes.

The research done in [10] states an important conclusion that despite autonomous organization of work, business orientation approach becomes very useful in self-organized teams and organizations. This means that either business analysis skill must become a competence for anybody within self-managed team or there is still in place business process documentations with clear and easy-to-maintain structure.

One practical example of process mapping in close -to-teal banking service is found in [22]. Author states that with the new way of working and expectations on it, there is a need to re-design the way how processes are documented. Interesting fact is, that new process mapping structure is still hierarchical.

It combines company core processes (business directions), transactional processes which go through the several core directions, transnational processes groups and team’s functional processes. The new way of process mapping allowed to speed-up process changes and release up to 90% of time for changes in functions and cut up to 12% of time in re- design of core processes. Despite new process mapping system supports employees in faster decision making and change implementation, the role of business analyst is highlighted as must and stated as process-design facilitator, owner of process-design best practices and expert in understanding of process interdependencies in the complex process map.

D. Enabler for decision-making in digitalization projects

Business process management and digital innovations have natural synergy that is used to provide expected efficiency on process automation and digitalization. IT (information system) development is used to be stated as is one of the agile (and “tealest”) industries using teamwork, flexible and Agile practices.

Considering how IT implementation projects should be executed in self-managed environment rise a lot of questions, specifically if IT is supporting function with its own development pace. In [23] authors made the analysis to trace the correlation between the stages of organizational development and those of the IT-environment. Same as organizations cannot skip natural mind-set transformation steps toward self-managed organisation, the readiness of IT is considered from different organizational models’ perspectives. Typical challenges are stated at each stage which allow better understanding if IT function could be facilitator or showstopper for teal-like transformation.

Very little attention is paid how implement IT projects and deliver results in self-managed environment, even with agile methods, especially in Production, Banking, Retail, Pharmacy. Following are main concerns:

• IT system complexity. ERP platforms are designed to ensure cross functional end-to-end processes. A clear up-to-date processes map is enabler for successful system implementations. Effective process automation requires that all business process activities, transitions between activities, constraints, conditions, and other attributes are completely presented through formal models or documents.

• Industry regulations. Biotech and Pharmacy production companies should meet legal regulations, quality standards and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). GMP is centralized function ensuring holistic view and validation for all processes, including IT platforms. How to ensure decentralization of GMP into autonomous teams keeping it core controlling function is questionable.

• Industry process complexity. Industries as Manufacturing, Retail, Banking requires quite complicated and resource demanding IT system implementation scope even for MVP (minimum viable product) phase. Moreover, IT Roadmap as a strategic planning tool supports companies in business process digitalization with dedicated attention, IT-resource involvement and mitigates risks of desynchronization of product implementations, especially in homogenous

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IT infrastructure [23]. A power of autonomy rises the risk of system implementation and/or maintenance costs increase.

• A concept of self-managed teams has many commonalities with agile methodology mostly used in IT companies. Agile is often stated as a core tool to be used in self-managed organizations. Although important is to eliminate a bias that applying agile methods would promote self-managed way of working.

V. SUMMARY

Business process management as processes reengineering tool with its methods and practicalities is enabler for successful transition to self-managed organizations. Isolating business process management in transformation stage may lead to the risk of core business processes continuity. Few principles are formulated to support smooth transition:

• Maintain information about business processes, at least on a level necessary to secure business continuity and financial position. Critical steps of the business processes and principles for business model to secure its business could be defined, agreed, and documented.

• Maintain business process descriptions in a way that allows fast updates and information sharing, and direct execution for automated business processes.

• Position business process mapping and its value not as directive and bureaucracy rule but rather as platform for facilitating decisions and sharing process expertise or understanding among the members.

Entrusting people with responsibility to run business in self-managed rise a question of allocating Business Analysts competences per organizational units, so anyone can keep business running towards its goals. Self-managed team’s member need to know what are core business processes and interdependencies to involve (or consult) right people in decision making. Among others competencies, there should be focus how to enhance employees process analysis skills to analyse root causes, discover opportunities, foresee effects of changes on the end-to-end processes, translate business needs to business requirements for digitalization and automation solutions, as well as business impact analysis, processes criticality assessment & critical resources identification.

Self-managed set-up shows up a need for the business process management approach which would trade off the need for keeping critical busines processes continuity versus self- managed way of working of autonomous teams. Simply speaking how to ensure that critical business processes will not be disturbed or broken by others decision, misinterpretation, or curse of knowledge. The lack of the methodology is identified within current paper and methodology itself is set as a next research direction. Another aspect to be considered within next research is related to the impact that new organizational paradigm brings to IT management set-up including information architecture (business objects etc.), application architecture (application components, application services etc.) and infrastructure architecture (platform services, nodes etc.).

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