Empowerment and beyond: Paradoxes of self-organised work
<p class="first" id="d36486e80">In recent years, empowerment has increasingly become the watchword for work in knowledge-intensive industries. In particular, <i>The Agile Manifesto</i> (2001) and new management approaches such as agile f...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Pluto Journals
2021-01-01
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| Series: | Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation |
| Online Access: | https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/workorgalaboglob.15.2.0073 |
| Summary: | <p class="first" id="d36486e80">In recent years, empowerment has increasingly become the watchword for work in knowledge-intensive
industries. In particular,
<i>The Agile Manifesto</i> (2001) and new management approaches such as agile frameworks promise to cut down
documentation duties and increase autonomy for knowledge workers. It nonetheless remains
an open question whether self-organisation as a structural framework and self-organising
as an agentic, team-based process can actually be realised in a holistic manner. By
building on insights into the paradox of organising and the paradox of autonomy and
control, we consider the conditions under which self-organised work in fact becomes
feasible. We therefore focus conceptually on two paradoxes of empowerment and empirically
on project teams within software development firms. Our data show that organisations
might respond to these paradoxes by structurally and culturally opening up to agile
approaches – thereby not only empowering teams, but also enabling them to develop
by providing structural and personal resources, qualifications and means for promoting
self-awareness.
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| ISSN: | 1745-641X 1745-6428 |