How digital transformation drives the evolution of self-managed teams?

Abstract

The presented research was pursued within the framework of the Research Centre of Business Administration in The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. The research conducted for this paper is supposed to contribute to the wider academic discourse on the role of digital transformation for implementing self-managed work team structures. Against the background of strategic management considerations impacted by the latest wave of digitalization approaches, companies revisit organizational settings to exchange outdated command and control systems with more agile and customer-centric structures. While self-managed work structures have been around since the 1980s, impact factors of the digital era revive the topics relevance. In this context, the research paper combines an overview of the existing literature on the topic of digital transformation as well as the evolution of people management approaches with a case study on the challenges of introducing self-managed work team structures within a hierarchical set-up. While the first part of the paper focuses on assessing and qualifying the existing research conducted by international scholars and publishers, the second part is going to present the results of the quantitative and qualitative research conducted in a test case scenario in one of the leading German direct banks. Essentially, the results of the case study present new facets on the introduction of self-managed work teams and contribute to the overall value in terms of productivity and learning for organizations.