Self-Managing Teams in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are looking for a sustainable and profitable business concept. They use a human resource model according to the situation and establish a democratic system with flexible work, focusing on responsibility and initiative and increasing the self-control of the team´s members. Self-managing teams have been used more and more in recent years in the business environment. They are relatively autonomous work groups whose members share responsibility and leadership to accomplish their independent tasks. Their objective is to develop a type of collective knowledge that requires the pooling of individual knowledge. Their characteristics include independent, autonomous decision making, shared responsibility, and shared leadership. Sometimes, self-managing teams are also responsible for personnel decisions within the team, such as working hours, the selection and contracting of members, dismissal, and even determining salaries. In sum, the authors propose self-managing teams (such as High Performance Practices) as a good human resource management in small and medium enterprises and show how they can help to create organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage in SMEs.