ABSTRACT
The notion of teams is implicit and explicit within manufacturing and other industries. There are, for instance, design, development, core or steering teams. Increasingly companies are concerned with teams in a different sense, those that are formed within the organization of production, as an improved way to re-design work. These teams are termed here as self-managed work teams, although the same or very similar concept may be described instead as self-regulating, autonomous, semi-autonomous or selfdirecting. These distinctions have emerged to help discriminate between teams with varying levels of autonomy and with different types of internal or external leadership and supervision. However, all of the definitions embrace the concept of a work group that has the opportunity for greater independence of decision-making than is traditionally available, although the boundaries of this decisionmaking, and the degree of mutual cooperation and support that are required, may vary.
