Systems for team empowerment: Research on practice 2018
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2018-07Author
Hughes, Martin
Dennehy, Denis
Campion, Michael
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Hughes, Martin, Dennehy, Denis, & Campion, Michael. (2018). Systems for team empowerment: Research on practice 2018. Galway: National University of Ireland Galway.
Abstract
Welcome to this collection of research papers on Systems for Team Empowerment. Achieving
empowerment in teams is complex. Not only do team leaders need to understand the complex and
nebulous interplays between systems, teams and empowerment, they must do so in the context of
contemporary issues and trends. Such trends include the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous
(VUCA) characteristic of the modern workplace. Indeed the interplay of systems, teams and
empowerment is itself both antecedent and consequent
to VUCA. Many teams are increasingly incorporating
geographically dispersed individuals as team members
and all teams, it seems, are under increasing pressure to
achieve an increasingly dynamic response. Additionally,
the very fabric of business and industry is continuing its
march towards digitisation and to what some have
called the 4th Industrial Revolution. Finally, diversity of
team membership is now generally embraced and
regarded as a value enhancement. It’s interesting to
compare photographs of business teams from the
1960’s and 70’s with today. Even with such a casual
analysis, there is little doubt but that conformity has
given way to diversity.
In the MBA lecture series and industry seminar that preceded the conduct of these research efforts,
the two trends of digitisation/the 4th industrial revolution and team diversity formed a significantly
greater part of the conversation than VUCA, disperse location and dynamic responses. Accordingly,
many of the research papers which follow directly address specific issues in these trends. However, as
previously stated, the domain of systems for team empowerment is incredibly complex and the
diversity of the research papers which follow reflects this reality. These research papers, are studies of
the contemporary practice of systems enabled and systematic team empowerment and have been
conducted by teams of MBA participants at NUI Galway. The contexts examined are the workplaces of
contemporary practice. This alone makes the cases of interest. However, the investigating teams’rigour
in emulating good academic research practice adds validity and confidence to the findings and
conclusions. The papers that follow investigate issues around systems artefacts, multigenerational
composition and human preferences and biases. Their findings and conclusions will be of interest to
researchers, practitioners and especially to team leaders.