Works
- Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams, Academy of Management Journal 47(3), 385 to 399, 2004
- The downside of self-management: a longitudinal study of the effects of conflict on trust, autonomy, and task interdependence in self-managing teams, Academy of Management Journal 50(4), 885 to 900, 2007
In Organizational Structures
Known for
The costs of autonomy in self-managing teams
Ideas
The downside of self-management. Langfred proposed that increased conflict in self-managing teams is associated with lower intrateam trust, which in turn may reduce individual autonomy and loosen task interdependence, so that teams may unintentionally restructure themselves into a less than ideal design; longitudinal data from 35 teams supported these expectations. Caveat: Thirty-five teams, in a setting not confirmed; Langfred (2004) found in 71 self-managing teams of MBA students that high trust went with lower performance when individual autonomy was high.