Leadership in Self-Managing Organizations: Orpheus and a Date Plantation

Abstract

Executive Summary Self-managing teams have become a widespread and well-accepted practice that presages an evolution toward fully self-managing organizations. This will have a profound impact on our understanding of leadership and the leader's role in organizations. This article looks at two cases where self-management is not just a matter of team behavior but of organizational behavior with a focus on how leadership is practiced and how it is different from conventional organizations. Lessons learned and its appropriateness to firm governance, generally, are discussed.