Self‐directed work groups and team competence

The study examines the impact of self‐directed group work on team competence. The sample consists of 83 production groups from 20 medium‐sized enterprises: 44 self‐directed work groups and 39 traditional work groups. Results based on process‐analytic behavioural data, collected at the group level of analysis, show that self‐directed teams are more competent than traditional work groups on seven out of 12 aspects of competence. Self‐directed teams show greater methodological competence, to some extent greater professional and self‐competence but no greater social competence when completing optimization tasks. In addition, the work characteristics participation, formal team communication, continuous improvement process, training and team‐oriented tasks were related to team competence in the subsample of self‐directed work teams.