Summary:
We interviewed 58 persons (from 14 teams in 8 organizations) working with various methods of autonomy (Holacracy, Scrum, ad hoc initiatives for reduced management control), in order to understand the benefits, drawbacks and conditions of power sharing within the firm. Our coding of the interviews reveals that team autonomy leads to organizational agility, empowerment, creativity, competency development and a holistic view on one’s job, but it also leads to drawbacks: over-engagement, stress, isolation, wrong decisions, and long decision-making. Team autonomy brings benefits when some conditions are met: a clear framework, a leader-coach, trust, willingness and ability to take the autonomy, and a careful change management.
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