Production teamworking: The importance of interdependence and autonomy foremployee strain and satisfaction

A UK manufacturer introduced a common model of teamworking which achieved q uite different performance results in wire-mills and roperies. Survey data (n = 231) showed higher job-related strain and lower job satisfaction in th e wire-mills, where teamworking was not a success, Findings indicated that the differences in employee wellbeing could be accounted for by contrasting levels of process interdependence in the two production areas. Teamworking was a success in the roperies where process interdependence was high, but not in the wire-mills where there was a mismatch between this production pr ocess characteristic and a team-based form of work organization. interactio ns between interdependence and autonomy were also found, such that higher a utonomy had a positive impact only for those working in low interdependence processes, The unintended consequence of teamworking under low interdepend ence is to create winners and losers, as individual team-members take on re sponsibilities of the team as a whole.