The formation of self-management teams in higher education institutions. Satisfaction and effectiveness

Abstract

This paper explores how self-management work groups are formed in higher education institutions and how this affects the effectiveness of the teams. For this, we investigated the experiences of 560 students who were members of self-management learning teams, using factorial analysis, cluster analysis and ordinal logit regression. We focus on self-management teams, where students form work groups autonomously, and making decisions with whom to collaborate. Thus, students influence the composition of their groups, which will condition the internal dynamic of teams, and its subsequent effect on the effectiveness of the groups. Our paper contributes to the literature on student-centred perspectives highlighting how the formation of self-management teams has an impact on their satisfaction and effectiveness. Moreover, we identify four criteria (competencies, academic level, social relationships, and ad hoc) during the formation of self-management teams that have a differential impact on the effectiveness and potential conflict in the team. Additionally, our results reveal three groups of students, regarding the formation criteria of self-management teams: a first group where the academic level criteria prevails, a second group based on competencies, and finally, a group that combines social relationships and ad hoc criteria. Moreover, we find that self-management teams based on the competencies and academic level criteria have a higher level of effectiveness and satisfaction than the formation of self-management teams based on social relations and ad hoc decisions. Moreover, the results show that the exclusive use of academic level as a formation criteria is potentially a source of conflict in the self-management team.