Increasingly, organizations have been employing self-managing teams to circumvent bureaucratic controls and stimulate innovation. However, this goal is not easily achieved; in many situations, informal controls replace formal controls. This study develops a multi-level perspective of control. We explicitly analyze control mechanisms at different levels of the organization and how they affect innovative team output. We theorize and empirically investigate a potential downside of horizontal social control mechanisms at the team level (i.e., peer pressure) affecting self-managing teams’ innovative outcomes. We also discuss managerial control mechanisms at the organizational level (i.e., interactive and diagnostic management control systems) that may help to mitigate such negative effects. We theorize how they may influence the innovative output of self-managing teams, both directly and interactively. We chose a multi-level, multi-source setting for our study and ran three parallel surveys with employees in a Fortune 500 firm where 248 team members, 126 internal team leaders, and 97 organizational leaders enabled us to create a unique database of 97 self-managing software development teams. Our findings confirm that peer pressure is common among established agile teams and that it negatively influences the innovative output of the agile teams. Moreover, our findings show that the magnitude of the effect of peer pressure is contingent on control mechanisms at higher levels within the organization. This enables us to provide new theoretical insights regarding the paradoxical effect of managerial control systems when it comes to flat organizations and autonomous teams. Additionally, we provide practical guidelines for managers who increasingly adopt agile practices but at the same time face issues with regard to innovation.

中文翻译：

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缓解敏捷团队的阴暗面：同行压力、领导者控制和敏捷团队的创新输出

越来越多的组织开始采用自我管理团队来规避官僚控制并刺激创新。然而，这个目标并不容易实现；在许多情况下，非正式控制取代了正式控制。这项研究发展了一个多层次的控制视角。我们明确分析了组织不同级别的控制机制以及它们如何影响创新团队的产出。我们对影响自我管理团队创新成果的团队层面的横向社会控制机制（即同伴压力）进行理论化和实证研究。我们还讨论了组织层面的管理控制机制（即交互式和诊断管理控制系统），它们可能有助于减轻这种负面影响。我们推测它们如何直接和交互地影响自我管理团队的创新输出。我们为我们的研究选择了一个多层次、多来源的环境，并对一家财富 500 强公司的员工进行了三项平行调查，其中 248 名团队成员、126 名内部团队领导和 97 名组织领导使我们能够创建一个包含 97 个自我的独特数据库-管理软件开发团队。我们的研究结果证实，同侪压力在已建立的敏捷团队中很常见，并且会对敏捷团队的创新输出产生负面影响。此外，我们的研究结果表明，同侪压力的影响程度取决于组织内更高级别的控制机制。这使我们能够就管理控制系统在扁平组织和自治团队中的矛盾效应提供新的理论见解。此外，我们为越来越多地采用敏捷实践但同时面临创新问题的管理者提供实用指南。