Exploring decentralised authority in organisations
Dr Hewett’s research focuses on self-managing organisations (SMOs), which decentralise authority by eliminating traditional hierarchies and distributing decision-making power to employees. Although SMOs are viewed as solutions to organisational challenges, their success in democratising governance can vary. Her project investigates the role that leaders, particularly founders and CEOs, play in shaping and implementing self-management structures.
Advancing research in self-management
By interviewing leaders from over 40 SMOs, Dr Hewett and colleagues aim to explore organisations’ motivations for decentralising authority and how these motivations influence governance and ownership decisions, including moves toward stakeholder-focused models like foundation ownership.
Her research aims to contribute new theoretical insights on the interplay between leader ideology, organisational governance and profit distribution. It should also help to provoke broader discussions about workplace democracy and worker participation by offering empirical evidence on the conditions under which SMOs fulfil their potential.
Collaborative research project with long-term impact
Dr Hewett is the lead researcher on the project, which is part of the larger People in Self Managing Organisations (PASMO) project. Her collaborators on this include Moritz Appels, assistant professor in RSM’sdepartment of Organisation and Personnel Management, as coauthor. Dr Hewett and Dr Appels are in the process of hiring a postdoctoral researcher for additional support, a position which will be funded by the fellowship.
While the fellowship is for a period of 12 months, the project is expected to extend beyond this period, with long-term plans in place to continue the research well into the future.
About the fellowship
The Bill Nobles Fellowship was established in 2011 by its namesake, an executive fellow at Rutgers University, to promote research for companies that implement so-called self-management, where the employees share both the ownership and the decision-making to foster exceptional business results. This concept originated from Mr Nobles' post-retirement research, which explored how decentralising authority in his long career as a business leader, had a transformative effect on both employees and the organisation.
