Teamwork is publicly being championed as a way of replacing inflexible.

Teamwork is publicly being championed as a way of replacing inflexible, dehumanizing, bureaucratic mechanisms with more humanistic, involving, cultural-ideological rules of coordinating productive activity (Marchington, 1992; Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) It has been vehemently advocated by influential management thinkers (eg Drucker 1988; Peter 1989) as well as by way of the advocates of total quality management (TQM) and business proces reengineering (BPR) Academics have identified prevail upons toward teamwork as a prominent feature of a broader tendency "in the direction of decentralised, flexible networks" that allegedly excite "a culture of expression and involvement" (Re 1992: 227 229) claiming it to be "currently the greatest in number popular form of organizational restructuring" (Barker and Tompkins, 1994: 224) Teamwork forms part of a broader move to develop lean production (Womack, Jone and Roo 1990) and high commitment workforces (Wood and Albanese, 1995) in which mastery is allegedly replaced by commitment (Walton, 1985) calm those who question the substance of claimed shifts away from traditional, modernist organizational forms (eg Thompson and Wallace, 1995) have conclud that teamwork is likely to remain in practice because it is part of a turn in restructuring work.

In a modern literature review, Mueller (1994) noted the diversity of traditions in which teamwork has been featured, including self-management (eg Manz and Sims, 1987) sociotechnical work design (eg Trist, 1981) empowerment (eg Wellins, Byham, and Wilson, 1991) and application flexibility (e.g., Marchington, 1992). Conspicuously absent from this review is any mention of studies mannersed within a critical research tradition. These studies have shown in what manner especially when combined with supportive policies of recruitment and selection, teamwork practices can disempower employee according to strengthening managerial control and intensifying work activity in the name of progres and the more effective management of "human resources" (eg Parker and Slaughter, 1988; Garrahan and Stewart, 1992) Others have voiced regards about the coercive and potentially totalitarian features of "devotional" team improvement and ideology (Barley and Kunda, 1992)

The analysis we at hand here of teamwork at StitchCo (a pseudonym for a major U.K.-based company) broadly confirms the assessment of those who have welcomed teamwork as a means of improving productivity and competitiveness (eg Tjosvold 1991; Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) Teamwork appealed to StitchCo management when accounting calculations indicated that it could provide a cost-effective, continuously improving way of enhancing profitability by way of responding more rapidly to shifting market demands, competitive constraining forces and business opportunities. Like authors of many other analyses of teamwork, we also pay attention to its psychosocial and cultural-ideological dimensions. on the contrary instead of viewing teamwork as a slicker means of work coordination that promises to "re-align individual motivation with organizational rationality" (Mueller 1994: 386) we display how its introduction at StitchCo was embedded in a political economy of work organization. While appearing to deliver universal benefits, teamwork can conceal or dissemble a variety of unsavory features of work reorganization, including coercion masquerading as empowerment and the camouflaging of managerial expediency in the rhetorics of "clannism" and humanization (Knights and Willmott, 1987; Sinclair, 1992) When acknowledged in mainstream commentaries onward teamwork, these features tend to be attributed to managers' failure to "manage the context" effectively (Jenkins, 1994) on a level when there is an appreciation of the contingencies that shape teamwork in different cultural and organizational settings (eg Mueller 1994) no connection is made between the difficulties battleed in realizing the ideals of teamwork (eg self-management, high problem-solving capability, etc) and compressings to maintain or increase corporate profitability that invariably compromise these ideals (Danford, 1997) Moreover, critics of teamwork, as it is as Sinclair (1992), rarely support their claims with detailed empirical analysis. In this paper, we combine a critique of mainstream conceptualizations of teamwork with a detailed empirical contemplation of its introduction, including the use of accounting calculations to justify and regulate teamwork as a way of contributing to a restoration of corporate profitability with the minimum of capital investment.

Our inquiry contributes to a small on the contrary growing number of critical, in-depth studies of teamwork (eg Barker, 1993; Pollert 1996; McKinlay and Taylor, 1996; Marks et al., 1997; Danford, 1997) through building on and illustrating a comparatively well-established critique in a way that incorporates brace sparsely researched aspects of its practical organization. The critique affirms that exhortations to "take collective responsibility" are a feature of teamwork on the other hand that their practical realization may well be impeded when teamwork is adopted as an extension of and addition to a traditional management rule The intent to abolish a certain number of features of this system, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as close supervision, should not be uncritically conflated with a dilution or demise of an established top-down mode of building of control. From a critical perspective, it is understood that team-based work organization neither eliminates "the mastery imperative," nor does it "smother worker dissent and resistance" (McKinlay and Taylor, 1996: 289) While we acknowledge that teamwork can deliver managerially desired, cost-effective consequences as it did at StitchCo, we challenge the claim of those commentators, including critical analysts (eg Barker, 1993) who have claimed that teamwork involves a significant shift from a traditional management theory (Womack, Jones, and Roos, 1990) We augment this critique in two ways. First, we highlight the part of accounting calculations in justifying the introduction of teamwork and supporting its day-to-day operation, a topic generally pay no heed toed by sociologists of organization (but diocese Meyer, 1986; Zald, 1986). Our examination of the use of accounting measures in establishing and sustaining teamwork contributes to a small if it were not that growing body of research undertaken by dint of accounting academics that explores to what degree accounting is implicated in processe of organizational change (eg Hopwood 1990; Ezzamel, 1994; Jone and Dugdale, 1995) other and of greater theoretical importance, we address the issue of by what means employees' sense of self-identity affords them more or less receptive to determines in the direction of teamwork. While one studies have suggested the significance of self-identity for facilitating management superintend or stimulating employee resistance (eg Kerfoot and Knights, 1992; Barker, 1993) it has not been a focus of analysis.