The current business environment in which companies are operating is constantly becoming ever more challenging. Companies must be able to challenge their competitors in various ways to respond to environmental changes and customer needs. This kind of business environment requires new kind of thinking and organizing ability from companies. Management thinking has recently evolved from managing individual tasks to leading operations, the purpose of which is to create new kind of operational culture and broad-based co-operation. Self-managing work teams are faster to adapt to environmental changes, because self-managing work teams have responsibility and authority to decide on matters related to their own work. The key, in this case, is the utilization of employees’ skills and knowledge capital.

The research was carried out as a qualitative case study. The data were collected from the operating model documents of the company and through thematic interviews and observation. 11 IT organization team leaders and one employee were interviewed. Additional 2 thematic interviews about the operating model were conducted (HR specialist and VP Digital Development). The research results show that the IT-organization has both teams and workgroups. The operating model of the IT-organization is based on the fact that the teams are strongly self-managing and the employees are able to self-direct their own activities. IT business in the company is mainly operated and developed in functional teams. Team leading is decentralized or shared between different people, so it is leadership in the plural. The current operating model in the organization favors incremental employee-driven innovations. Working in functional teams creates silos which threatens the emergence of the radical innovations.