Case Study #1

Technical Skills - (Helpful - chapter 6 & 9)

Northern UniTech promotes from within, When seeking a new first-line supervisor, the company generally selects the person with the greatest technical skills. UniTech believes that its focus on technical skills inspires non-management employees to improve those skills so as to ultimately work up into management thus, resulting in more productive employees. Furthermore, UniTech believes that workers are more likely to respect and willingly follow the leadership of a supervisor who is an expert in the technical area which he or she supervises as opposed to someone who may know the big picture and how to get along with everyone but understands less about the work than the people he or she is supervising.

In fact, the company places so much focus on technical skills that even top managers are periodically taken away from their work for a few days to work alongside non-management employees at jobs. They often simply "get in the way" but generally the employees feel that it is desirable for the managers to "get down to their level" and gain first hand knowledge of how the company's products are actually made.

Questions

1. What arguments would Support UniTech's focus on technical skills among first-line supervisors? What arguments could be made against that focus? What are the pros and cons of periodically sending top managernent out to work alongside non-management employees?

2. Suppose you have just finished your degree program and a company has selected you to take over a department involving many different skills. You are not an expert in any of those skills. Suppose there were people in that department who were well respected by their fellow employees, people who were seeking that same management position but lost out on it to you - and you know very well that the people in the department think that was unfair. How would you handle that?