Supervision: Concepts and Skill Building 10th Edition by Samuel Certo Solution manual
Form 1.1
Stereotyping
Make notes on the list below indicating common notions held about persons who have the characteristic.
- Blind
- Red hair
- Bald man
- Speaks English as a second language
- African-American man
- Single parent of a young child
- Hispanic woman
- Blonde woman
- Asian man
- In a wheel chair
Learning Objective 1.5: Identify the general functions of a supervisor.
- Key Terms:
Planning: Setting goals and determining how to meet them
The purpose of planning by supervisors is to determine how the department can contribute to achieving the organization’s goals. Computer technology has made new planning tools possible.
Organizing: Setting up the group, allocating resources, and assigning work to achieve goals
At the supervisory level, organizing usually involves activities such as scheduling projects and assigning duties to employees. In addition, modern supervisors are increasingly responsible for setting up and leading teams of workers to handle special projects or day-to-day operations.
Staffing: Identifying, hiring, and developing the necessary number and quality of employees
Whereas an operative (nonmanagement) employee’s performance is usually judged on the basis of the results that the employee has achieved as an individual, a supervisor’s performance depends on the quality of results that the supervisor achieves through his or her employees. Therefore, staffing is crucial to the supervisor’s success.
Leading: Influencing people to act (or not act) in a certain way
The supervisor is responsible for letting employees know what is expected of them and inspiring and motivating employees to do good work.
Organizing draws heavily on the supervisor’s conceptual skills, but leading requires good human relations skills. The supervisor needs to be aware of and use behaviors that employees respond to as he or she desires.
Controlling: Ensuring that work goes according to plan - monitoring performance and making needed corrections is a function of controlling
The supervisor needs to know what is happening in the department. When something goes wrong, the supervisor must find a way to fix the problem or enable employees to do so.
In an increasing number of organizations, the supervisor is not supposed to control by dictating solutions. Instead, the supervisor is expected to provide employees with the resources and motivation to identify and correct problems themselves.
- Teaching Notes:
Supervisors and other managers carry out the same types of functions. To describe these common activities, management experts categorize them as planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling.
Figure 1.3 shows the management functions as a process in which planning comes first, followed by organizing, then staffing, then leading, and finally controlling. This order occurs because each function depends on the preceding function or functions. Figure 1.3 is a very general model of managing that shows how the functions depend on one another, not how the supervisor structures his or her work.