"Successful delegation of authority as a leadership style takes time and energy, but it's worth the time and energy to help employee involvement and employee empowerment succeed as a leadership style. It's worth the time and energy to help First let me preface this by explaining what my organization does. We manufacture disposable food service/ tableware products. We have six levels of management. At the top is the owner; next are the executive committee, upper management, mid-managers, front line supervisors, team leaders, and hourly workers. Being a manufacturer delegation is ingrained into the system, no one person could do everything. Everyone has a section delegated to them and all the pieces must work together to produce the end product.
The work is delegated when orders for product are received. The plant manager (upper management group) delegates the scheduling of the orders to the production scheduler (mid manager). These schedules are relayed to the front line supervisors. They in turn assign hourly workers to team leaders. The team leaders assign workers to particular machines and the orders are filled. There are also support personnel, warehouse personnel who supply the machines with raw material and packaging material. There are also maintenance personnel that provide support for the equipment. This work is always delegated starting with the maintenance manager (mid-manager), to the front line supervisors, to the team leaders, to the workers. The delegation is the same for the warehouse personnel except it starts with the warehouse manager (mid-manager).
The process also involves the engineering team (mid-managers). The engineers decide what tooling to use in which machine and delegate the work of change over to the front line maintenance supervisors. Then they in turn delegate the work to the maintenance team leader, and he delegates to his team. Although all team leaders are hands-on workers in all departments. Most of the time it is hard to tell the difference between the team leaders and the hourly workers except, at the end of the day, the team leaders make the decisions and are responsible to the supervisors.
One of the best examples of delegation occurs when a total rebuild of a machine is required. The front line supervisors are tasked with the project but without them delegating 90% of the work to the team leaders and in turn the team leads delegating work to the employees the deadlines would never be met.
Effective delegation requires one be organized.
In regards to decision making at Duplox, the vast majority of employees have limited autonomy in completing their work, more specifically the TSS’s. The TSS’s are required to receive permission from FSM’s regarding most of the incidents and issues within their work as a manager higher in the hierarchy must approve all decisions before any immediate action is able to take place. It is indicated that prior approval from a Field Service manager is required for many actions even if they are within the allotted budget limit, resulting in only a FSM to have authority to order parts. The lack of autonomy in the decisions and input from TSS’s in regards to the approval of actions is a prominent factor in the delay of the receiving of copier parts, resulting in TSSs to often have to visit the same client twice in a row. The majority of the managers do not encourage employees to perform better as many of them hold roles that are considered controlling supervisory, as they have decision authority over the TSS’s. TSS’s at Duplox are restricted from
A Delegation is the process by which responsibility and authority for performing a task or activity is transferred to another person.
The next chapter in part two is, “David Doesn’t Delegate”. This chapter highlights an experienced manager, David, who is an ineffective delegator because of his immunity to delegating. When a leader has a staff that they supervise one would think they would relish the power to be able to delegate. Delegation takes some of the responsibilities off the plate of the leader. However, the authors admit that leaders often say their goal is
“Delegation is the assignment of authority to another person to carry out specific duties” (Robbins & Coulter, 2010, p. 282). In a fast paced environment, it is important to delegate to meet deadlines, and encourage employee development. Proficient delegation can be the determining factor in the success of the project and reduce operating cost by eliminating redundancy. According to Robbins and Coulter (2010), there are five (5) effective delegation behaviors, clarifying the job, specifying the employees’ range of direction, allowing the employee to participate, informing others that delegation has occurred, and establishing feedback channels (p.282).
The company has certain rules and regulations that employees have to follow. The rules aren’t very bad rules, they are the basic rules that are set at manufacturing companies. Hubbell has a corporate office, which is located in Shelton, Connecticut. The nearest Hubbell plant is located in El Dorado, Arkansas. At the main office there are primarily administrative, management, and engineering departments. The Hubbell manufacture in El Dorado is called Prescolite, it is a division of Hubbell. Their main task is to produce light reflectors. Prescolite has three shifts. Each shift has it’s own supervisor. The El Dorado division has one production manager and one plant manager. There are several departments within Prescolite. Prescolite has a management team, production team, engineering team, tool room team, maintenance team, and administrative team. The company is broken down into these teams in order to help better execute certain tasks that are handled by the company. The management team is responsible for making sure that the orders that are received are taken care of. The production team is responsible for producing the light reflectors. The toolroom and maintenance team are responsible for maintaining the proper tools to work on the equipment and they also are responsible to working on the equipment. The engineering team is responsible for designing the objects and making models. And the administrative team is
“follower empowerment in servant leadership occurs at the point which leaders subdue or eliminate their ego and embrace the notion of primus inter pares, first among equals, followers become collaborators.” (Buchan, 1998). Empowering followers has become necessary in the global environment, as Spreitzer puts it; “interest in empowerment comes at a time when global competition and organizational change have stimulated a need for employees who can take initiative, embrace risk, stimulate innovation, and cope with high uncertainty.” As quoted by (pg. 3). He went further to categorize empowerment into two, namely;
My leadership style is primarily participative. Consultation contributes to more effective decisions leveraging the collective wisdom of the group, and, by soliciting their input, a greater degree of personal interest and satisfaction from participants (Yukl, 2013, p. 107). No one has all the answers, but together, in an open and trusting environment, all of us can collaborate toward a solution (Bennis, 2009, p. 133). Consultation and delegation within a shared philosophical framework serves to build support, personal investment, and leadership capacity amongst participants (Yukl, 2013, p. 384).
Everyone that works on marketing the products, for example, would report to the manager of the marketing department. Subsequently the manager in charge of the other areas in turn would report to the chief executive officer — each staffing level reporting to its superior.
...gid environment for their subordinate and works to perform the task well and evaluated thoroughly steps by steps and using the pinpoints of a task.
“Effective delegation leverages the manager’s energy and talent and those of his or her subordinates. It allows managers to accomplish much more than they would be able to do on their own. Conversely, lack of delegation, or ineffective delegation, sharply reduces what a manager can achieve. The manager also saves one of his or her most valuable assets—time—by giving some of his or her responsibility to somebody else.
There will be a manger who is in charge of the stores’ profitability and the overall cooperation of all functions within the region like making sure every stores sells the same collection of clothing. By using matrix, managements not only organize their work more flexible with lower costs, but also improving communication and coordination across the countries. However, the matrix structure violates the unity of command principle as each employee reports to at least two or more managers. Next, high degree of centralization is exercised in H&M. Centralization is the concentration of authority for making most decisions at the top levels of the organization. In this instance, the head office in Sweden are in charge of establishing the code of ethics, internal policies, and manuals. Important decisions that are strongly related to the company’s profits are also made by the top management. Nonetheless, H&M has a decentralized system. For example, there are 32 production teams that handle
Directive leadership is defined as telling subordinates “what they are expected to do, how to do it, when it is to be done, and how their work fits in with the work of others” (Hughes et al., 1999, p.71). Directive leadership has been described as autocratic, task-oriented, and persuasive and manipulative (Muczyk and Reimann, 1987; Yukl, 1989; Bass, 1981). Though it can be effective in communicating a clear and concise vision of the organization’s strategic goals, directive leadership is transformational only by force.
The correspondence streams all over the structure from bosses to workers and the other way round. Supporting business capacities report to their particular Group Heads/Country Heads/Executive officers, who then report to the President and CEO and they further answer to the Board of Directors. In such a work specific environment where jobs are assembled in different divisions, each part is a master and reports to his/her superior.
During the revolution, both small-scale and large scale production factories were managed by engineers who had technical knowhow and little else. There were therefore challenges when it take to handling people. Problems also arose as is the norm when a large number of people are working together. The main concern was which worker-task arrangement would bring about the best results. Research done by Adam Smith showed...
Employee empowerment can be a powerful tool. The leadership style can increase efficiency and effectiveness inside an organization. Empowerment can also increase productivity and allow managers more tim...