Different Forms of Supervision

FIGURE 8.2 Supervisor decision making during micro-incidents. (Adapted from Carvalho, Py.R. et al.. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 35, 619-644, 2005. With permission.) 

True self-managed team (i.e., no direct supervision) Rotating leadership across each team member Coach/mentor associated with self-managed teams Team leader appointed by team members Team leader appointed by management N Traditional supervision/first line supervisor 

FIGURE 8.3 Supervision continuum. (Adapted from Ward, R. et al.. Different Types of Supervision and the Impact on Safety in the Chemical and Allied Industries Literature Review, Health and Safety Executive, London, 2004. Reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence.) 

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As described above, in order to be able to approach flaws in their supervisory approach, it is critical that organizations fully understand their current supervisory arrangements and the flaws associated with it. Weaknesses associated with different forms of supervision include a lack of team member interaction with the supervisor, lack of team member autonomy, overloading of supervisor, lack of team member development, lack of clarity over roles and responsibilities, and a lack of leadership (Ward et al., 2004). It is also critical for organizations to identify when their supervisory system is not functioning effectively. 

The literature indicates that different forms of supervision are available to organizations, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. According to Brazier et al. (2004), different forms of supervision are appropriate for different circumstances depending on the nature of operations undertaken, structure and culture of the organization, and nature of the teams involved. Ward et al. (2004) developed a supervision continuum (see Figure 8.3) to demonstrate how differences in the structure of teams impact the... 

The supervision of employees undertaking work activities is not a new concept, and research has been conducted focusing on different forms of supervision and supervisory behaviors and their effects on employee performance. Many classical studies in the field of occupational psychology, for example, have demonstrated that the quality of supervision is directly related to worker productivity (e.g., Mowry, 1957). A series of seminal studies focusing on leadership undertaken at the Personnel Research Board of Ohio State University investigated the description and assessment of leadership and its effects on employee performance, one of the outputs of which was the Supervisory Behavior Description Questionnaire (SBDQ) (Fleishman, 1953). 

Different types of organizations require different forms of supervision. 

Many undergraduate science majors take on academic-year or summertime research projects at their home institutions, at other colleges or universities, or at some chemical industry location in the form of an internship. These are valuable experiences since they allow students to experience both the joys and frustrations of cutting-edge research. Working in a research lab is often a very different experience from performing academic lab experiments that are associated with courses in a chemistry curriculum. Many new hazards can be encountered and the level of supervision can vary considerably in comparison to lab courses, where experiments have been pretested, hazards are well known, and supervision is constant. 

The ACS Symposium Series was founded in 1974 to provide a medium for publishing symposia quickly in book form. The format of the Series parallels that of the continuing Advances in Chemistry Series except that, in order to save time, the papers are not typeset but are reproduced as they are submitted by the authors in camera-ready form. (The papers in this book were prepared with a different reference style from the style usually used in the ACS Symposium Series.) Papers are reviewed under the supervision of the Editors with the assistance of the Series Advisory Board and are selected to maintain the integrity of the symposia however, verbatim reproductions of previously published papers are not accepted. Both reviews and reports of research are acceptable, because symposia may embrace both types of presentation. 

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