Joe Schultz was a first line supervisor of a group of assemblyline workers at Supreme Manufacturing, a plastics manufacturingfacility. With a high school education, he had been with Supreme inthis department, first as an assembly worker, then promoted as asupervisor 5 years ago. His leadership style could be described as"active, controlling and task oriented." He was of the same ethnicbackground as many of his subordinates (German) and would often'kid' with them in Germanic slang at the local beer garden onFridays after work. He was well liked by his subordinates and theirwork performance was among the best in the company. Joe wasrecognized as being highly intelligent and mechanically expert. Hehad taken some evening courses in engineering at the localuniversity over the past 3 years. He had done well, maintaining aB+ average. Recently, with a respectable (although not expert)background in engineering, he was promoted to assistant supervisorin the company's drafting department. Here he had the technicalskills necessary to supervise his employees, and the work hesupervised was highly programmed, as it was in the assemblydepartment. The workers he supervised were of diverse ethnicbackground and of mixed gender. Most of them had been in thedrafting department for 8-10 years. There was a feeling on the partof some of his new subordinates that one of their own, BonnieMelville, should have been promoted to the position; but thisfeeling was not too strong, as certain members of the groupdisliked Bonnie. Joe continued has basic leadership style (asdescribed above) in his new job, but somehow productivity in thedrafting department fell. Numerous antagonisms developed underJoe's leadership and a couple of his better subordinates resignedwithin a period of three months.
Question: Explain why Joe did so very well inhis old department, and encountered these problems in his new job.Incorporate into your response what you have learned aboutcontingency theory and team building. Discuss the Leadership Grid(p.250). Also consider French and Ravens framework of social power(pp. 125-134 + lecture notes week 3) to assess the social power Joeheld in his old and his new position. What should Joe do to improvehis own performance with respect to his new work team? What, ifanything, should Joe's supervisor attempt to do to get thesituation back on track?
