The End of Supervision? A Case-study and Critique of the Attempted Conversion of Supervisors into Team Leaders

Abstract

The concept of team leader often attempts to maintain the authority and accountability of individual supervisors while increasing employee participation in workplace decision-making. Criticisms of the concept are that it combines functions which are not easily reconciled, and that there is a contradiction between designating individuals as responsible for work groups and group members accepting responsibility for their own performance. A case-study of supervisory and managerial team leaders found that exszcpervisors tended to control rather than develop work teams, whereas the difficulties encountered by managerial team leaders arose more from managers' lack of familiarity with managing work groups directly. Contrary to the Industry Task Force on Leadership and Mancigement Skills (1995), first-level -supervisors tend to inhibit workplace participation, and redesignating them as team leaders does not change that. However, redeveloping managers' roles to link management strategy with work-group decision-making holds promise for future research, education and practice.