Industrial Engineering Chapter 3 Motivating And Leading Technical People Discussion Questions Provide Your Definition Leadership

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Chapter 3

Motivating and Leading Technical People

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

3-1. Q: Provide your definition of leadership. Is this different than your definition of management?

Why or why not?

3-2 Q: Describe a manager you have known and characterize their leadership style.

3-3. Q: From your analysis of the findings of Harris (Table 3-1), why do you think engineers look for

different qualities in their managers as they (the engineers) grow in experience?

3-4. Q: How would McGregor classify Taylor’s management style? Defend your answer.

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3-5. Q: Dennis is a new project manager for a company that develops system solutions for large

projects. Dennis has not yet developed working relationships with those in his work group. In

fact, some in his group are somewhat skeptical of his abilities. The organization structure at the

company allows most of the power in projects to rest with the functional managers, not the

project managers. Dennis feels a little uncomfortable dictating the details of tasks he assigns,

preferring to allow those with much more experience in the jobs to plan them accordingly. Even

though Dennis is “the boss,” he is much younger than the majority of the members in his work

group and feels limited in what direct effect he might have on their performance. Dennis has

been thinking hard over the weekend about how to start the group off on a new project Monday

morning and needs your help. Explain to Dennis how he might apply the behaviors from the

Managerial Continuum to his discussion with the team on Monday. Which behaviors do you

recommend? Why?

3.6. Q: Schermerhorn defines management as the activity which “performs certain functions in order

to obtain the effective acquisition, allocation, and utilization of human efforts and physical

resources in order to accomplish some goal.” How would a Theory X manager ensure that they

meet this definition?

3-7. Q: Six months into his new job, Bob, a new engineering graduate, is performing just well

enough to avoid being placed on a corrective action plan. When hired, he was carefully selected

and had the abilities required to do the job really well. At first Bob was enthusiastic about his

new job, but now he isn’t performing up to this high potential. As his supervisor, describe how

you would apply Situational Leadership to improve Bob’s performance.

argue that employers should aspire to have their employees at the highest level of Maslow’s

hierarchy? Why or why not?

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3-9. Q: Which of the 16 concepts of Utley and Westbrook (Table 3-6, ignoring Drucker) were you

familiar with before reading this book? Which do you now feel would be useful to you as an

engineering manager? Discuss why.

3.10 Q: Would you expect the factors motivating an engineer to change as they proceed through a

career? In what ways? How can the engineering manager make use of these changes?

3-11. Q: Managers using Theory X or Y approaches run the risk of having the approach become a

self-fulfilling prophecy. Explain what this means and why it might be true.

3-12. Q: Explain how Herzberg’s two factor theory built on the work of Maslow. Does Herzberg

argue that employers should aspire to have their employees at the highest level of Maslow’s

hierarchy? Why or why not?

3-13 Q: Herzberg specifically classed salary as a hygiene factor, not a motivator. How would you

classify it? Why?

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3-14. Q: Job enrichment seeks to make work more meaningful and give employees more control over

their work. Discuss the negative response of many blue-collar production workers toward this

initiative. Why do you think workers have this attitude?

3-15. Q: Would you expect the need for affiliation among managers to be somewhat dependent on the

culture in which they grew up and/or work? If so, give an example.

3-16. Q: Provide another example of the validity of equity theory as a motivator of human

performance at work or elsewhere.

3-17. Q: The vignette “Leadership Failures” highlighted some recent cases of poor leader behavior.

Find two more recent examples and explain what happened. Explain how you think these issues

might be prevented in the future.