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We evaluated a strategy for making highly nonpreferred work duties more preferred as a potential means of enhancing work enjoyment among supervisors in a human service setting. Repeated preference ratings and rankings were completed by 4 supervisors during baseline to identify their most disliked work tasks. These tasks were then altered by soliciting each supervisor's opinion regarding why the respective task was so disliked and what could be done to make the task more preferable, removing disliked stimuli associated with the tasks, and adding liked stimuli during completion of the tasks. Following the task alterations, ratings of task likeability increased for all 4 supervisors. Preference rankings of target tasks also increased, including from rankings as among the least preferred tasks to among the most preferred tasks. All supervisors rated the task-alteration process as making their quality of work life better, and all chose to continue the intervention. These results occurred without any observed decrease in work quality. Results are discussed regarding the potential contribution of behavioral interventions with subjective concepts, such as enjoyment, that are viewed as important by the general populace. However, qualifications with relying on verbal reports also are noted. KEYWORDS. Preference assessments, supervisors, work enjoyment

The way in which positive and negative moods play an important role to influence creativity in supportive context and three alternate ways by which supervisors should provide a supportive context, by providing developmental feedback, by being trustworthy and by showing interactional justice is presented.

A study examines the impact of supervisor biological sex, power use, and nonverbal immediacy on subordinates' satisfaction, liking for the supervisor, and perceptions of the supervisors' credibility. Results demonstrate that supervisors must maintain nonverbal immediacy and frame prosocial-type message to preserve their credibility in the workplace.

This qualitative study explores supervisory authority in the relationship between social work supervisors and frontline social workers in Hong Kong. Forty in-depth interviews and seven focus groups were conducted with supervisors, supervisees, and local experts. The findings reflect that the supervisors dominate the decision-making process and that their authority is apparent in the supervisor-supervisee relationship. The results reveal that in issues related to policy or administration, or when there is an urgent need for timely decision-making, supervisors would give clear instructions and adopt a straightforward decision-making strategy. Discussion among staff is allowed and encouraged, but it focuses on issues related to professional practice or service delivery. Supervisees tend to use supervision to ensure that the supervisor is responsible for decision-making, and they often become frustrated when no clear instructions are given. The Chinese attitude towards hierarchical relationship and practice of subordination to authority are obvious in the supervisor-supervisee relationship. Most supervisors interviewed tend to adopt a 'consensus by consultation and consent' approach in their supervisory practice. This approach reduces staff participation and sense of belonging. Supervisors are advised to achieve referent power and expert power by using a competence model of supervision to replace culturally ascribed authority. KEYWORDS. Supervision, authority, Chinese culture, Hong Kong

What are the consequences when a supervisee experiences a negative event in supervision? Supervisee developmental level, supervisory working alliance, trainee attachment style, and negative supervisory events were examined to determine their relationship with one another. Findings underscore the destructive impact negative supervisory events can have on supervision and supervisee development. This impact varies depending upon a supervisee's developmental level or the strength of the supervisor-supervisee working alliance. Supervisors are encouraged to be more supportive of supervisees in early development, and suggestions are offered on ways to ensure a strong supervisory relationship.

Byline: Richard A. Posthuma (1) Abstract: This paper presents empirical evidence about the dimensions of supervisor evaluations of employee job performance. Factor analytic results supported the conclusion that supervisors were able to distinguish between two dimensions of job performance. While bivariate correlational analysis indicated that these two dimensions of job performance were similarly related to other measures, a multivariate regression analysis suggests that they are distinguishable constructs. Author Affiliation: (1) University of Texas at El Paso, USA Article History: Registration Date: 30/09/2004

The suggestion that bosses do not have to exert much effort when sinecure and promotion offer an alternative option for labor discipline was examined using a neo-Hobbesian model. The neo-Hobbesian approach to the effort extraction question provides a convenient, albeit problematic, point of departure concerning the role of individual incentives in labor discipline. The neo-Hobbesian model also tackles the use of the threat of possible detection and dismissal by capitalists as a mechanism to enforce discipline among workers.

In response to new theoretical conceptualizations (Raven, 1992, 1993), an instrument was developed to measure 11 bases of power, the original 6 French and Raven (1959: Raven, 1965) bases of power, with 3 of these further differentiated: reward (personal, impersonal), coercion (personal, impersonal), legitimate (position, reciprocity, equity, dependence), expert, referent, and information. In Study 1, 317 American student respondents rated the likelihood that each of these power bases contributed to a supervisor successfully influencing a subordinate in a series of hypothetical situations. The internal consistency of the items which made up the 11 power bases proved adequate. Factor analysis found 7 factors and 2 categories of bases: harsh and soft. In Study 2, which used 101 Israeli health workers, the earlier findings were generally supported. In addition, job satisfaction was found to be positively related to the attribution of soft bases to the supervisor.

Primary ethnographic research is drawn on in this paper so as to examine the nature of supervisory systems in two manufacturing organisations which have both, to varying degrees, implemented 'new' manufacturing techniques such as just-in-time and total quality management and have organised around 'teams'. Debates in industrial sociology and the labour process have understandably concentrated on the implications of such developments for workers; the important and problematic role of supervisors in realising managerial objectives has been largely neglected. This paper analyses the nature of supervision and the role of supervisors/first-line managers within contemporary manufacturing. In contrast to previous studies, which have sought to explain supervisory roles in terms of their link with structural factors such as technology, organisational size and formalisation (Perrow 1970; Woodward 1965), this paper highlights the importance of supervisors as social actors. The analysis demonstrates the dynamic and complex role of supervisors in implementing and adhering to managerial rules while needing to ensure a degree of operational flexibility that relies on informality, particularly in reaching accommodation with labour. These types of contradictory pressures have long been recognised in supervisory work (Roethlisberger 1945) but recent research into developments on the 'new' shopfloor has failed adequately to report and conceptualise the increasingly complex position of supervisors and front-line managers. Key words: ethnography, just-in-time production, supervisors, total quality management.

A home care supervisor ensures that the delivery of service is in accordance with administrative directives. The supervisor also assures the home care client and family caregivers that adequate service is being provided to enhance quality of life. The supervisor is also accountable to supervisees for their training, consultation and on-going support. The supervisor must see to it that all of these responsibilities are being done equally.

This article seeks to demonstrate how self psychological concepts can be applied to the process of training psychotherapists in a variety of clinical and community settings. The author examines the role of clinical supervision in the development, consolidation, and maintenance of a cohesive professional self. The role of selfobject experience, needs, transference, and counter-transference as manifested in the supervisory relationship is elaborated. Supervisor and supervisee form a self-selfobject unit, through which the trainee's anxieties and vulnerabilities can be managed. This selfobject matrix enables maintenance of self-esteem, expansion of cognitive understanding, and structure building in the arena of the professional self. To achieve these ends, the supervisor forms an empathic alliance with the internal, subjective experience of the therapist. The importance of focusing on the self experience and self-object needs of the therapist in training via an empathic mode of observation is illustrated by several examples and vignettes. The application of theory to practice is emphasized, with examples chosen from a variety of clinical settings and modalities.

This paper extends the authors' previous work on observability of discrete-event systems by taking time into consideration. In a timed discrete-event system, events must occur within their respective lower and upper time bounds. A supervisor can disable, enable, or force some events to achieve a given control objective. We assume that the supervisor does not observe all events, which is often the case in practice. We generalize the concept of observability to timed discrete-event systems and show that it characterizes the existence condition for a supervisor. We also generalize normality, a stronger version of observability, to timed discrete-event systems, which has nice properties that are absent in observability. We then derive conditions under which observability and normality are equivalent. We propose two methods to synthesize a supervisor, a direct approach and an indirect approach. An example is given to illustrate the results.

When organizations shift to an involvement-based culture, the first-line Supervisor's job is dramatically changed. This article examines some of those changes, the adjustments that have to be made by the [...]

The question of how supervisors perceive the degree of social support they receive from three support sources in the workplace was examined using data obtained from 62 supervisors working at units of the Department of Social Services in Israel. The supervisors were specifically asked what types of support, whether tangible, appraisal, informational or emotional, were provided by subordinates, peers and superiors. The supervisors identified subordinates as being the most supportive. Peers, however, were perceived to be withholding emotional support, reflecting a high degree of mistrust among supervisors. Superiors were considered by the supervisors to be the least supportive. The nature of the workplace relationship between supervisors and the three support sources was postulated to be associated with the level of organizational ambiguity regarding the specific roles of these supervisors.

Results of a comparative study of supervisor and incumbent job evaluation ratings are presented. Supervisors' and incumbents' job evaluation ratings differed for abstract but not specific compensable factors. Overall ratings did not differ, but incumbents rated their jobs higher than did their supervisors and did so significantly more often than would occur by chance. To reach consensus, incumbents lowered their ratings significantly more than their supervisors raised their ratings. Job evaluation ratings of female incumbents were not significantly different from those of male incumbents in the same jobs. Finally, implications of this organizational study are discussed. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)