Management Decision Technique in the Classification of Employee Skills

Abstract

An interesting problem which crops up in the field of industrial learning is the question of when an apprentice can be said to be a fully experienced operator. The importance of this question crops up for industrial training programs. It also occurs under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act which provides that during the learning period the apprentice can only receive an hourly rate which is less than the standard going hourly rate for experienced operators. It therefore becomes important to determine when the learning period is over for apprentices, so that they may receive the higher rate to which they are then entitled. This is equitable enough but the real question which then arises is by what criterion do we determine the actual length of the learning period. Management will tend to exaggerate its length and labor will tend to minimize it. Management Technology, ISSN 0542-4917, was published as a separate journal from 1960 to 1964. In 1965 it was merged into Management Science.