Production Supervisors in Britain, Germany and the United States: Back from the Dead again?

Abstract

The recent diffusion of'lean production' work practices and various forms of team-working in manufacturing industry has revived old arguments about the likely decline of production supervisors. These issues are here submitted to empirical scrutiny through a detailed comparison of the skills and utilisation of supervisors in the British, German and American engineering industries. The threatened demise of supervisors is found to be exaggerated yet again for three main reasons. Firstly, supervisors' jobs have generally become more demanding and complex due to greater diversity in the product mix and more stringent quality and delivery targets. Secondly, in Britain and the US (although not in Germany) the average span of responsibility of supervisors has remained stable in recent years. Thirdly, there is evidence in all three countries that, far from making supervisors `redundant' in any way, the development of new work practices such as team-working can actually help to restore the influence of supervisors in strategic decision-making - by `freeing' them from their traditional immersion in the day-to-day details of shopfloor management.