High levels of managerial turnover can disrupt organizational functioning at the best of times (Kitchen, 1992, p. 1). During the contemporary period of economic transition·regional economic unification, corporate restructuring, governmental retrenchment, and so forth·such turnover poses even greater risk for the organization. A research study is proposed to investigate the problem of turnover among first-line supervisors in a manufacturing setting.
The purpose of the proposed study will be to identify human resource strategies that will enable manufacturing organizations to improve retention rates of first-line supervisors. Major causes of turnover among first-level supervisors will be identified in the pursuit of this objective.
The research setting for the proposed study will be a manufacturing organization. Specifically, the setting will be an assembly plant of the Ford Motor Company.
The organizational sub-unit that will provide the focus for this study employs 65 first-line supervisors in a three-shift production operation. The rate of turnover among these first-line supervisors has been at undesirably high levels for the past three years. There are no signs indicating that the situation is likely to improve in the foreseeable future in the absence of effective action by senior management at the plant. Management within the target organizational sub-unit has not applied consistent human resource policy in relation to the first-level supervisors, and this practice likely has exacerbated job satisfaction problems among the first-level supervisors. Senior management at the plant considers the improvement of the retention rate among first-level supervisors to be a priority objective. Based on this problem, the research objectives that will be sought through the conduct of the proposed study will be pursued through the development of answers to three research questions, as follows:
1. What is the level of job ...