an example of boss as symbol. Already, some civilian managers are embracing the military style. One instance of this occurred early in 1991 when the salesman of the year was announced for Technical Industries, an Atlanta audiovisual supply company, and caricature of the winner as Schwarzkopf was flashed on a screen. In a speech, his business strategies were lauded for their takecharge qualities. The theme of the ceremony: "Taking Georgia by Storm" clearly a reaction to current geopolitical events (Reibstein, 1991, p. 34).
Additionally, this new management style of the 1990s, which has much more in common with the Japanese Management style of the 1970s and 1980s, considers forethought, planning, subdivision of resources, and motivation instead of shortterm profits, lengthy and complicated corporate goals, and an emphasis on the present. Should America worry about this new trend? No, says Professor Gerald Meyers of Carnegie Mellon University:
I have a difficult time thinking of any military leader who could take over a civilian company. The military is good at motivating people, promoting on merit and ridding the workplace of discrimination. Yet in the civilian world there are messy things like unions, workers who won't be ordered around, profit and losses, and customers who don't always do what they're told . . . (Reibstein, 1991, p. 38).
A great deal of the literature on supervision has been focused on two categories: how to supervise, and what's wrong with supervision. These categories of literature are important critiques of the system in general, however they fail to delineate the necessary variables that often accrue within the basic structure of the workplace itself. For instance, a number of research studies have pointed out that many managers place far too much emphasis on their personality traits and charisma, thus hiding a great deal of incompetence and vulnerability (Hogan, 1990, pp. 72-7). Other ...