Class stuff

The purpose of this executive summary is to compare Tom Dossenbach’s article “Let Your Employees Handle the Trees!” about empowerment with Dobbs’ article “The Empowerment Environment.” I will discuss two idea’s : (1) innovation and (2) accountability.
Inovation
Dossenbach explains innovation as “(being) prepared to think on his feet and create solutions on the fly to meet the objectives set forth by his boss.” In class, Mikael chertudi spoke about empowerment. He explained innovation as the ability to resolve issue. Mikael talked about how empowerment can greatly help a company because the line workers know the best way to maximize time. The line workers do their work everyday and they know where excess time is spent.
Dobbs’ article “The Empowerment Environment” explains innovation as “environments in which curiosity is as highly regarded as is technical expertise’s.” Dobbs also explained that innovation comes from “the trenches”. The trenches are the workers that operate the machinery in the factory; they are the people that deliver service to the customers. Empowerment can not exist with out innovation.
Accountability
Dossenbach speaks about accountability in his article “Let Your Employees Handle the Trees!” Dossenbach states “to successfully empower an employee requires transferring more responsibility to that person to reach clearly stated objectives.” Giving an employee the extra responsibility will cause the employee to have more ownership of the company or project. This employee will gain more pride and satisfaction for their work.
Dobbs points out that accountability is egalitarian; the employees are accountable to the manager and the manager is accountable to the employees. Some managers don’t want to give power to their employees because of the fear associated with empowerment. If a manager empowers an employee but does not give him accountability over the task, that employee will not do the job to the best of his ability because he knows that there would be no recourse.