Some foremen obviously have full managerial authority. They appoint their own workpeople, are able to dismiss those who are unsuitable without reference to higher management, and either train their own apprentices or are able to secure for them the kind of training which they think suitable. They instruct their men how work is to be done, and questions arising from this work are brought to them and settled on their own responsibility. They are known as foremen, but might equally well (and in some companies would) be known as departmental managers.
In the larger companies there is a tendency for some of the work which used to be done by the foreman to be taken over by functional specialists. Thus the design engineer might be responsible for the drawings of a product, the production engineer for manufacturing methods, the production controller for scheduling, machine loading, and progressing, and the personnel officer for the engagement and dismissal of workpeople. None of these, however, need necessarily reduce the foreman's authority to a level inconsistent with managerial status, though they obviously circumscribe it. The fact that the decision whether a part is to be planned, milled, or ground is taken by the production engineer does not free the foreman from the duty of seeing that the process is properly carried out; it merely prescribes more closely what is to be done. The foreman has still to organize its performance by men whom he considers capable of doing it properly. leia todo o artigo
