Manohar Kale

Manohar Kale had recently received a promotion to the position of Manager of Engineering within the Madras Manufacturing company, a medium sized firm producing numerous house hold products. Manohar had an electrical engineering degree and had been with the company for nine years since graduating from IIT Delhi.

Manohar’s Record as a design engineer was excellent. He had developed three new products that had been marketed around the world and was widely respected for his many innovative contributions to a department recognized for its reputation as the industry leader in new product research and development. Not only was Manohar an effective engineer, he was also popular with almost everyone in the company. Throughout his nine years with Madras Manufacturing , Manohar had kept himself ‘up – to- date’ in his field by reading engineering journals and by attending continuing education workshops. Because of his technical Engineering experience with the company and his ability to get along with people, top management felt very confident in promoting manohar to the position of manager of engineering

Manohar’s early experience in supervising the eighteen engineers in the department proved to be a real challenge. He experienced considerable difficulties being a manager as compared to an engineer. He continued to be very involved with research and product design and work very long hours ( sometimes upto 12 hours a day) in order to ‘keep up’ his design engineering. As a result of this situation, Manohar did not provide the overall direction and coordination of the department that top management believed was necessary in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Manohar also began to feel pressure from some of the engineers who likewise believed that he was overly involved in performing ‘routine engineering’ and not ‘ managing’ the department.

Since Manohar wanted to improve as a manager, he decided to discuss the problems with his boss

Read the above case carefully and answer the following questions after analyzing it in the light of your knowledge about the meaning, functions and skills of management.

Questions:

1) What is the basic problem confronting Manohar kale as a manager? What is the cause? 2) How does being the manager differ from being an engineer? Be specific 3) Did top management make a mistake in promoting Manohar to the position of a manager? 4) What skills are important for manohar as the manager? Why? 5) Does being a good engineer guarantee success as a manager? Why or why not?