Lorry Driver Ils 154 by Peter G Hollowell

Author:Peter G Hollowell [Hollowell, Peter G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781136252976
Google: SfREAQAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 18977427
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Attitude to Management

The attitude to management is investigated from two points of view. Firstly it is desirable to know how the worker in question views the management of the actual firm for which he works. A further insight may be gained if the worker’s conception of an ‘ideal’ management is known.

Sixty per cent of the drivers in the firms’ sample have a favourable attitude to the managements of their firms. This figure has, however, limited value in application since the total firms’ sample is not homogeneous in terms of management. When the individual firms are investigated, B.R.S. drivers have a less favourable view (56 per cent have a favourable view) than the drivers in private haulage firms, where 64 per cent have a favourable view of their management.35

Trampers in both firms have the most favourable view of management of all the categories of driver. This is significant as the tramper has a job which takes him away from his management for most of the time while he is at work and the area of discretion is correspondingly wide. In fact in the private firm trampers even find their own loads which determines where they will go. Part of a tramper’s role is thus a managerial expectation. Trunkers on the other hand see their managements on most shifts and there is considerably less discretion in the job as the routes are pre-set and there is a prescribed time in which to do the job.

The largest single reason for the favourable attitudes is the way that management treats drivers in disciplinary terms. Clearly management is seen as having certain prerogatives, and its authority as such is accepted, but within these prerogatives any management action may be viewed as being fair or unfair by the lorry driver.

‘The depot manager is fair but he is not a practical man—he’s only an office boy. I don’t have much to do with them on nights.’

This statement suggests that although a manager may be fair he is not really likely to understand the problems that a lorry driver might encounter. Four other drivers mentioned that their managements allowed them to get on with the job without interference once they were given it. This proportion was higher in the private haulage firm than at B.R.S. although numbers in each firm were the same.

‘Nothing. I’ve never seen them (the management), if you do your work right they never bother you.’

‘I think they’re quite good, they leave the job to the particular driver.’

On the whole there is less sign of the lorry driver’s approval of management on the score that he is left to his own devices in the job in the firms’ sample than there was in the café sample. In the café sample however the attitude to management in relation to job control was revealed in a question on the firms in general. The other reasons for a favourable attitude to management are only vaguely, if at all, related to the problem of area of discretion at job level.

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