People-Centered Organization Case

1) I believe Jeffrey Pfeffer would call UPS a people-centered organization. I found 3 of the 7 people-centered practices that Pfeffer identified. The first being employee empowerment through decentralization and self-managed teams. UPS allows supervisors to ride along with their drivers and evaluate them. The second people-centered practice that I found was the reduction of status differences. I believe that since UPS implemented the use of PDA's anyone can log on and see the status of a driver. The third status that I found in the case is sharing of key information. Supervisors being able to use PDA's anytime they want to check on the status of their drivers has made UPS a much better company and place to work. The supervisors can easily get a quick and reliable update on their drivers without having to leave their office.

2) I believe that UPS in this case is using the Critical Incidents performance appraisal technique. The book defines Critical Incidents as "specific instances of inferior and superior performance are documented by the supervisor when they occur." I believe that this occurs when the supervisor goes along with the driver for a ride-a-long. The PDA's give the supervisor a performance checklist to evaluate their driver on; this checklist is the same one that every UPS driver across the country gets evaluated on. Using this checklist it can assure the upper management at UPS that each and every one of their drivers across the country is being evaluated the same way and on the same credentials.