Question

Case: Northeast State University

Dr. Woodrow Bay, chairperson of the Decision Sciences Department in the College of Business Administration, sat at his desk pondering his latest predicament. For the last 45 minutes at the faculty meeting, faculty members complained about poor administrative support. Numerous examples of unavailable administrative assistants were given. As the professors left, one muttered, “There are universities that provide plenty of administrative support; maybe it is time to update our resumes.”

Dr. Bay knew this to be true and that these professors could easily leave for another university given the current job market. He needed to determine whether their perceptions regarding inadequate administrative support were justified.

Background

The Decision Sciences Department houses four functional areas: operations management, quantitative methods, statistics, and information systems. The faculty have national or international reputations based on their excellent scholarship. Higher student enrollments have resulted in the department increasing its faculty from 12 to 20 full-time professors during the past three years. Unfortunately, there was no increase in the administrative support for the department.

As professors were added, the strain on the administrative staff increased. There were more classes, so more course materials needed to be prepared (syllabi, handouts, and exams). In addition, since the faculty were expected to publish research, the administrative assistants spent more time working on manuscripts. New professors required significantly more interaction with the support staff to explain what was wanted and when. Administrative assistants often ran errands for faculty members (placing items on reserve at the library, dealing with the bookstore, making photocopies, distributing mail, doing correspondence, providing supplies, making travel arrangements, arranging meetings, and placing meal orders). The administrative assistants seemed unable to complete all of their work in a normal eight-hour day.

The faculty, on the other hand, believed the primary work activity of the administrative assistants was keyboard entry: keying in manuscripts, course outlines, correspondence, and grant proposals. When faculty did not see the administrative assistants keying in information, the impression was that the staff was not doing its job. It seemed that too much time was wasted talking with faculty, students, or each other, and work was not being done. Dr. Bay did not believe this was the case. He needed to gather information about how the administrative assistants spent their time and compare that with data from the faculty concerning the administrative assistants. Both the faculty and the administrative assistants believed that the solution was hiring an additional administrative assistant. For Dr. Bay this was next to impossible, given the proposed budget cuts at the university, so he decided to collect data to gain insight into the problem.

For two weeks data were collected. From the faculty, Dr. Bay received estimates as to what percentage of the administrative assistants' time the faculty perceived was spent on different activities. He also did a work sample of the administrative assistants. The results are shown here.

Estimates of Administrative Assistants' Use of Time
Activity	Faculty Estimate (%)	Work Sample (%)
Working on computer	20	40
Talking on phone	25	7
Away from office	20	10
Talking with faculty	2	8
Talking with others	15	10
Filing	3	5
Photocopying	5	15
Other	10	5

Case Questions

Your assignment is to analyze the data collected by Dr. Bay. In particular, you should

1. Describe how Dr. Bay can use the data.

Answer 1

1 It is quite clear from the data collected by the administrative assistants on the usage of time that the majority of time is invested in the activities other than the office activities. In comparison to the office activities, more than 70% of the time is used for other activities. This is a clear indication that the office assistant has to perform more of those activities which are not related to the office and are not the part of the job description which is against the perception of the faculty who think that the main work of the office assistant is to type. This is not as what the faculty thinks due to the fact that a lot of burden of other activities are there on the administrative assistant, for instance, managing book store, photocopying, putting the books again in the library shelf, mail distribution, facilitating supplies and so on.

The data which is collected to determine the total time used by the office assistant on different activities could be used by Dr. Bay to evaluate the given scenario. The present duties and responsibilities of admin assistant can be determined by Dr. Bay by analyzing the time recorded. The informed decision related to the various issues faced by the administrative assistant can be taken by Dr. Bay. The role of administrative assistants could be understood effectively by Dr. Bay by evaluating the data collected and this can provide him he input about the allocation of some activities to other workers and the balancing of time among the different works.