The Friendly Supervisor Avishek manages the customer relations department of a public utility company. The department is responsible for replying to customer requests for information and to customer complaints. There are seven typists in the department who handle the correspondence to customers dedicated by the staff. Avishek recently promoted Rachana to office supervisor. Rachana had been a typist in the department for ten years. She was considered the fastest and most accurate typist who had ever worked for Avishek. Rachana has the best attendance record in the department and Avishek considered her his most dependable employee. She was very well liked by all the typist and they considered her to be a good personal friend. As a supervisor Rachana does a good job handing out work assignments, but she does little else to supervise the typists. She does not like to criticize the typists and does not enforce office rules. No matter what a typists does Rachana will not take any disciplinary action. She makes no attempt to check the work of the typists for compliance with quality standards or to see that work is complete on time. In fact, she spends most of her time typing to reduce the work load of other typists. The human resource department have been receiving an increasing number of complaints from various staff from different departments about the poor quality of the typing and about the slow turnaround time of the work. A number of the complaints target towards Rachana's poor supervisory skills, complaints were also received about the typists under Rachana taking excessively long coffee breaks and spending time on personal phone calls. The Human resource department convey the complaints to Avishek who has been asked to inquire and rectify the problem. When Avishek talked to the typists, they told him that Rachana frequently invites them to her house for dinner or to play bridge. It appears to Avishek that the typists all like Rachana as a friend, but they are becoming concerned about her lack of supervisory skills. Avishek mentions to Rachana that she should focus her effort on improving the work of the typists. She replied, "These woman are my friends and I don't feel right cracking down on them". Questions: 1) Can an individual effectively manage a group and be a close personal friend with group members? 2) What should Avishek do to ensure that the work of the typists will improve? 3) Should Rachana have been promoted to office supervisor? 4) If you were Rachana, what would you do? Would you quit the supervisor's job? Would you no longer be friends with the typists