Perspectives on dismissal as a management prerogative in social service organizations

The process and practice of employee dismissal is an important and nagging task in personnel management in the human services. The employee has come to view one's status, following a probationary period, as permanent. Antidiscrimination laws, unionization, grievance rights, the cost of replacing and retraining, etc., increasingly make firing an option less open to administrators. The author offers several practical considerations for using the dismissal prerogative, linking supervision and dismissal through a typology of supervision proposed for employees throughout their tenure with the organization.