ABSTRACT
Although this book is about incompetent teachers, it is important to recognize that poor performance is a problem facing all organizations and professions. In a study of the Fortune 500 companies, the flagships of American business and industry, 97 per cent of the responding administrators indicated that they were currently supervising an ineffective subordinate (Stoeberl and Schniederjans, 1981). This problem is felt at all levels of management — lower, middle, and upper — in these companies and is on the increase (Ibid). Doctors and lawyers, as well as industrial chiefs, have incompetents in their midst. Malpractice suits plague the medical profession (King, 1977), and lawyers are charged with ineffectively representing their clients (Burger, 1968; Finer, 1973). Clearly incompetence is not a problem that is limited to the teaching profession.
