Industry should get rid of half its bosses, says behavioral psychologist Alfred J. Marrow. 'Adults are quite capable of handling their lives outside their homes, at their jobs,' Marrow said in an interview. They need fewer supervisors and managers, not more. As president of the American Board of Professional Psychology, he's heard the complaint from working people over and over again: too many bosses. If a shirt manufacturer's customers are returning merchandise because the collars are crooked, he said, the people who make the shirts are more likely than management to identify the problem quickly if they get together to talk about it. But if the boss comes on as an adversary, bawling them out for bad work and threatening to or actually firing some, the remaining workers will probably react angrily and work will suffer. He recalled an insurance company in Hartford, Conn. that got about 50,000 pieces of mail every morning. One person was assigned to slit the envelopes starting at 6 a.m. When a meeting was called to discuss the frequent turnover of employees in that job, one worker suggested that the starting hour be changed to 7:30, and the one person to a team of four or five. The solution worked, Marrow said, because one person was no longer stuck with a boring and lonely job for four to five hours. The work got done in one hour, and the people who did it were then given more varied and interesting clerical duties the remainder of the day. That's called 'job enrichment'. More American companies are turning to it because surveys show it is No. 1 on employees' lists of importance: 'Not wages, not hours. They are fifth, sixth, seventh', Marrow said. Job enrichment and employee participation gain the support of top organizations because they arc good for production and reduce staff turnover, he said. For employees who have not yet discovered they can actually influence management, he suggests: if you have a problem or objectives that will be good for the company, first discuss them with your coworkers. The author's chief purpose is ______.