HANDS-ON

adjective (Business World) (Science and Technology) Involving direct participation; practical rather than theoretical. Also used of a person: having or willing to gain practical experience. Etymology: Formed on the verbal phrase to get one's hands on (something) 'to touch or get involved in' and influenced by the exclamation hands off! 'do not touch or interfere!' History and Usage: Hands-on was first used as an adjective in relation to computer training in the late sixties, when opportunities to learn computing by sitting down at the keyboard and actually using the computer were described as hands-on experience. Throughout the seventies this was the dominant sense of the adjective, although towards the end of the decade a number of new applications were beginning to develop: people who had practical experience, or jobs which required it, could now be described as hands-on, and the metaphor was taken up in a more literal way by museums devoted to experiential learning, where visitors were encouraged to handle and use the exhibits. It was also at the end of the seventies that hands-on came to be used figuratively in hands-on management, a style of management in which executives are expected to get involved in the business at all levels, including the production process itself. (The opposite policy, in which managers interfere as little as possible and give their subordinates maximum room for manoeuvre, is called hands-off management.) During the eighties hands-on has been applied in a wide variety of different contexts to direct, practical participation. The sucessful candidate will have a solid record of achievement in 'hands-on' management established over several years experience. Wanganui Chronicle (New Zealand) 19 Feb. 1986, p. 10 Reactor operators are denied hands-on control until they have proved their competence in a simulator. Just as pilots make their first mistakes firmly fixed to the ground, reactor staff are brought up to standard without the risk of accidentally plunging the world into Armageddon. Guardian 3 Aug. 1989, p. 27 Zapata, who has been working in the business since she was a teenager, is the hands-on administrator of operations at Dawn. Delaware Today July 1990, p. 56