Building Best Practice in Human Resource Management

Frederick W. Taylor worked across the United States in the first 15 years of the 20th century looking to solve production problems (Owens & Valesky, 2011, p. 67). He was an engineer in steel manufacturing and studied developed what what is now known as the four principles of scientific management. These principles spell out what both managers and workers are to do. Two important principles include having the management set goals, plan, and supervise workers, and the workers perform the work, and that organizations should establish the standard where management “sets the objectives and the workers cooperate in achieving them” (p. 67). Taylor’s principles are still used today by some organizational leaders who fight the movement that management should work as a team with the workers (pp. 67-68). Taylor’s principles have led to things such as strict discipline, the idea that workers must focus on their task with little or no interaction with colleagues, and the idea of incentive

Frederick Taylor’s fundamental thoughts on scientific management dated back to early 1880s when he was employed at Midvale Steel Company and observed his coworkers “soldiering” at work. In the following two decades, he moved around different companies while developing his management theory

Taylors Method was known as the Time & Motion Studies. Time was the least amount of time it took to perform each task and even each part of each task, whereas motion was where the fewest numbers of motions required for each small task. Taylor wanted employees to work as if they were machines. From Taylor’s Theory to Taylorism the outcomes were that it boosted in productivity by 200% to 400%. More work was also accomplished with fewer people meant more profit for companies from Taylorism and the final outcome was that more consistent products were of higher quality (Frederick Taylor Scientific Management). In Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ‘The Principles of Scientific Management 1910, he states that ‘under the old

The human resources department has numerous responsibilities. The success of a company is depended upon the adequate functionality of the human resources department because it serves as the source of workforce. There are 10 top best practices recommended for the human resources.

Scientific management has also been criticised for not accounting for the employees in the organisation (Handy, 20) “but people had been left out of the equation – they were not so easily regimented.”, moreover this the management style also received a bad reputation (Brooks, 19) “Similarly, in Germany in 1912 they were greeted with considerable hostility, and in France (Renault) they resulted in strike action and violent

Sigmund Wagner-Tsukamoto, (2008),"Scientific Management revisited: Did Taylorism fail because of a too positive image of human

Taylor’s work had no direct impact Britain due to the hidebound conservatism of British executives (Nelson, 1992). The only visible aspect of Scientific Management that come into view in England before the First World War is the ‘Premium Bonus System’ where each worker is given an incentive in order to make the most out of his/her productivity and this system is very common in Britain Shopfloor (Caldari, 2007).

Taylorism is a system that was designed in the late 19th century, not only to maximise managerial control, but to also expand the levels of efficiency throughout workplaces. With this being said, productivity levels increased and fair wage distribution was the main result. However, with other, more recent theories and systems, such as Maslow and Herzburg’s theories, these helped to focus on the satisfaction and motivation of the workers rather than the concern of managerial control and empowerment. Fredrick W. Taylor ended up developing 4 main principles to help increase the work efficiency and productivity in workplaces; these will be discussed later on. Other theories relating to this include, Fayol, Follett, Management Science Theory as

People and processes are the main elements under management purview, and it is interesting to learn how managerial philosophy pertaining to these two elements has evolved from the Industrial Revolution throughout the Progression Era and into the modern workplace. The purpose of this paper will focus on Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management, also known as the Taylor System, and Elton Mayo’s Human Relations business models and how they relate to this

Taylor imagined that workers would be able to make out the relationship between completion of more work in units and the economic rewards been increased. Taylors work as described by (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004) depicts how theories were to take place at shop floor levels, then how facts were substituted for opinion and guess work. Henri Fayol, his fellow classical writer had a different perception which looked at organisation from top to bottom. The pace setters of classical theories had engineering background hence derived theories with scientific approach. (Buchanan and Huczunski, 2004). (Cole, 2004) talks about how the production environment under the classical theory in America had created difficulties, where labour force were skint, uneducated, and in quest of making economic fortunes. (Lemak, 2004) point out how the classical management has had

He believed increased production will eventually increase employees income (could use quote here) and organisations profit margins, but in fact in long term future production could fall due to employees felt dissatisfied and felt like machines. There jobs became repetitive and specialised to specific jobs, with no team work, job rotation or social groups, which are argued the main motivators in a workforce. At the time Taylor’s theory was successful proved by when he tested at manufacturing industry he found production increased by over 300% and wages increase by 60%, which shows his ideas did indeed give efficiency. Evidence of Taylors method of management is used to today is shown in organisations such as McDonalds and call centres. This showing that even though its 94 years old theory its used in present time and that scientific management is not overlooked by newer theories such as from the Human relations school and the contingency theory.

The fierce marketing competition drives company to seek new resources to improve their core competences and adapt to changing of the internal and external environment of organisation. A growing number of HR professors argued that strategic human resource management can be regarded as a source of sustained advantage for competition (Zupan and Ograjenšek, 2008). But there are lots of limitations exist in previous literatures, which do not answer questions like which strategic human resource management practice is best fit to enhance performance of organisation or is there any most effective SHRM model? Thus, in the article “the impact of bundles of SHRM practices on the performance of European firms”, authors mainly adopted the quantitative

Understanding the relationship between human resource management and organizational outcomes is one of the long-standing goals of macro human resources management research. – Kaifeng Jiang et al 2011

The purpose of Part Two is to begin with the work of Frederick W. Taylor and trace developments in management thought in Great Britain, Europe, Japan, and the U.S.A. up to about 1929. Taylor is the focal point, but we will see his followers as well as developments in personnel management and the behavioral sciences. Henri Fayol and Max Weber will be discussed, although their main influence came later, and we will conclude with an overview of the influence of scientific management in its environment.

These principles were implemented in many factories, often increasing productivity. Henry ford applied Taylor’s principles in his automobile factories.