Business Management Improves the Efficiency of an Organization

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

In the late 19th century, when a period of social activism and economic reform, historically known as the Progressive Era (Maligned), coincided with the capitalistic expansion at an unprecedented rate, a series of ideas on eradicating systematic soldiering and increasing the overall productivity quiet sprouted at steel industry, later growing into the theories of scientific management in the next two decades. Scientific management, also known as Taylorism, was one of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to optimize of management and achieve economic efficiency. Its founder, Frederick Winslow Taylor, was also the prominent figure in the Efficiency Movement in the U.S. The principles of scientific management have shaped American industry and on management science in three major ways since the 1880s. On the corporate level, scientific management had streamlined manufacturing process; on the individual level, it instilled many fundamental management ideas into the American industry; as the leading thought during the Progressive Era, it laid the foundation for various disciplines, many of which serve as guidelines even for modern-day industries.

Chandler, A.D. (1962) Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of American Industrial Enterprise. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Scientific Management, or Taylorism, is a theory of management by F. W. Taylor that analysed how the highest economic efficiency, especially labour productivity, can be achieved, hence the greatest prosperity for both employers and employees. The four principles that he brought forward are the replacement of the ‘rule of thumb’ work method with a scientific way to study work, matching and training the most suitable person to do each particular job scientifically instead of leaving the workers to choose their own work and teach themselves, the provision of detailed instructions and standard operating procedures by the managers to workers to ensure “all of the work being done in accordance with the principles of the science” and the division of work between workers and managers, which managers are responsible for planning and supervising while workers are to complete the tasks they are assigned to.

As discussed by Lewchuk & Robertson (1997), the organizational culture and values of the company, were simply to limit any role the workers had in the decision-making process, which was called the Fordist model. Hence, mainstreaming the production problems to the managers and leadership would enable them to better control and carry out the improvement of the workers and their products.

In 1982, General Motors closed “The Worst Plant in the World” in Fremont, California. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened up a joint venture operation in the same plant General Motors had closed just two years prior. The joint venture was called New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. (NUMMI). The concepts used for this new venture are those of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his time-and-motion regimentation. NUMMI’s newly implemented Taylorist procedures appear to encourage along with satisfaction and increased worker motivation.

These theories were proven relevant by their popularity (Brooks, 20) “Taylor’s thinking preceded the widespread adoption of mass production techniques, possibly best demonstrated by the early 1920’s motor manufacturers, most significantly Henry Ford in the USA.” Production lines were sequential and followed a strict rule of the “one best way” which may be because the new industry and workers did not have a large amount of knowledge or expertise on how their jobs should be done.

Initially at Ford motors, production used to take place by keeping the vehicle at one position and making the workers move in and about gathering the several parts together. This method unfortunately was a very tedious and time-consuming process. In view of this fact, Henry Ford appointed Taylor to monitor the operations taking place. Ford applied the scientific management

Firstly, according to Rose, M. (1978), Taylor believes that the root of inefficiency is the slacking and soldiering of workers. And irrational and incompetent of managers. He further explained the idea of inefficacy by stating ‘managers are incompetent is because of the growth in scale and technical complexity of industry’. In order to dealt with the slackness of worker, the worker should be closely control and supervise by inspector. This ensures that no one will shirk during work and the chance of worker making mistakes are minimized. Hence worker will produce the maximum effort which leads to increase in productivity. Taylorism also suggested the use of hierarchy organization structure which means separating the decision maker, usually the managers and the people who receive orders from the managers and implement it. This is because he believes that people with no management skills will not be able to make a right decision and hence may leads to a waste of resources. Besides supervision, Taylor asserted that managers should apply their professional knowledge on managing their worker and plan the work. For example, calculating the

The year 1911 saw Frederick Winslow Taylor publish a book titled ‘The principles of scientific management’ in which he aimed to prove that the scientific method could be used in producing profits for an organization through the improvement of an employee’s efficiency. During that decade, management practice was focused on initiative and incentives which gave autonomy to the workman. He thus argued that one half of the problem was up to management, and both the worker and manager needed to cooperate in order to produce the greatest prosperity.

The theory of scientific management was not invented by one day. It took many times for Frederick W. Taylor to understand that time’s organizational structure; workers behavior machinery tools etc. the idea was generated in his mind because he worked in various firms during the late 19th century, starting in 1878 with Midvale steel company. He worked there several years & recognized some of the process of the factory operation. He realized, at that time the management had no clear knowledge of working responsibilities or management responsibilities. There wasn’t any organized or structured work standard. The managers were taking their decision with guess, past experience, intuition which in many time resulted in failure. The workers efficiency level didn’t grow.

Named after American industrialist Henry Ford, Fordism is essentially a modern socio-economic system designed on the bases of industrial mass production in the 20th century. There are many aspects of Fordism in terms of its social and economic organisation, such as the relation to production line techniques, the nature and pattern of consumption, and overall state regulation. This essay will firstly outline the three major characteristics of Fordism; the standardisation of goods produced, the synchronisation of assembly line workers, and the concept of how higher waged workers are able to afford the goods they produce. Moreover, the 21st century patterns of production,

In this essay the focus is on Henry Ford and Fordism. The first paragraph of the essay is an introduction of Fredrick W Taylor, and how Fordism is derived from the ideas of Taylorism. It also looks at the main ideas behind Fordism and scientific management. Further in the essay the importance is to look at the different ideas of Fordism (the mass-production, the $5 day, the division of labour and management style), and on why it was important at is time and the effect following from those ideas. The essay has two different paragraphs discussing the positive and the negative effects of Fordism on management and organisations, and workers and society. In the end of the essay there is some paragraphs about the new forms of

Taylor's own name for his approach was scientific management. This sort of task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly ubiquitous today in industry, and has made most industrial work menial, repetitive, tedious and depressing; this can be noted, for instance, in assembly lines and fast-food restaurants. Ford's arguments began from his observation that, in general, workers forced to perform repetitive tasks work at the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work (which he called "soldiering", but might nowadays be termed by those in charge as "loafing" or "malingering" or by those on the assembly line as "getting through the day"), he opined, was based on the observation that, when paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work the slowest among them does: this reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their compensation. He therefore proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted, intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. From this he posited that there was one best method for performing a particular task, and that if it were taught to workers, their productivity would go up.

Although his work emphasized the technical rather than purely human side of management, he did point out the role of specific incentives in motivating workers and the value of specialization. Perhaps Taylor’s greatest contribution to the study of management and organizational behaviour was his approach of applying the scientific method to industrial problems. (Colonel Samuel H Hays and Lieutenant Colonel William N Thomas,Taking Command, Stackpole Books, USA, 1976, p 93). This scientific approach has been adopted by several theorists and applied to the filed of organizational behaviour.