Classical Management Theories : Scientific Approach

Scientific management or "Taylorism" is an approach to job design, developed by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) during the Second World War. With the industrial revolution came a fast growing pool of people, seeking jobs, that required a new approach of management. Scientific management was the first management theory, applied internationally. It believes in the rational use of resources for utmost output, hence motivating workers to earn more money. Taylor believed that the incompetence of managers was the major obstacle on the way of productivity increase of human labour. Consequently, this idea led to the need of change of management principles. On the base of research, involving analysing controlled experiments under various working

Frederick Taylor was an engineer who ran experiments in the 1880’s on the common manufacturing process of his time. His goal was to increase the productivity of the workers. The experiments measured the time to perform different tasks. He created recommendations for the workplace that became business standards and were enforced in the workplace. Businesses used these as a measure of productivity and rewarded wages and other rewards on a basis of performance. These changes created a shift in the workplace and a demand for higher compliance became the norm. Taylor helped create the need for standards in the workplace.

Management, is the art and science of getting things to be done, generally by others. (Mullins 2011), states is the way of organizing the things and to direct the duties of people in the setting of their jobs In many organizations, people are managed in the setting of their jobs because all employees have different abilities (Thompson, and McHugh, 2009). The different management perspectives evolved are classified into five perspectives, classical, humanistic, management science, recent historical trends and the innovative management. The classical theory includes three other perspective, scientific management, Bureaucratic organization, and Administrative approach. These are the historical theories of management. Based on the classical perspective

According to Miller (2010) Scientific management (Taylorism) was devised by Frederick Taylor to improve economic efficiency especially labor productivity by analyzing and establishing workflows. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management. Taylor’s scientific management was based on four principles. The first is replacing the “rule of thumb” work methods with methods based on a scientific study. The second is selecting, training and developing the most suitable person for the job. The third principle is managers should give out detailed instructions on how to do the job scientifically and supervise workers. The last principle is dividing the tasks between managers and workers. This paper will discuss if these scientific management principles are outdated in the study of organizations. I will present the principles and explain their relevance in current organizations.

His suggested principles and features have helped to model the scientific approach to management theory to this day. He was primarily concerned with how effective workers can be and the use of machines and other resources in order to have a better business which would attract the interests of different enterprises or entrepreneurs who were looking to invest in new businesses. (F.Mee, 2015) Taylor previously worked in various positions in the steel industry. It was Taylor who saw the urgent need for the elimination of waste, which at this time had become a serious problem in industrial organization. (Taylor, 1911) . According to Taylor (Taylor, 1911) , the only way to reduce wastages and achieve efficiency was to apply the method of science to the field of

In the late 19th century, the management decisions were often arbitrary and workers often worked at a deliberately slow pace. There was little in the way of systematic management and employees and the management were often in conflict. Scientific management was introduced in an attempt to create a mental revolution in the workplace. It can be defined as the systematic study of methods in order to improve efficiency. Frederick W. Taylor was its main proponent. Other important contributors were Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, and Henry Gantt.

The work that Frederick Taylor started was in response to the conditions in factories at the end of the 1800s. During this time work in factories was not particularly organised with each manager doing it ‘their own way’, usually by being extremely authoritarian

Frederick W. Taylor was recognized as the father of the "scientific management" theory. Taylor's Scientific Management Theory is not just a collection of purely technical principles and practices, but also the cooperation and harmonization of fundamental relationships between people and machines and techniques; between people in the production process, especially between the manager and the employee. Thanks to this theory applied in the industrial enterprises, the labor productivity has increased dramatically; The final result is high profitability, both employers and workers are high income. His scientific approach requires detailed observation and measurement of routine work, in order to find the best working way. Taylor’s approach is categorized as the bottom up approach.

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.

Several modern management theories have been shown to have their roots stemming from the ideologies of the scientific management theory. The basic principles of scientific management include standardised work activity based on measurement and formulae, workers are matched to tasks, coordination of activities in order to execute a number of related tasks and separation of planning and execution with the aim of maximum output. (4) The scientific management theory explores the idea that managers should manage and the workers should work. The industrial revolution era brought the need to bring about an increase in the effective rate of output and productivity and that led to the introduction of the scientific management theory by Frederick W. Taylor. Taylor was an engineer interested in efficiencies through work measurement and coordination of tasks and focused on the problems of dividing up labour tasks. He believed that the most efficient methods for completing a task and for the selection, development and motivation of employees could be scientifically determined, Taylor concluded that there was one best way to achieve things (4). Taylor had four

Scientific management theories proposed in this reading do apply to contemporary management functions. Although many of these theories could be argued as common knowledge today, when Fredrick Taylor established them they were prehistoric terms. He wanted to find out ‘one best way’ for everything in the workplace. Taylor’s most well known experiment was the pig-iron experiment (Locke, 1982 ). The experiment involved workers loading ‘pigs’ of iron on to rail cars. He knew their current daily output, but believed more was possible using scientific management. This was done due to many things. First of all putting the right person on the job with the right tools and equipment. In today’s management people hire the best person they can for the job. Secondly he had the worker follow his instructions exactly. This is also normal in today’s management functions, because people do things the way the employer wants them to. Taylor also motivated successful and productive workers with higher pay (Locke, 1982). This is also very common in today, with higher salary packages for good workers and pay increases for productivity fairly common. This improves employer and employee relationships by making the employee feel valued.

The purpose of this essay is to research, analyse and assess the theory of scientific management, which was revolutionised by Frederick Winslow Taylor in 1887 (A.Huczynski, 2010) and to critically evaluate the benefits and pitfalls of his theory. This theory Taylor developed is known as Taylorism and has been used commonly in various structures of organisation. Comparisons shall be drawn to other theories and advancements of this theory, such as Fordism and Toyotism, which was extremely popular in Japan (Cheng, 2009). Using these variations of Taylorism, we can therefore further and deepen the evaluation of his original theory. This essay aims to show that the disadvantages outweigh the advantages due to changes in culture and worker’s mentality.

The scientific management theory have an assumption that workers are lazy, not smart in analyzing tasks, only prefers simplified work and only works for money (Miller & Form, 1964). According to Taylor (2004), workers are unable figure out the most efficient way in doing work. Therefore, they are thought as replaceable working parts like a machine in the production line and can be trained to specialize in a certain procedure in the production. They are assumed to adopt the Protestant work ethic, working for long hours and not taking any breaks. Whenever a worker or a ‘part’ failed to perform its tasks, they

There is another name called Taylorism. The scientific management is a hypothesis of administration that breaks down and integrates work processes. Its fundamental target is enhancing financial effectiveness, particularly work profitability. It was one of the most punctual endeavours to apply science to the building of procedures and to management. Its advancement started with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s inside of the assembling commercial ventures.

Frederick Taylor (1856 – 1915) called the father of scientific management and the ancestor of the entire system of scientific organization of production, and more than a hundred years, the whole modern theory and practice in the field of scientific labor organization uses “Taylor “heritage. And it is no coincidence that the theory was based management engineer, thoroughly knowledgeable technology industrial enterprise and their own experience to know all the features of the relationship between workers and managers. “The goal of scientific management was to use systematic study to find the one best way of doing each task” (Williams, p. 24)